Free Enterprise in action: A DANGEROUS BETRAYAL

The Case of the Cash Hungry Contractor  
07/13/09  

The East Tennessee Technology Park. Courtesy of the Department of Energy.

Two hundred thousand dollars—not a huge sum of money in return for betraying one’s country. But that’s exactly how much money Roy Lynn Oakley asked for when he attempted to sell stolen parts of uranium enrichment equipment to someone he thought was an agent of a foreign government.

Oakley’s contact was an “agent” all right, but not from a foreign country—it was an undercover agent from the FBI.

How it all began. In January 2007, our Knoxville office learned that Oakley—an employee of the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge—was trying to sell restricted U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) materials.

The East Tennessee Technology Park was formerly known as the K-25 building, a DOE facility that opened during the 1940s and produced highly enriched uranium used in the manufacture of atomic weapons. DOE later shut down the facility and contracted with a company—Bechtel Jacobs—to dismantle and demolish the plant. Oakley was an employee of Bechtel Jacobs.

Working with DOE’s Office of Counterintelligence, we used sophisticated investigative techniques, interviews, and analysis of records to further pinpoint Oakley as a suspect.

The next phase. To catch Oakley in the act, we began an undercover operation. Our agent contacted Oakley and told him he was representing a foreign government and had heard that Oakley was offering to sell some classified materials. During recorded phone calls, Oakley said he had stolen parts of the uranium enrichment fuel rods and other related hardware items from his place of employment that he was willing to sell for $200,000.

Our undercover agent eventually agreed to the deal, and a face-to-face meeting was set up for January 26, 2007. Both parties showed up at the meeting place, money and classified components were exchanged, and Oakley was ultimately arrested and charged with violating the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

Oakley’s confession. So why did he do it? Not because of any anti-U.S. ideology. Not because he was angry at his employer. No, he did it purely for the money. Oakley wanted to retire from Bechtel during 2007 but was deep in debt and needed cash.
He told us he took the materials home with him and kept them in a metal box…until he could find a buyer.

In January 2009, Oakley pled guilty to trying to sell these materials. He admitted that he knew the items were “restricted” and that they play a crucial role in the production of highly enriched uranium which is used for atomic weapons (through what’s called the gaseous diffusion process). In June, he was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Knoxville to six years in prison.
Upon Oakley’s sentencing, Knoxville Special Agent in Charge Rick Lambert said, “Bringing to justice the trusted insider who would betray America for private gain remains the FBI’s highest priority.”


Resources:
- Press release on Oakley’s sentencing

source: FBI Press Release


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Invisible Hand of Free Enterprise has to be amputated

The National Institute of health announced today that the Invisible hand of Free Enterprise that was badly mangled during the George W.Bush presidency could not be saved.

The Hand” had to be amputated and replaced by a prosthetic hand that is controlled by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A term “Invisible Hand of Free Enterprise' was coined by economist Adam Smith in his 1776 book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations".

In his book he states:

"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Republicans believe that any government intervention in the economy isn't needed as the invisible hand would best guide the economy. Thus, the invisible hand is essentially a natural phenomenon that guides free markets and capitalism through competition for scarce resources.

However, sometimes the “Invisible Hand” plays with itself as it did on Wall Street. Sometimes the “Invisible Hand” puts its fingers in the wrong place at the wrong time add get mangled as it did during the sub prime mortgage crises.

After the Great Depression, FDR made the “Invisible Hand” follow some rules because the Invisible hand had been naughty. Since then the GOP eliminated most of those rules and the Invisible Hand started running amok particularly after the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act (1933) in 1999.

Senator Bryon Dorgan was one of a handful of Democratic senators who voted against the repeal and predicted there would be a financial meltdown in about 10 years.

On a bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

During a brief meeting on April 28, 2004,the SEC also changed the reserve rule for five banks: Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr.

Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.
An old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments.

In addition, the Reserve rule was changed from 1:12 to 1:40. When the loans stated defaulting, the there were no reserves to cover the defaults and “The Invisible Hand” got kicked, mangled and run over by Mercedes Benzes and BMWs. This is why the hand had to be amputated even though a valiant effort was made to save it.

The “Invisible Hand” will never be the same, but America is now safer. With the SEC and IMF controlling it, it make take many decades before the conservatives can unleash the Invisible Hand again to play with itself.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html