Prisoners Built WHAT for the U.S. Military? A Story in Contracting Gone Bad
August 13, 2019 by Marshall McGurk ~ Leave A Comment
Prisoners Built WHAT for the U.S. Military? A Story in Contracting Gone Bad
by Marshall McGurk
Spoiler Alert: This is not an Article 107 News article. The federal government paid over $53 million to two companies to build combat helmets between 2006 and 2009. The cost is not the problem. The problem is almost 150,000 Army and Marine Corps combat helmets were defective. Oh by the way, prisoners made the helmets.
Prisoners built the helmet, and the helmet didn’t work.
First of all, the prisoners came from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, working under…wait for it…a federally owned company called Federal Prison Industries (FPI). But wait, there’s more! FPI, also known as UNICOR, received the sub-contract from a private vendor, ArmourSource LLC. So, a private company was awarded a government contract, to make combat helmets, after normal bidding procedures. No problem. The private company then sub-contracted out a federally owned company for cheap prison labor and reaped a $30.3 million windfall as a result. That’s a problem, even if just from a perception viewpoint.
https://havokjournal.com/nation/prisoners-built-u-s-military/
