CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Colonel
Norwood, Armor Holdings and the Loophole That Ate the Law
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 26, June 20, 2007
Two body armor products competed for the Army’s $360 million in orders last year.
One was called the Interceptor, developed by the Army and manufactured by the Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings.
The other was Dragon Skin, made by Pinnacle Armor of Fresno, California.
The Interceptor uses four rigid plates.
Dragon Skin has a large number of smaller interconnect discs.
Last month, NBC ran an investigative report which featured independent tests that found Dragon Skin to protect better than the Interceptor.
The report also featured Jim Magee, the man who originally helped develop the Interceptor.
He’s now a Dragon Skin fan.
And it featured Nevin Rupert, an Army insider who believes Dragon Skin never got a fair shot.
Rupert was recently fired by the Army.
So, if Dragon Skin is better, how did Armor Holdings, the maker of the Interceptor, get the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from the Army?
That’s what Pinnacle Armor’s CEO Murray Neal wants to know.
And that’s what Rogers Charles, the president of Soldiers of Truth, wants to know.
That’s what Senators Hillary Clinton (D-New York) and Jim Webb (D-New York) want to know.
After the NBC report ran, Clinton and Webb wrote the General Accountability Office (GAO) asking for an investigation.
That investigation has since been launched.
One person who the GAO investigators might want to contact is Army Colonel John Norwood.
Murray Neal told Corporate Crime Reporter that when he met Colonel Norwood early last year, Norwood told him that he was the guy in charge of the Army’s body armor program.
“I run the body armor program,” Norwood told Neal. “Nothing moves without my say so.”
Neal was with Norwood at the HPY Laboratories facility in Street, Maryland where Norwood’s people were conducting a test of Dragon Skin.
Neal said that Norwood did not take the tests seriously and that the tests were halted for no good reason.
The Army decided instead to order the Interceptor.
And Armor Holdings got the $360 million on contracts for the Interceptor in 2006.
Colonel Norwood retired from the Army in June 2006.
Three months or so later he was hired as Vice President for the Aerospace & Defense Group at Armor Holdings.
There is a law on the books – 41 USC 423 – that in effect says this – if you are a government official who has dished out government contracts to a corporation, you can’t then quit the government and immediately go to work for that corporation.
So for example, a government acquisitions official says to the corporation – here is a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And corporation says – thanks very much, here’s a high paying job for life.
It’s unseemly.
So the law says – you can’t work for that corporation for a year.
Chill out.
Your time will come
Twelve months.
We called up Armor Holdings and reached its spokesman, Michael Fox.
We wanted to know why the hiring of Colonel Norwood a few months after he left the Army didn’t violate this law.
Fox points us to a loophole.
And the loophole says, in effect – the corporation can hire you immediately just as long as you work in the division of the company that doesn’t produce the product involved in the government contract.
Fox would not give any details about Norwood’s duties with the company.
Fox would not even say when Norwood joined the company.
“Col. Norwood's transition to Armor Holdings was thoroughly reviewed from a legal perspective by the Army and deemed to be fully compliant with all applicable laws, rules and regulations,” Fox said. “Any suggestion to the contrary would be inaccurate.”
For years, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has been fighting to close the loophole – to no avail.
“It’s the loophole that ate the law,” says POGO’s Beth Daley.
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