Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shuttered the Office of Net Acquisition on Thursday. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
He called the office "wasteful and ineffective."
The office in recent years has been focused on strategizing a potential war with China. It championed a strategy known as "AirSea Battle," where a blinding campaign against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of stealth bombers and submarines would take out China’s long-range surveillance before a naval assault.
But Grassley has for years scrutinized ONA’s contracting practices.
ONA has failed to produce classified net assessments for years, with whistleblowing analyst Adam Lovinger once complaining in emails to Director James Baker that the office seemed to attract overpriced academic-style papers instead of classified net assessments.
"On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled ‘derivative,’ ’college-level,’ and based heavily on secondary sources," Lovinger wrote in a September 2016 email. "One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report."
Lovinger had complained about questionable government contracts awarded to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign in 2016.
A DOD inspector general’s report later found that Halper had failed to properly document the research he did as a contractor on four studies valued at $1 million. The four contracts, spanning from 2012 to 2016, were meant to encompass relations between the U.S., Russia, China and India.
SECRETARY HEGSETH SAYS THE DOD DOES NOT DO 'CLIMATE CHANGE CRAP'
ONA contractor Stefan Halper also had contact with Carter Page. (Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin)
"The contract was fixed price based on the acceptance of the deliverables and did not require Professor Halper to submit travel receipts. ONA personnel could not provide documentation that Professor Halper traveled for this contract."
Contracts show that Halper listed a Russian intelligence official as a consultant for an ONA project, the same intelligence official who was listed as a source in the Trump dossier used to spy on Carter Page. He was in contact with Page and former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, "raising questions about whether Halper used U.S. taxpayer dollars to seek connections with Trump campaign officials," according to Grassley.
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Halper was also a confidential human source for the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections who recorded conversations with officials from the campaign.
The senator claims that ONA has stonewalled on his inquiries about Halper’s relations to the Trump-Russia probe.
Senator Jack Reed, D-R.I., top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called the office’s closing "shortsighted," adding that it would "undermine our ability to prepare for future conflicts."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dod-closes-office-net-acquisition-trump-russia