The Ministry of Defense Has dissolved his office of net acquisition-a think tank-like arm of the Pentagon that Republicans have claimed that it was involved in Trump-Russia’s investigation.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said that civil employees within the office “are being re -assigned to mission -critical roles”, because the DOD prepared a plan to rebuild the office “in accordance with the strategic priorities of the department.”
The office is intended to offer long -term strategic analysis within DOD, but it has become a target of Republicans who claim that it has been concerned with ‘projects that are not related to its mission’.
“Price the Lord. This wise movement saves American taxpayers more than 20 million dollars a year,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, R-iOWA, in a statement.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseeth closed the Netto Acquisition office on Thursday. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
He called the office ‘wasteful and ineffective’.
In recent years, the office has focused on strategizing a possible war with China. It defended a strategy known as “Airsea Battle”, where a blinding campaign against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Stealth bombers and submarines would take China’s long -term monitoring For a navy attack.
But Grassley has been examining the contract practices of ONA for years.
For years, ONA has not been able to produce classified net assessments, with whistleblower analyst Adam Loveeder once in e-mails to director James Baker that the office seemed to attract too expensive papers in academic style instead of classified net judgments.
“About the issue of quality, I have heard more than once that our contractor studies ‘derived’, ‘college level’ have labeled and heavily based on secondary sources,” LoveGer wrote in an e-mail of September 2016. “One of our contractor studies was literally cut and stuck from a report from the World Bank.”
Liefder had complained about dubious government contracts to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant SPIVEED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN in 2016.
A report from a DOD inspector General later found that Halper had not properly documented the research he did as a contractor in four studies with a value of $ 1 million. The four contracts, which extend from 2012 to 2016, were intended to include relations between the US, Russia, China and India.
Secretary Hegseeth says that the DOD does not do ‘climate change’ nonsense
An ONA contractor had contact with the former Trump campaign assistant George Papadopoulos. (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)
The report showed that Halper had not provided any evidence from meetings he had or locations he had visited as part of his studies.
“ONA staff could not provide us with evidence that Professor Halper visited one of these locations, founded an advisory group or met one of the specific people in the work statement.”
For an investigation into what China relationships could look like in 2030, Halper had suggested traveling to London and Tokyo.
ONA contractor Stefan Halper also had contact with Carter Page. (Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin)
“The contract was a fixed price based on the acceptance of the delivery and did not require a professor Halper to submit travel vouchers. Ona staff could not provide documentation that Professor Halper traveled for this contract.”
Contracts show that Halper has mentioned a Russian intelligence officer as a consultant for an ONA project, the same intelligence officer mentioned as a source in the Trump file used to spy on Carter Page. He was in contact with Page and former Trump campaign assistant George Papadopoulos, “Asking questions about whether Halper used American taxpayers Dollars to seek connections with Trump campaign functionaries,” said Grassley.
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Halper was also a confidential human source for the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections who registered conversations with campaign officials.
The senator claims that ONA has conducted his studies on Halper’s relationships with the Trump-Russian probe.
Senator Jack Reed, Dr.I., Top democrat in the Armed Services Committee, called the end of the office ‘short -sighted’, adding that it would undermine our ability to prepare for future conflicts’.
