Hegseth Guts Pentagon Office That Gifted Lucrative Contracts To Famed Russia Collusion Hoaxer
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a complete overhaul of a Pentagon think tank that infamously gifted lucrative contracts to a key player in the Russia collusion hoax, the Defense Department revealed on Thursday.
“As part of the Department’s ongoing commitment to strengthening our national defense, the Secretary of Defense has directed the disestablishment of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and the development of a plan to rebuild it in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “This decision ensures that our resources are focused on the most pressing national security challenges while maintaining accountability and efficiency.”
According to the Pentagon’s website, ONA was established in 1973 to provide top-ranking defense officials with “long-term comparative assessments” of risks, trends, and opportunities regarding U.S. military-related endeavors. In recent years, this has included producing internal studies “represent[ing] years of detailed analysis” of these issues, which “provide strategic-level management insights for the Secretary of Defense and other senior DOD leaders.”
In his Thursday memo, which was obtained by Breaking Defense, Hegseth reportedly instructed the Defense Department’s Performance Improvement officer and director of Administration and Management “to reassign all civilian employees to other ‘mission critical positions’ inside the department, while military personnel will return to their service to receive new billets.” The agency’s chief acquisition official is also instructed to “‘ensure that the necessary steps are taken’ by department contracting authorities to terminate ‘all ONA contracts awarded for ONA and ONA-related requirements,’” the outlet reported.
While Democrats such as Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., have already begun attacking the administration’s overhaul of ONA, such criticisms have (unsurprisingly) neglected to mention the office’s past financial ties to famed Russia collusion hoaxer Stefan Halper.
As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland previously reported, Halper “served as a confidential human source for the FBI during the targeting of the Trump campaign, during which time he ‘secretly recorded several conversations with Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos,’ as well as taping ‘an extensive conversation with Sam Clovis—a co-chair of the Trump presidential campaign.’”
As noted by Cleveland, Halper was receiving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the ONA, including two contracts inked around the same time he was working with the FBI on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
[READ: The FBI’s Key Russia Spy Made Bizarre Resume Claims]
Halper’s ties to ONA prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to issue a series of letters to ONA Director James Baker throughout 2020 requesting information about the former FBI source’s contracts with the Pentagon-based think tank. Iowa’s senior senator specifically questioned ONA’s “stewardship of taxpayer dollars as well as its contract management and internal controls,” according to a January 2020 press release.
Grassley praised the Trump administration’s decision to overhaul ONA in a Thursday statement, saying the “wise move saves American taxpayers over 20 million dollars a year.” (The senator had previously called for the DOD to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” at ONA last month).
“After years raising Cain about the Office of Net Assessment’s failure to strengthen our national defense and its rampant abuse of taxpayer dollars, I’m thrilled to hear the news that President Trump is abolishing this wasteful and ineffective office,” Grassley said Thursday. “Praise the Lord.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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