Feds: Company provided subpar steel for Navy submarine hulls
Source: Associated Press
Gene Johnson, Associated Press
Updated 4:28 pm CDT, Monday, June 15, 2020
SEATTLE (AP) For decades, the Navy's leading supplier of high-strength steel for submarines provided subpar metal because one of the company's longtime employees falsified lab results putting sailors at greater risk in the event of collisions or other impacts, federal prosecutors said in court filings Monday.
The supplier, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., paid $10.9 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the Justice Department said. The company provides steel castings that Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding use to make submarine hulls.
Bradken in 2008 acquired a foundry in Tacoma, Washington, that produced steel castings for the Navy. According to federal prosecutors, Bradken learned in 2017 that the foundry's director of metallurgy had been falsifying the results of strength tests, indicating that the steel was strong enough to meet the Navy's requirements when in fact it was not.
The company initially disclosed its findings to the Navy, but then wrongfully suggested that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud; that hindered the Navy's investigation into the scope of the problem as well as its efforts to remediate the risks to its sailors, prosecutors said.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Feds-Company-provided-subpar-steel-for-Navy-15341465.php
BamaRefugee
(3,487 posts)Budi
(15,325 posts)Pompeo, Tillerson, Kobach, KOCH, to Bob Dole.
There's a long list of possibilities in Red Repub Kansas
Bengus81
(6,933 posts)Budi
(15,325 posts)Not a Kansan himself, although Exxon had a big footprint there.
"Kansas City-based Bradken Inc.," is a Co to dig into.
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)VMA131Marine
(4,149 posts)as narrowly defined in US law.
Its a lot of other really bad things, and the fine seems shockingly low considering the potential disastrous consequences of low strength steel on a submarine, but it isnt treason.
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)You have not changed my opinion in the least, legalities not withstanding. It certainly meets the spirit of the meaning.
VMA131Marine
(4,149 posts)It is contained within Article III
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
In Federalist No. 43 James Madison wrote regarding the Treason Clause:
As treason may be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it. But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Three_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_3:_Treason
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)Igel
(35,359 posts)A German car manufacturer's employees falsified information because the requirements imposed by regulators couldn't be met. Don't meet the requirements, company suffers, and the blame falls on those who didn't succeed it complying--not the board, not the CEO, but the engineers.
Mother worked in the "analytical lab" of a steel mill. It was a job a trained high-school drop out could have, hence she had it. A time or two the bit of the company that she was involved in was under extreme fire. In one case they lost a very large buyer because the coating on the sheet steel that they made had finally started being subject to quality control tests done buyer-side and kept failing. But they didn't fail the same tests done in the steel mill, and the steel company wasn't pleased to find out the buyer was attempting to replicate the test results. Outcome: Every test result had to be in duplicate, one attached to the coiil's paperwork and another attached to a snip of the coil that the test was for, which was packaged up and sent ... somewhere ... for spot checking and for insurance if there's any disagreement as to quality. Inference: Either the workers were incompetent (and the union had defended them) or they were falsifying results. Or the company brass were. That the brass wanted the snips means they wanted records and tin-plate to cover their collective ass. You lie on a test result, a spot check might find it; and since the samples were often really different between runs, grabbing a sample from a random coil might not just show a defect but an entirely different coating if the quality of the test is challenged.
Mother sweated for a while, then came home relieved. None of the batches bore her signature. In fact, she'd gotten in trouble for failing some batches. And prior to the investigation she said that she knew that other workers weren't telling the truth--why was it that she got all the bad runs? My mother and I had few things in common, but she insisted on doing her job properly and insisted on being as honest and truthful as she could be, and frequently got hell from her union for it--they needed somebody to help with the books, and she created a shitstorm when she found bribes and inconsistencies.
Anyway, my mother's sweating and the need for back-up samples tells me it wasn't the brass at fault in the steel mill. That tells me that it's possible for employees to deceive trusting or ignorant superiors. If in the largest freshwater steel mill in the US, why not in some podunk steel manufacturer?
If the director thought his ass was on the line, why wouldn't he have falsified it? Occam fits here: Why have more dishonest people involved than necessary? I assume given that testing is more complex now than in the late '60s and early '70s the director would have seen the test results, which would have been harder to falsify. Might be a bad assumption.
(The customer, btw, was Campbell's soup, and the result was that more than once soup produced and shipped by the company for weeks was in cans made from "tin plate" with defective coatings. No, "tin plate" didn't actually require actual tin in the local steel mill vernacular. We had no canned soup for a while. It was Campbell's or A&P's store brand, which was also Campbell's.)
Submariner
(12,509 posts)has got to be very upsetting for the crews of our nuclear fleet of boats. Putting the whole U.S. submarine force at risk for a few dollars more is unforgivable.
There's probably more than a few crew now wondering if that noise they heard during a recent deep dive was the pressure hull groaning and slightly giving way under the high external pressure. Kind of increases the underway pucker factor.
Igel
(35,359 posts)Esp. in light of your handle.
keithbvadu2
(36,937 posts)Only $10.9 million? Sounds like they got off easy considering the severity of the fraud.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,369 posts)Hopefully, the hulls will be fixed/reinforced before attempting deep dives.
70sEraVet
(3,516 posts)on the largest subs (Ohio-class). In a collision or attack, at depth, that's 155 lives that would have been STOLEN! THERE NEEDS TO BE PRISON TIME FOR SOMEBODY!
Ramsey Barner
(349 posts)The Truman Committee, formally known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, was a United States Congressional investigative body, headed by Senator Harry S. Truman.[1] The bipartisan special committee was formed in March 1941 to find and correct problems in US war production with waste, inefficiency, and war profiteering. The Truman Committee proved to be one of the most successful investigative efforts ever mounted by the U.S. government: an initial budget of $15,000 was expanded over three years to $360,000 to save an estimated $1015 billion in military spending and thousands of lives of U.S. servicemen .[2][3][4] For comparison, the entire cost of the Manhattan Project was $2 billion, at the time.[5] Chairing the committee helped Truman make a name for himself beyond his political machine origins and was a major factor in the decision to nominate him as vice president, which would propel him to the presidency after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[6]
[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Committee|
brooklynite
(94,745 posts)PSPS
(13,617 posts)10.9 million is a rounding error on the size of the federal contracts they won. "Cost of doing business." We're back to the old Reagan charade called "sue and settle." And I'm sure they'll make a hefty "campaign contribution" for "services rendered."
I wonder if their steel played a role in those sailors' deaths in the ship collisions not so long ago.
Maxheader
(4,374 posts)Shoulda been doing their own spot checking...in house inspection..aircraft does..
Turbineguy
(37,372 posts)and they did all sorts of tests. Of course, this was in 1973.
Randomthought
(837 posts)My brother worked on subs for Newport News Building and Dry Dock. He risk his job more than once calling out people like this. I remember how he cried over the Thresher even though his company had not worked on it.
tclambert
(11,087 posts)Therefore, expect Republicans to just tap on their wrists oh so lightly.