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GAO Exposes 1997 Missile Defense Agency Scam by CONSPIRACY PLANET According to a new report, the General Accounting Office states that the US Department of Defense falsified data in the first missile defense tests in 1997. Because a sensor could not distinguish between a warhead and decoys, the report concludes that the test was flawed. Pentagon contractors TRW, Boeing, and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology review team all exaggerated the success of the test, reported the GAO, the investigative agency of Congress. "If we can't tell the warhead apart from a decoy, what good is it?" asked Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who released the report. Protecting lucrative Pentagon fraud, Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner quickly backpedalled, saying the GAO report "doesn't matter, because that was a test of hardware that hasn't been part of the missile defense program in more than four years." According to an Associated Press report, "the 1997 test, which did not involve an attempt to intercept a warhead, tested a system made by Boeing and TRW that was rejected. The Pentagon accepted a competing system by Raytheon that relies on a different sensor that uses a different design and different means of discriminating warheads from decoys." Even though the GAO did not offer conclusions on whether the test was a failure, falsifying scientific and financial data is standard operating procedure at the Pentagon and major defense contractors. In a previous report confirmed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the GAO found that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion worth of expenditures. Department of Defense audits have revealed a black hole where the accounting should be. Regarding this latest Pentagon fraud, the GAO report found that: * The contractors analyzed only about 12 seconds of data out of more than 60 seconds available because of sensor malfunctions and other problems. * An engineering team that reviewed the test did not verify whether the data was accurate or whether the software was able to discriminate between a warhead and a decoy. The open-ended Strategic Missile Defense Fraud was initiated during the Reagan-Bush Administration in an attempt to funnel billions of dollars to defense contractors and other Republican Party donors. More recently government insiders have admitted that the so-called Star Wars program was an elaborate scam designed to outspend the Soviet Union into submission. For the complete report, go to http://www.gao.gov |
