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Defense Department Orders Chemical Weapons Audit
The U.S. Defense Department is auditing the accelerated destruction project for mustard agent at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, just after Congress voted to reinstate the project’s funding over the Pentagon’s opposition, the Pueblo Chieftain reported today (see GSN, May 10). The department is questioning the project’s operation under primary contractor Bechtel and whether the program has been structured to increase its cost. Members of the local Citizens Advisory Commission received a letter from acting Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne requesting an investigation of the project by the department’s inspector general, according to the Chieftain. The letter states that the Pueblo project was slated to cost $1.6 billion and employ no more than 587 workers at a 95,000-square-foot facility. The revised plan has 1,100 workers at a 240,000-square-foot plant and “could end up costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated,” Wynne wrote. Wynne’s asked auditor to examine the Bechtel contract and determine if the terms of the agreement gave the contractor an incentive to inflate the proposal unnecessarily. A draft report of the audit is expected in July, according to the Chieftain (John Norton, Pueblo Chieftain, May 27).
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