The FBI raided the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, D.C. Their website says, “OCTO employees stationed at OJS (441 4th Street, NW) should not report to work until further notice.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — A District of Columbia employee and a technology consultant have been hit with corruption charges after a raid on the former office of a city official who now works for President Barack Obama.
The charges were formalized in a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city’s technology office, which was led until recently by Obama’s new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
AdvertisementYsuf Acar, a city technology worker, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar’s home.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal was released but was ordered not to engage in overseas financial transactions. Bansal is due back in court on April 21.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama’s pick to coordinate federal computer systems.
Kundra himself was not a target of the raids. Mark Seagraves, who was onsite, reported what he could learn from the raid by Twitter. “The contractor arrested got gov contracts worth about 350K last year … An official in the D.C. government’s office of the chief technology officer has been arrested in a federal bribery sting.” Interestingly, Ysuf Acar appears to have described himself as “the agency’s chief security officer”.
The other person under custody, Sushil Bansal, ” heads Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp“. A look at AITC’s portfolio shows it has worked on the Citywide IT Security Program (CWITS) and the Motor Vehicles Information System (DESTINY).
Wired says Kundra, who has been proposing “radical transparency” in government, will probably be unscathed by the raids.
it is not clear how closely Kundra and Acar worked, or whether Kundra will be criticized for his supervision. Although the breaking news must be causing severe headaches in the administration, a source close to the Obama tech team suggests the story will pass. “Kundra will be fine. His aide will not. … One of his main jobs for Obama will be determining what data can and should be opened up, a complicated process given concerns about privacy and the general bureaucratic difficulties that the federal government has in acting.”
The Washington Post in a profile of Kundra and his management style depicts him as a someone who wants to “wire” the government to the public by providing a number of new channels through they can interact directly. Preliminary reports from the Associated Press suggest that Acar and Bansal will be accused of defrauding the government.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city’s computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents. Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and “ghost” contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged. …
Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters.
Tip Jar
A source close to the Obama tech team suggests the story will pass. “Kundra will be fine. His aide will not.
They can ship the aide over to Treasury– he’ll fit in just fine with that crew.
Were any of these guys in charge of putting together Obama’s overseas-capable internet campaign contribution set-up? Is it just my imagination or are these Arabic (i.e., Muslim) names?
Where does Obama looks for candidates for his team, in the FBI most wanted list? This is becoming ridiculous, they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.
I think they are Indonesian, or maybe Turkish. Let’s look on the bright side, at least there is no one called Mohammed… Yet.
Kundra is Indian, but that is hardly the issue. The Indians are very heavily represented in IT and that one would become a CIO is just probability. What is really damaging was that Kundra’s assistant is being charged with running a scam in the department over the period where Kundra was top dog. But since these men are innocent until proven guilty, we should just wait and see.
However, what is striking is the potential that penetrations into IT now have in damaging things. We’ve all become very dependent on computer technology and count on its security to do things like buy stuff, tell each other secrets, make business plans.
So while we don’t know how this will end, it’s a reminder that like finance, IT is the unnnoticed elephant in the room. We don’t even see it until it all goes wrong.
Which way’d he go george, which way’d he go…. This is better then looney toons!
Nothing to see here. Just as there was no pork in the stimulus and no wasteful spending in the budget. Move along people. The DOJ doesnt have time for this as they are busy investigating border sheriffs that have been enforcing immigration laws.
So, Wretchard – you think they should be allowed to innocently continue with their jobs until they are proven guilty?
So, Wretchard – you think they should be allowed to innocently continue with their jobs until they are proven guilty?
They’re not going to be criminally punished until proven guilty. I don’t want to speculate on Kundra’s innocence or guilt, especially since he hasn’t been charged. But questions will surely be raised about the managerial question of why he didn’t catch on to the alleged hanky-panky.
Consider that the current economic difficulties aren’t really caused by any physical damage. Nothing blew up. What failed was something almost virtual: the financial system. It was poisoned with bad economic information: toxic assets. There’s a very intertwined relationship between finance, trade, security and even identity and information technology. We depend on it far more than we even realize.
The problem with the financial system is not bad information, it is bad assets, zero down mortgages, undocumented mortgaes, CDOs, CDSs etc. These are not information, they are liabilities and assets. And the physical damage is that way too many houses were built by issuing debt to China.
The other day on the radio I heard a portion of an interview between Bwany Fwank and a NBC “reporter.”
She asked him if the difficulties Obama has in finding people who do not have problems with their past were going to represent a lasting impact on the Administration.
Bwany replied that the Media was the real problem, focusing on meaningless minor incidents rather than the urgency associated with getting things fixed. The reporter replied “We are guilty as charged.”
Interesting how during the Reagan Admin the Democrats and Media harped on and on about “The Sleaze Factor” as dozens of Reagan appointees were forced to leave their posts when it was found that had not bothered to remove certain Defense stocks from their investment portfolios or other similar truly meaningless infractions. Not one of those accused of adding to The Reagan Sleaze Factor had an infraction even close to what has been found on Obama’s appointees.
What we are seeing is a “defining down” of improper behavior. And it is necessary to do so because of the type of people Obama is choosing. And it was those type of people that caused the Meltdown.
Archaeologists today dug up a vampire’s grave near Venice. I make no correlation, but you know, just sayin’.
RWE @ 11: Interesting how during the Reagan Admin the Democrats and Media harped on and on about “The Sleaze Factor” as dozens of Reagan appointees were forced to leave their posts when it was found that had not bothered to remove certain Defense stocks from their investment portfolios or other similar truly meaningless infractions.
RWE, you even understate the case. I remember it vividly. The phrase that spilled from the mouths of Democrats and news media, again and again, was “the appearance of impropriety.” Essentially, it was a way of saying “they didn’t actually do anything illegal, but they did something that looked like it might be somewhat vaguely wrong, and since they’re Republicans they have to go.”
That’s how they played the game in the Reagan years. It was marginally tied to reality in that something usually did happen, however picayune. Under GWB the Dems learned they don’t have to be tethered to reality at all. Just let the lies fly because nobody that matters will question them, and everybody from Jon Stewart to Bill Maher to Katie Couric will pile on.
walt/12;
“It’s just beyond everything. What does it mean? What is it leading to?”
the sheriff asks in No Country for Old Men, and then answers the question himself: “It’s the tide. It’s the dismal tide. It’s not the one thing.”
it’s never the one thing, except maybe when you dig up a vampire.
Speaking of No Country for Old Men, here’s an interesting bit of news today U.S. Military Being Sent to the Border with Mexico</a.
peterike/13; i read somewhere that Katrina taught today’s media that it could lie all it wanted and suffer naught; then the recent campaign taught it that it could simply not report anything at all, as it did re Obama, and again suffer naught (at least naught outside the accounting offices, har).
A media-like place-holder, replete with expensive equipment, talent, and production budgets, appearing to be legit, in fact continually entering such claims into the information stream, is far worse than no media at all. No media at all would clue us to do our OWN gov’t watch-dogging. You know, so that we’d suffer no surprise institutional meltdowns.
Anyhoo, the reason the media exploded over Katrina was, i think, the early-on tv cameras entering the Ninth Ward, and putting images before the world of the results of a pure, unalloyed Democratic Party rule.
Had reporters questioned those stunned people (Saul Bellow, writing of his native Chicago’s south side gov’t electoral captives, called them the “spun people”) they’d've learned the families had been more or less imprisoned right there, jobless and all but schooless, consuming crumbs from DC in return for bloc votes, ever since the Yankee Occupation Gen’l Benjamin Butler of Boston had rounded them up in 1865 and brought ‘em into the Ninth for ‘protection” (actually as a rationale for his massive graft machine).
Anyhoo clearly someone in the media/party spliceworld saw the image stream and freaked out, and sent out emergency orders to launch 24/7 hyper BDS bombs (remember the RIDICULOUSly stretched and fantastical reporting?), in order to stun the world and render it incapable of asking questions.
The Washington Post describes one of the suspects:
Everything that we know about the value of assets is expressed as information. Cash flows, credit worthiness etc are all information. The subprime mortgage meltdown occurred when the market realized that the stream of payments was not going to be met. That would have been obvious had not a process been in place to produce false estimates of capacity to pay, wrong estimates of value, etc. But eventually reality sends its signature through the filters. At some point we understand the truth and then the markets reconcile value to reality. The bill comes due.
Acar in the example above was boasting he could manufacture US citizens at will. He could give you a DC birth certificate. He could give Osama Bin Laden, or Mickey Mouse, for all that we know, a DC birth certificate. For the most part, what is officially true about all of us is what is entered in some database.
wretchard:
What’s the difference between a “toxic asset” and a lie?
What’s the difference between a “toxic asset” and a lie?
I think there’s precious little. An asset which is carried at an inflated value on the books is a lie. Receivables that have no realistic chance of being collected; financial instruments whose value is grossly overstated; inventories based on empty warehouses; a stream of mortgage payments on million dollar homes due from bus drivers who inflated everything in their application. These are all lies. And they are toxic assets.
Toxic Assets = Systemic Poison
i think the ‘toxic’ refers to the reversed-leverage creating a negative income stream –IOW, toxic is worse by far than ‘non-performing’ –toxic poisons the capital ratio, which then creates atop a non perfoming’s opportunity cost a direct insolvency demanding fresh cash infusions, before the regulators show up and lock the place down. and that’s just the mortgages. the CDS too -buyers pay monthlies to sellers –which you’d think is a net out re general system order, but does far worse re that paid cash dollar’s power to lock down ten times itself in (possibly) illiquid or non-monetized assets. not sure but i think this is called “latency”. So ‘toxic’ runs you out of cash but also latency, or, time for something good to maybe happen. these are all leverage issues –the latent cost is like your insurabce premium –you feel like it was wasted if you make no claims, but to be ‘covered’ is to be consuming an asset all along. You just can’t see it, but you would see its effect –if you have an accident.
Kundra and company are small potatoes compared to this: Tony West, who volunteered to defend Joh Walker Lindh, the American Taleban, is Obama’s choice to head the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. What’s going on here?
Tony West. The Jawa Report has post on it. According to Wikipedia, the Civil Division does the ff:
The picture given in the Jawa Report, however, may be wrong. This photo, taken from the Morrison Forester site may be more accurate. The bio is interesting, and has some points of resemblance to Obama’s own career.
Once charming universties
become the fortress enemy’s
where sent our life of labor fruit,
the faculty don’t give a hoot
but for Reds, and tenured amenities.
say, wonder if jihadi fundie religious extremist symp lawyer tony West was to balance out adult and kiddie porn anti-life symp lawyer David Ogden?
lessee, mr porn is deputy AG, and mr jihad is a dept head at DoJ, so does that mean the admin loves hostage-beheaders less than it loves child-molesters ? DISCRI MI NATION !
My God. the country is in the hands of people you could not let baby sit. Actually, people you would probably not let in the house. Weirdos and ambulance chasers.
““Kundra will be fine.
His aide will not.
… One of his main jobs for Obama will be determining what data can and should be opened up, a complicated process given concerns about privacy and the general bureaucratic difficulties that the federal government has in acting.””
—
Just the types of folks we want making such determinations.
Every time you hear the word transparency from this bunch, you wince.
I’m guessing Obama’s Columbia years will be candidates for a public airing forthwith.
““Kundra will be fine.
His aide will not.
… One of his main jobs for Obama will be determining what data can and should be opened up, a complicated process given concerns about privacy and the general bureaucratic difficulties that the federal government has in acting.””
—
Just the types of folks we want making such determinations.
Every time you hear the word transparency from this bunch, you wince.
I’m guessing Obama’s Columbia years will be candidates for a public airing forthwith.
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
– The Obama Rosetta Stone –
Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography — “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone’s life:
“A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America’s Promise. The President’s Budget and Fiscal Preview” (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it’s a must read.
Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused.
-ht ‘Rat
(that great post-repost compliment got copied from somewhere, somehow. Not my style, but I remain a dedicated reader!)
The happenings in DC IT is an example of what is simple been going on with “0”, “0″ picks are the same as these jokers! Folks there is no fixing the behemoth, it must be disassembled and create anew…
So what happens when in days, weeks or Months Wall Street takes the dive from the over stimulated and falsely prop up corporations? Will anyone remember that “0” declared it was just Hyper talk or will we once again simple sound the alarm to stimulate and prop up decrepit corporations again…? Really, it is time like the Apple commercial where the women throws the sledge hammer thru the mesmerizing screen to break the death hold the “Progressive” (actually regressive) liberals have on our souls and country!
lessee, mr porn is deputy AG, and mr jihad is a dept head at DoJ, so does that mean the admin loves hostage-beheaders less than it loves child-molesters ?
No, buddy, that’s his famous “cabinet of rivals.”
effsdf
Pilot of the airwaves
Peterike # 13: Yep., you are quite right. It was the “appearance,” not the facts. And what is the appearance now of the Obama Admin?
By the way, does anyone know of a book that details the lies associated with Hurricane Katrina? A significant portion of the suffering there was due to official reaction to the false new media reports. I understand that many people arrived there with privately owned boats to help but were not allowed to go in and rescue victims because the media was reporting that the rescue helicopters were being fired on. After the fact those reports were found to be false – along with those that said that women being raped in the superdome and that armed gangs with AK-47’s were roaming the streets robbing abandoned stores – and so forth – but by that time the damage had been done.
RWE, I’ll ask my sources over thataway –check back here in day or three –dunno if can paste in archives so i may put it top front as an o/t to you –
Obama’s duplicitousness seems to work both ways. Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After Signing Executive Order to OK It
RWE, don’t know of any book. But you can Google Anna Pou and see how CNN systematically went about destroying her life in the year + following Katrina. Nice race-baiting story while denigrating her bravery in the face of awful conditions.
If anyone is still wondering whether the Obama really is interested in making America a better place, check out our Messiah’s newest bright shiny program initiative: ” hey let’s not fund Veteran’s health care anymore”.
So let me get this straight; you serve your country heroically in battle, and come back with some not so good, or really bad wounds from battle. As a thank you, Obama now wants you or your employer to fund your health care costs, often viciously expensive ones at that due to those battle wounds, for the rest of your life. Veterans with severe war wounds will become an economic pariah. Now that the hope and change we voted for! Not.
The enlisted will leave the service in droves. The Obama wants to punish our brave soldiers for their service, not thank them.
This Obama dude is one dangerously cruel, evil, sick puppy who wants to wreck this country.
“The problem with the financial system is not bad information, it is bad assets, zero down mortgages, undocumented mortgaes, CDOs, CDSs etc. These are not information, they are liabilities and assets.”
A CDO is both an asset and a bundle of information. The ways in which the CDO pools were sliced and diced by derivatives specialists served to obscure the aggregate value of the assets within the pools. This misinformation, created by design or by accident, is what fueled the market for more CDOs and consequently for more new mortgages.
If that’s not not a failure of information I don’t know what is.
Unsk:
Got a link to document that?
That should be a deal killer for a Hell of a lot of voters.
Obama Veteran’s health care – Google News
re: 17 “Acar in the example above was boasting he could manufacture US citizens at will. He could give you a DC birth certificate.” Could he give you a Hawaii birth certificate? I wonder.
i read up on the Nazi eugenics program once. Of all the people they killed through their “socialized medicine”, and there were many, the one group that lept off the list at me were the ones they initially started with.
They euthanized the veterans from WWI first.
There were many reasons for this, but they are summarized by the estimation that these injured and wounded soldiers from WWI were the greatest burden to their society. They were disabled, thus couldn’t work/pull their own weight, their pensions were exhorbitant, and continuing medical care was expensive.
They moved on to the other institutionalized, mentally ill, et al, next.
But they STARTED with their own VETERANS.
I don’t think this point is made enough: The NAZI eugenics program WAS socialized medicine, as instituted by their National Socialist Workers party.
We see a similar mindset exposed in a recent circumstance in Oregon, where an individual with cancer was refused treatment (due to cost) by the State’s healthcare program. However, they helpfully offered to euthanize the patient (much more cost effective).
Aaron
Senators slam plan for wounded vets to use private insurance
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.
Lawmakers say they’d reject a proposal to make veterans pay for treatment of war wounds with private insurance.
But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.
Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.
aaron,
That’s and unfair characterization:
Limited funds were used for higher priority needs:
…like unlimited Health Care for illegals.
He can manufacture birth certificates for osama, mickey mouse or obama?
RWE, there was a blog or two that really compiled a lot of the Katrina garbage at the time. Can’t find them right now and no time to look, but a web search might turn up some good sources.
Doug:
It is already a fact that when veterans go to a military medical facility for treatment they are requested to provide information on any private insurance they have so that the insurance company can be charged for the costs. If they don’t have suitable insurance over and above that provided by enrollment in and payment of fees to Tricare, they are not denied treatment, but if it can be charged to an insurance company, it will.
Buddy and Peterike: Would be just the thing for Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or John Stossel to do a show on: Katrina Lies and the Media’s Responsibility.
RWE…
Here’s a link to a very good story from a couple years ago that was pretty damning of the media’s performance during Katrina – and somewhat positive about the government’s
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/katrina_what_the_media_missed.html