27.11.03   THE STORY (updated - original post 26.11.03)

Lockheed-Martin Lost DOD Contract Through "Mismanagement"

After months of negotiating and losing a significant Department of Defense contract, Lockheed-Martin has begun laying off many of its employees at this North Texas location.

According to sources deep within the company and former military officials, mismanagement was to blame for the loss of a major Defense contract last week. And this isn't the first black eye LM has received, particularly at this plant. Sometime last year, nearly an entire project team walked out the door because of what they said was a hostile and overall inefficient environment, which they said also promoted and contributed to at times even misleading clients about the status of projects and so forth. Now questions hovering around that “inefficiency” and candor that led to the walkout are once again surfacing as news of this canceled contract comes to light publicly.

And to make matters worse for the billion-dollar defense contractor, apparently Lockheed-Martin lost the contract for the top-secret project because it was three months behind and had forfeited any credibility with its Government counterparts. This in turn it seems, condemned the doomed project and brought about this latest round of layoffs. Layoffs, it appears that came as no big surprise to those involved in the failed endeavor. It would seem the very same people who were running things when the earlier walkout occurred are still running things now and of course they are also the few remaining who will no doubt be placed in charge of the next conquest, whatever that might be.

As if this were not quite enough, the same sources have mentioned to Blogbat that LM was also frighteningly lax in its security. Employees were allowed to openly carry camara-phones at will throughout secure areas of the facility, download all manner of software onto their desktops from the internet (even download high-encryption software that could have been used for nefarious reasons, were the person of a mind to do so. Such software would be able to conceal the contents of any data packets the user sends from his or her computer). Further, this was all permitted in an area where sensitive project details were available. One need not connect every one of those dots to construct a pretty lackluster assessment of Lockheed-Martin security practices. It turns out also, according to one source that recently their Network was down…for two months (which might partially happen to explain why their most recent project was a couple of months late as well). Where they relocating? Was it construction? Upgrades? Not exactly. This was because of some viruses which propagated across their systems and which prompted them to –get this: for the first time ever-- install antivirus software to begin protecting their assets (if not covering them). Now remember, these are your tax dollars, folks. We are talking about a contractor which handles top secret projects that have to do with our national security and way of life and their network is unsecured, open to all traffic and infested with viruses and Trojan horses (which allow hackers to gain access to infected systems and their files remotely). Doesn’t sound like a good investment, does it. We might as well just give the technology directly to Al Qaeda and the Chinese and let them pay for the R&D.

Some inside the company have been saying for months that things might be awry within LM. The question some may soon ask is if this will become another Enron. Not so much in the financial sense, rather certainly in the transparency department. If the accusasions are true, (accusations which follow the most striking assertions that a few within the company engaged in misleading government officials -- be that deliberate or incidental-- and mismanaging American tax dollars) then without question this needs to be investigated along with any other LM contracts future or currently pending. Blogbat will update this as the matter warrants - Blogbat