corrente

Welcome to the Pentagon Pennysaver, for all your scary end-timer crazy-guy shopping needs.

Via ABCNEWS.com - October 7, 2003 Bargain Basement - Congressional Report: Terrorists Could Buy Special Equipment From Pentagon

The Pentagon could inadvertently be providing terrorists with special equipment that would enable them to make biological weapons, according to a draft report from the General Accounting Office obtained by ABCNEWS.

According to the report, which is due to be released Tuesday, Congress ordered the GAO -- its investigative arm -- to set up a phony company to see how easy it would be to buy surplus lab equipment from the Pentagon.

More:

Via Newsday - AP:Pentagon Said Lax in Protecting Chem Labs

Using a fake company, congressional investigators were able to buy off the Internet excess Pentagon lab equipment and protective gear that terrorists could use to make chemical and biological weapons, the investigators told a House hearing Tuesday.

Fellow shoppers on the Internet site also resold the items to buyers in the Philippines, Malaysia, Egypt, and other countries, the General Accounting Office said in a report to the House Government Reform's national security subcommittee.

"Public sales of these Department of Defense excess items increase the risk that terrorists could obtain and use them to produce and deliver biological agents within the United States," it said.

Gregory Kutz, the GAO's director for financial management and assurance, said that, using a fictitious company, they were able to buy $4,100 worth of items, including a biological safety cabinet, a bacteriological incubator, a centrifuge, an evaporator and chemical and biological protective suits and related gear.

He said the original acquisition value of the items purchased was $46,960.

[...]

The Pentagon in January stopped sales of protective gear, but the GAO found that some 4,000 suits, and 26,000 other items such as gloves and hoods, were sold after that date.

Kutz said that in the past three and a half years the Pentagon sold at least 18 safety cabinets, 199 incubators, 521 centrifuges, 65 evaporators and 286,000 protective suits.

Anthrax - Aisle 5!