Posted on 03/14/2025 7:40:12 PM PDT by Libloather
The Department of Defense has dissolved its Office of Net Acquisition – a think tank-like arm of the Pentagon that Republicans have claimed was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said civilian employees within the office would be "reassigned to mission-critical roles" as the DOD established a plan to rebuild the office "in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities."
The office is meant to provide long-term strategic analysis within DOD, but it has become a target of Republicans who claim it has engaged in "projects unrelated to its mission."
"Praise the Lord. This wise move saves American taxpayers over 20 million dollars a year," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement.
He called the office "wasteful and ineffective."
The office in recent years has been focused on strategizing a potential war with China. It championed a strategy known as "AirSea Battle," where a blinding campaign against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of stealth bombers and submarines would take out China’s long-range surveillance before a naval assault.
But Grassley has for years scrutinized ONA’s contracting practices.
ONA has failed to produce classified net assessments for years, with whistleblowing analyst Adam Lovinger once complaining in emails to Director James Baker that the office seemed to attract overpriced academic-style papers instead of classified net assessments.
"On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled ‘derivative,’ ’college-level,’ and based heavily on secondary sources," Lovinger wrote in a September 2016 email. "One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sen. Grassley from 2020; YES, from 2020:
...When I began to review Stefan Halper’s contracting work for ONA, something didn’t look right. So, I asked the Inspector General to look into it.
For those who are unaware, Stefan Halper was a central figure in the debunked Russia-collusion investigation.
Halper secretly recorded Trump campaign officials during Crossfire Hurricane.
Halper also received over a million taxpayer dollars from ONA for several “research” projects...
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