That NASA Whistleblower Case You Have Not Heard About
Lockheed Martin, which already settled one whistleblower suit at Stennis Space Center for $2 million, hit with another, Louisiana Voice
“With three large cost-plus contracts for testing and maintenance support services, Lockheed Martin has a commanding presence at NASA’s primary rocket propulsion facility at the Stennis Space Center just over the Louisiana state line in Mississippi. But as history has shown, the potential for abuse with such large contracts that seem to carry little apparent oversight, is overwhelming. Now two Louisiana residents, one former Lockheed employee and the other a former contract employee for Lockheed, are bringing suit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans under the federal false claims act The two, Mark Javery of St. Tammany Parish and Brian DeJan of New Orleans, claim that they were first given no duties and then fired from their jobs after reporting cost overruns and safety and performance issues.”
This reminds me of preventive maintenance at another certain center and costing that was way below ideal. Having gotton costing data it seemed after a few years that the data was too predictable. Long story short, it turned out that all the detailed cost data was bogus, estimates based on taking a very large maintenance charge code and spreading it out in the abstract among facilities when anyone came asking for the cost to maintain specific facility x or y. We never knew what facility maintenance was costing what really, or where or why.
I moved on about this time, but wonder what may have changed, if anything, as the approach just begged for waste and possibly worse.
Wait— what? Who would benefit from such a scheme?
Someone who wants funding to maintain the facilities. In practice, x might be expensive to maintain and rarely used, while y might be cheap but something everyone wants. Funding for y isn’t in danger, regardless of the reported costs, because everyone wants it. But x might be targeted for cancelation. The creative accounting would prevent that, by hiding the high cost or low utilization.
What’s really going on here? It sounds like whistleblowers aren’t protected and are fired when they shed light on a problem. From what I’m reading about this case, it was dismissed by the judge even though NASA wasn’t in compliance with the federal law.
Does anyone have an update on this case? How is NASA allowed to get away with this?
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