When it has to get there overnight: War profiteers charge almost a million bucks to ship two 19¢ washers

A story by Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News, posted yesterday on Yahoo! News, recounts how the Pentagonpaid $999,798 to ship two 19¢ washers from South Carolina to Texas.

That's the bad news. The good news, according to Capaccio's article, is that the company that sent the bill, C&D Distributors of South Carolina, and its surviving owner, Charlene Corey, pleaded guilty yesterday in a Columbia, South Carolina Federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money.

Corey may receive 20 years in jail on each count.

I submit she may have gotten off lightly.

If Capaccio's story is accurate, Corey and her late sister billed $20.5 million in fraudulent shipping costs over a six-year period. Again, according to Capaccio's story, citing Pentagon records, Corey's company "also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida."

C&D was apparently able to milk American taxpayers in this way because of what Capaccio politely calls a "flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system." Citing Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator, Capaccio reports that "bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled 'priority' were usually paid automatically."

Investigator Stroot is also quoted in the article as saying that C&D got more "aggressive" over time in the amounts billed for shipping. Capaccio supplies some perspective: The cost of the parts shipped seldom reached even $100 -- a total of $68,000 billed over the same time that the contractor was billing $20.5 million for shipping those same parts. The outrageous charges were paid because (Capaccio quoting Stroot), "The majority, if not all of these parts, were going to high-priority, conflict areas." In order to evade oversight, all one needed to do was to claim that the shipment was "priority."

According to Capaccio, C&D's ride on the taxpayer gravy train finally came to a halt when a purchasing agent finally noticed -- and rejected -- a $969,000 bill for shipping two more 19¢ washers. That's when the government figured out it had just paid $998,798 for shipping two other 19¢ washers.

How brain-dead must one be to let that kind of charge sail through without so much as even a polite inquiry? Yes, send Ms. Corey to jail. Throw away the key. But fire the people who were paid to pay these charges, too.

Capaccio's story mentions nothing about the fate of any Pentagon procurement personnel.

He did say that, according to Stroot, fraudulent billing is not a "widespread problem." Although other questionable billing has been spotted during a review prompted by the belated identification of C&D, the next-highest contractor is suspected of only $2 million in questionable transport costs. The word "only" is mine. And it is inserted, like a dagger, dripping with intended sarcasm.

C&D was caught, apparently, because it was so incredibly outrageous that, finally, even the government noticed it. After six years.

Capaccio's article concludes with Investigator Stroot explaining that the Pentagon hopes to get some of that $20.5 million back "by auctioning homes, beach property, jewelry and 'high- end automobiles'" which the Corey sisters bought with taxpayer money. But, she says, they also "took a lot of vacations." So I guess we can forget about a 100% return.

American kids have died in Iraq and Afghanistan because they didn't have newer, safer helmets, or better-armored vehicles. Funds weren't available for these things -- particularly for National Guard units which, in the traditional view, were expected to operate behind the lines, providing support for regular Army or Marine units.

But there aren't any 'front lines' in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the $20.5 million that C&D bilked out of the Pentagon would have bought a lot of helmets and vehicle armor.

Ms. Corey and the people in the Pentagon who let her billing slide didn't just cheat American taxpayers; they helped kill American kids.

Of course, C&D was a small-time contractor. It didn't bill a lot for parts (only $68,000, remember) so, in order to score serious money, it couldn't just "pad" its bills -- it had to pile on heaping helpings of lard.

How much easier it would be for a contractor with a larger contract to add an extra $100 here or $50 there -- and maybe clear more, in the aggregate, than Ms. Corey ever dreamed. She forgot the old rule: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Is anybody really looking for fraud in military procurement?

How can we believe pious assertions along these lines when it took six years to pick up this scheme?

I don't care if you like or dislike American policy in the Middle East. I don't care if you marched in the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq or whether you TiVo Fox News while you're at work, just so you don't miss anything.

This isn't a matter of right or left.

It's a matter of right and wrong.