The New York Times’s C.J. Chivers has an extremely unsettling blockbuster on federal procurement in the Army. The Army Sustainment Command needed to supply weapons ammunition to the Afghanistan government in their fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. So it gave $300 million to AEY, Inc. a private contractor headquartered in Miami Beach, using what the Times calls “minimal vetting and . . . a vaguely written contract with few restrictions.”

It turns out AEY, Inc. was essentially a one-man company and the one man, Efraim E. Diveroli, is a 22 year-old with a previous arrest for battery and possessing forged documents. Diveroli’s business model was to send decades-old ammo from the former Eastern Bloc – weapons that the U.S. government has spent millions on destroying. The contract is now cancelled because AEY, Inc. illegally bought supplies from China. Read the piece, but be warned it may nauseate you.  Read Chivers here.  MB

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