Posted on 03/06/2002 4:59:32 AM PST by rdavis84
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Conservative Net
In a week of eyebrow raising stories out of Washington, D.C. about Clinton, providing expertise that enabled China to perfect the accuracy of missiles aimed at American cities, sanctions on India for underground nuclear testing etc, nothing alarmed me more than an obscure story about a strange event tagged "reinventing government."
It appears that, under the guise of "reinventing government" to "reduce bureaucracy," President Clinton directed the formation of a company called US Investigations Service, Inc., headquartered in an abandoned mine hundreds of feet beneath Butler County in rural northwest Pennsylvania.
According to the Scripps-Howard report "The company, which checks virtually all prospective civilian federal workers to determine if they have past criminal convictions or otherwise might endanger national security, was formed when 706 government employees of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) were dismissed in 1996 and offered jobs in the first employee-owned corporation ever created by the federal government.
"A Scripps Howard News Service analysis shows the federal government paid the 706 employees $37.3 million a year in salaries and benefits before they were privatized in July 1996. The private company, called US Investigations Services, received nearly twice that amount, or $73.2 million, from the government in its first full year of operation. The firm is expected to get a total of more than $153 million in its first two years and two months of business."
Does this strike you as a money saving operation? And, while we are talking about investigations which determine the hiring of people, what kinds of safeguards exist in this new "private" company which was merely handed millions of dollars worth of contract work without having to bid competitively? The company won't disclose how it spends taxpayer money or provide any details about its profits or salaries, including the compensation given to corporate officers.
However, this supposedly "private" company pays nothing for its office space or for even the computers that make the business possible. Those costs are paid by the U.S. government. Essentially, only the work force was privatized. Phil Harper, president and chief executive officer of the new firm called said, in refusing to give the reporter a profit figure, "That would give our competitors an edge. There are still a lot of expenses besides salaries," Harper said. "Travel is a large component. And we still have the need for paper, pens, pencils, repair agreements on equipment, leases on equipment -- a lot of incidentals that add up."
It strikes me that one could buy a whole lot of paper, pens and pencils with the extra $35.9 million. The reporter must have asked the government officials the same question. ""Was there a better way to do this? Maybe. Maybe there was a more efficient way," said Office of Personnel Managment spokesman Bruce Milhans. "But we are confident that we have saved the taxpayers money. We are confident of that."
He couldn't figure out just HOW that was the case, since the figures we have indicate it cost at least double what was paid previously, but assured the reporter that it must have been. Milhans and other officials said that the decision to privatize the former Office of Investigations was "an executive decision" from the White House. "This was part of the reinvention of government," he said. "If we had just fired everybody, there would have been an enormous disruption among the federal agencies (needing background checks). There wasn't a private-sector company in existence that could do this when this was decided to be done. We did care about our employees and we wanted to give them the support they needed for five years so they could make a successful transition."
So, you see, Harper HAD to refuse to respond to questions. He said if he revealed the amount of profit it might help competitors. WHAT competitors? Perhaps the Secret Service? The Clintons resentment towards the White House Secret Service, who were supposed to do the investigations on White House personnel, is well documented. Who, besides the federal government, is a customer of the investigating company? Supposedly the work which so far has been done totally by the monopoly set up by the President and Vice-President becomes available for open bid in 2001, just as Bill Clinton leaves the White House. Isn't that an interesting coincidence?
To "help" the fledgling company, the Clinton White House insulated it from public scrutiny of a public, tax supported entity as well as many of the major operating expenses faced by most start-up businesses. For example, it has free use of tens of thousands of square feet of office space in the Butler County cave complex (a secured compound the government began leasing during the Cold War) and in 21 other federally leased offices nationwide. Most important, it has free access to a vast and priceless government computer database of criminal, civilian and governmental records not available to the public.
The Clinton White House fling at entrepreneurship resulted in the creation of a firm which instantaneously became the world's largest security background company. A year later the company was denying that their profit margins are "excessive."
US Investigations Services spokespersons said they "voluntarily" gave up an additional $5.1 million the company was entitled to in the federal contract by reducing its charge for each investigation and by rolling back the price cut to July 8, 1996, when the company began. Harper said he turned down the additional $5.1 million not because he feared appearing too profitable, but in order to win a new contract in three years. "I've got 700 people here. I want to win that re-bid," he said.
Re-bid? There is no indication he ever bid anything to get this huge contract.
Thomas Hargove of Scripps-Howard reported, "According to an in-house chronology prepared by Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the privatization occurred soon after Clinton took office in 1993. Newly confirmed OPM Director Jim King promised that OPM would become a 'model agency' during reinvention. In February 1994, King held 'the first of several emergency meetings' with the investigations staff 'to discuss the unit's poor financial situation.'
"At that time, the investigations staff consisted of nearly 1,400 people, and the typical investigation cost $596 each. Three months later, King cut 400 employees, most of whom found other federal work. The cost per investigation was cut in half to about $231 each -- a level of efficiency that the private company only recently has been able to match, according to OPM estimates.
"Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jim King and four other agency heads attended a Dec. 19, 1994, news conference at the White House to announce a stream of government realignments. "For OPM's part, the president directs Mr. King to privatize or otherwise remove from government control the training and investigations functions of OPM," according to the official chronology.
Investigative functions of the Office of Personnel Management? That's right. Some folks in Congress and the media have wondered how the White house spin doctors have managed to get dirt on their targets so fast.
For example, just how DID the spin doctors get information that at age 10 Linda Tripp had been arrested? As it turned out, she was arrested because, unknown to her, someone put some property in her purse that was then reported as stolen. She was assured at the time the incident would never appear on her record, since it was an error. Then, somehow, it became a huge media issue when it was reported, with sinister overtones, as a indication of a "secret" past life of crime on the part of Linda Tripp. Just who was the "investigator" who found that tidbit she was told would not be on her record?
Could it be that the money-making "US Investigations Services" which apparently has access to the most sophisticated, publicly financed, information in the country has been the source of the White House's amazing stash of obscure personnel information about folks who dare suggest there is skullduggery going on in the White House?
And, just who, do you suppose, owns the stock in this handy little private-government financed company? In May 1996, employees for the investigations service were given termination notices, but within 48 hours each employee was offered a job "at the same salary and with comparable benefits" in the new company. Employees were given the same salary PLUS they receive annual shares of stock based on their salaries.
OPM managers told reporter Hargrove that "even if US Investigations Services earns millions of dollars in profits, taxpayers are saving money." In other words, just because your tax money was used to set up a private company that SOMEONE is making millions on, it really is none of your business.
Just yesterday Kenneth Bacon, a Pentagon spokesman, was refusing to respond to questions about how and why he made the story about Linda Tripp's arrest public, without telling the whole story. And, he did say Linda was still employed at the Pentagon. Just because that story, with much left out to help the Clintons' cause, and just because the Clinton's private income jumped in one year from $750,000 to up to $6 million last year, is no reason to be suspicious, is it.
But, then, those funds WERE made during the same time period that US Investigations Services happened to be making millions for its stock holders.
Now, you don't suppose, do you, that somehow some of US Investigations Service Stock somehow inadvertently found its way into the Clintons blind trust, thereby making a surprised and innocent Bill Clinton a reluctant millionaire, do you?
Nah! Couldn't be. Didn't both the President and the Vice-President tell us that their only goal was to save you, the taxpayer, lots of money?
And, why the hell are we paying for Clinton's Harlem office when he is a millionaire?
Where is the GAO on this?
The Clintons and Al Gore used the Oval Office for personal gain. All should be convicted of this crime.
I wonder who else was given privy and cut in to this little money making scheme using taxpayers' dollars?
Good going! I've made phone calls on U.N. Treaties to get answers and in effect get nothing. Remember the "Desertification Treaty"? O'K.'d by Helms because "it can't be implemented anyway". Let us know if Michael Reagan has any answer if you would. I KNOW you'll get zero from the WH and Ashcroft. We're at War, ya' know.
USIS - US Investigations Services
"It appears that, under the guise of "reinventing government" to "reduce bureaucracy," President Clinton directed the formation of a company called US Investigations Service, Inc., headquartered in an abandoned mine hundreds of feet beneath Butler County in rural northwest Pennsylvania."
I wonder if, after all this time, they all resemble Rats yet?
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