Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent a letter this month to Department of Defense Acting Secretary Mark Esper, urging him for more information regarding contracts awarded by its Office of Net Assessment to FBI informant Stefan Halper. Halper was used by the bureau as an informant to gather information on Trump campaign volunteers during the 2016 election. Grassely stated that the information be provided no later than July 25 and he requested a full in person briefing with his committee staff on all of Halper’s contracts with the DoD.
Grassley, R-Iowa asked for the information after an audit was released by the DoD’s Inspector General’s showed that there was failure to conduct appropriate oversight of contracts awarded under the DOD. Halper had long career in the U.S. government under several GOP administrations. His connections to the CIA and FBI are extensive and he had been awarded multiple contracts with the DOD totaling $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016, for a contract that ran until this March, 2018, according to USASpending.gov.
“Shockingly, the audit found that these types of discrepancies were not unique to contracts with Professor Halper, which indicates ONA must take immediate steps to shore up its management and oversight of the contracting process,” stated Grassley.
“Accordingly, no later than July 25, 2019, please explain to the Committee the steps DoD has taken to address the recommendations that DoD IG made with respect to ONA’s contracting procedures and produce to the Committee all records related to Professor Halper’s contracts with DoD,” Grassley’s letter states. “In addition, I request that ONA provide a briefing to my Committee staff regarding the Halper contracts.”
The 74-year old professor, has rarely spoken out publicly since being outed by The Washington Post, and other news organizations, as one of the informants for the bureau who spied on the Trump campaign. He spent a career developing top-level government connections–not just through academia, as he did in Great Britain through the Cambridge Security Initiative, but through his connections in both the CIA and British MI-6. He is expected to be speaking this month at the seminar, he helped found, according to The Daily Caller.
