In parts 1-12 I detailed some of the issues and problems-often caused by folly of one sort or another-that consistently undermined many of the government activities I’ve used as examples: I’m like Jimmy Durante about this stuff (I’ve got a million of them.) I also covered the murder of a security guard at the new NRO construction site that led to the discovery by congress of the new NRO building, which led to the firing of DIR Jeff Harris and DD Jimmie D. Hill.
Why do I keep belaboring these points (she cried?) My not so hidden agenda and premise here-because I told you and I’m telling you, and I’m returning to it to provide the context or backdrop against which it is so important to view and assimilate these events, is to get to and appreciate the true lessons learned.
The “gist” is these happenstances represent a number of “Doc” from “Back to the Future” type moments-where the space-time continuum was altered. In this case resulting in the most technically savvy, space literate and engineering “attention to detail” person in the FIA Procurement review and selection chain-Jeff Harris-was doing the Elvis thing as Phase B hit its pace (left the building.)
Resulting in what I came to believe was an ill-advised and ill-thought through procurement decision, a conclusion I came by honestly the day the GAP Mitigation Team received the full details of the Boeing proposal in mid-late July 2002.
Myriad acquisition options existed to “mitigate-” there is that word again-and hedge the action with belts-and suspenders on top of the belts-to improve the odds of meeting the top-level FIA objectives-the goals-closer to 90% than -50%: particularly when you consider that no matter how good a proposal was submitted by both vendors, past experience is always a major factor, and there is no getting around the fact that one of the vendors had none (more on this later.)
This wasn’t the NRO snack bar, cafeteria, “Bob Store,” or a history or library procurement action, this was for the next generation US IC satellite constellation that represented our nation’s capability for at least the first twenty years of the 21st century, and beyond.
I will cover the miracles after a little more detail on the process, but recently Bongino talked about (he’s a one name guy now after following him about 12 years or so since his Maryland political aspirations (dashed on the rocks) and his guest hosting on WMAL, with big Texan Brian Wilson (gravy not dressing guy) and Larry O’Connor,)) the 1986 New York Mets and Boston Red Sox-the infamous World Series where Boston first baseman Bill Buckner let a dribbling ground ball go through his legs, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run and crush the spirit and hearts of Boston fans everywhere: the night the lights went out in Boston… The Mets came back from two runs down in the bottom of the 10th and went on to win game 7. The good news? I was in the field, deployed along the Wumme River in Germany, oblivious to all of it.
The relevancy of the above? It was a miracle of the ages for the Mets. Would anyone in their right mind have bet on it as the Mets came to bat-or even as the ball dribbled down the first base line-in what had proven to be a hard fought, low scoring game? I don’t thin-so Lucy.
More germane to the FIA story, would anyone bet that the same thing would happen again the next game? Absolutely, positively, 99.9999999999% not (and that guy-urinalysis on aisle 7…)
But that is kind of what Boeing proposed and the government selected to get the “chicken dinner.”
That is why I am belaboring some of these points beyond a fare-thee-well: to hammer this point home like a dog on a bone or a Combined Armed Services Staff School Group Leader who still has time (or space) left in the instruction block: so back on your heads!
Taxpayers should expect-and demand-better of the civil servants that are paid damn good money to conduct the people’s business on these immensely important and costly projects. What could NRO-Keith Hall or David A Kier-have done differently?
They could and should have relied more heavily on subject matter experts (SMEs) on such an important decision (and yes, I know-they did…and we accept answers like that all the time: oh, they did??? Okay then-it’s on the SMEs, right?)
The true SMEs on this “stuff” could not be engaged: cause they all worked for Lockheed Martin (LMC), the incumbent they thought should be competitively challenged. They had access to many SMEs who had no dog in the fight, with all the money needed to bring them in to consult. Like the Jason’s that I’ve mentioned a time or two in my articles, who have-among other skillsets-some of the foremost optics and telescope experts-astronomers-physicists-in the world.
Hell, I begged and cajoled (well, submitted a research proposal) to their government POC Larry Gershwin for their help on a few projects and worked with them for nearly three years on several where we needed to figure stuff out-not just do the “I have an idea I threw against the wall” approach.
Let’s expand on what I’m somewhat obliquely referencing here (while there is time left in this block.) I’m talking about problem solving, solution assessment, causality, and the who, what, when, where, why, and how approach to data analysis. The Army problem solving process-which is now seven steps-but I did okay with the original five: Identify the problem, gather the information, develop potential solutions (3,) analyze and recommend the best course of action, implement the approved solution.
When I returned from deployment and caught up on the bad luck the Red Sox had, I couldn’t believe it. Then I discovered through research there was nothing unlucky about it: it was bad management and risky decisions that caused the problem. Bill Buckner caught hell and was a hounded man in Boston for ~two decades until the Sox bumped him off the “goat-seat” and won the series in 2004 (yeaaaa.)
But you know who should have been in the goat-seat all that time? The guy responsible for allowing it to happen in the first place: Boston manager John McNamara, who made three costly decision errors in the heat of the moment that sealed the Red Sox fate. He later puzzlingly modified his views and opinions to mitigate his culpability. Number one was when he pulled ace Roger Clemens from the game, insisting that Clemens “begged to be taken out of the game:” Clemons has steadfastly maintained that is a “crock of toa”-never happened: he told McNamara he still had the pop on his fastball and the Mets could not hit his curve. Number two was when he failed to bring Sox ace reliever Stanley in with the lead in extra innings, instead letting reliever Schiraldi go three innings, bringing Stanley in late after the save had already been blown.
But most importantly was the matter of leaving Bill Buckner in the game after he had been hit by a pitch in the hip, which worsened his already hobbled legs and mobility. Watching Buckner run was as painful as listening to our VP’s word salad or the Biden press secretary wander around trying to find the point. This is what McNamara said about it:
When asked later about his decision to leave Buckner in the game, McNamara initially said that he felt that he deserved to stay on the field for the potential final out to preserve the victory and the championship. Buckner, after all, was the third-oldest Red Sox player behind Baylor and Tom Seaver, (who was not on the postseason roster), and was an 18-year veteran who had only seen action in one prior World Series, which came when he was a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1974 World Series. Years later, McNamara changed his story and said that the reason why had nothing to do with sentimentality and instead said that Stapleton, who said McNamara’s decision cost the Red Sox the series, was not a reliable defender and that his teammates had taken to calling him “Shaky” as a result;[18] in spite of McNamara’s assertion, Stapleton had only committed one error at first base since Buckner joined the Red Sox in 1984 and, in his last two full seasons at first base, had recorded fielding percentages of .991 and .992 respectively.[19]
The bottom-line here is Bill Buckner suffered slings and arrows for nearly twenty years over this decision, when he never should have been in the game to make one of the most infamous errors in baseball history. Now I should get out of this while able, but the Sox lost a World Series championship prior to this-1967-to an admittedly great St. Louis team in their prime with Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood and a whole host of stars. Many believe St. Louis was the better team, but there is one reason-and one reason only-the Sox lost that year-and it is the tragic story of Anthony Richard “Tony” Conigliaro that I covered in a previous article. And I don’t want to get started with how my second team was swept in the 66 World Series with Koufax and Drysdale: swept! The Dodgers scored two runs in the first game-and no more in the final 3 games! I would have lost my 1 speed Apex bike that was built like a small tank over that one….
The bottom line in all this is it was a poor decision to award the contract to Boeing, in spite of their proposal-which all team members-and even LMC acknowledged was the better one. The thing that stood out when our Mitigation Team went through the Boeing proposal was the presence of at least two “pie-in-the-sky,” impossible engineering “miracles” that would soon prove to be the Achilles heel of the optical side of the program.
I left off with the meeting with TV and the subsequent status update to Ms. Isham, which proved to be a good lesson learned on what constitutes too much information.
To return to the end of the TV meeting, he asked how we planned to identify any GAP and what I was going to do about it. That was kind of the key question that I spent most of the prep time on after I found out I was in the hot seat, discussing GAP with our experts at Westfields, including the NRO team that NRO IMINT Chief Carol Staubach (RIP) had assigned to the task.
I knew a lot of the programmatics, the timelines from the Triple A Roadmap, a lot of the extraneous detail. I also knew that nothing currently on the books was going to help mitigate collection if the optical component kept slipping and did not make a date certain: soon. As did leadership right up to the DCI, who had discussed the issue with the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB,) who had accompanied the DCI to brief the president: yikes!
I came up with a somewhat simple approach to this problem at the top level and I offered that to anybody and everybody I talked to-whether they were interested or not-over the course of the first two weeks.
I believed that Mitigating the GAP was only going to be possible if we could identify it in terms of 3 basic components of it: the timing, extent, and duration. I soon learned that much like elbows and other things, everybody had an opinion on what was entailed in answering this question: and many opined the questions were largely redundant.
End of Part 13
25 November 2022
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