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Goods left in Panama investigated

Surplus from military cropping up in region

01/04/2000

By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News 

PANAMA CITY - The U.S. Southern Command may be gone, but you
don't have to go farther than Bush's used-car lot to see that America's
military presence will be felt long after last Friday's official hand-over of the
Panama Canal. 

The Panama City car lot offers an impressive array of U.S. military
machinery for sale, complete with serial numbers, decals, license plates and
tags declaring, "U.S. Property. For Official Use Only." 

There is a U.S. Army Caterpillar Series 700 road grader, with only 604
hours of use, on sale for $40,000. Nearby, two shiny, low-mileage U.S.
Air Force passenger vans are available for less than $7,000. Also for sale
are forklifts, step vans and other service vehicles that scooted across the
runways at Howard Air Force Base before the facility was handed over to
Panama on Nov. 1. 

Each of those items was supposed to have been donated by the U.S.
Southern Command to international nonprofit organizations for use in
regional humanitarian relief efforts, say administrators of the military
donation program. Instead, the equipment and other items worth millions of
dollars may have wound up in the hands of individuals across Central
America and the Caribbean - possibly including Cuba. 

In the Southern Command's scramble to meet a mid-December deadline
to be out of Panama, military officials say, equipment and supplies worth
up to $200 million were given away, abandoned or sold for a fraction of
their value. 

Many brand-new items, including precision jet-aircraft tool sets, jungle
counter narcotics equipment and fax machines , were handed over for free
to small regional charity organizations. The Southern Command placed no
restrictions on how the charities could dispense with the items, and many
apparently have found their way onto the commercial market. 

A team of U.S. military and civilian criminal investigators has launched an
investigation to find out how the items were disbursed and who might have
profited from their sale. A military source close to the inquiry said the
investigation could last two to three years. 

Meanwhile, a federal grand jury convened in Atlanta last month to decide
whether indictments should be issued against several military and civilian
suspects in the investigation. 

Spokesman Raul Duany said the Southern Command could not comment
as long as the investigation is in progress. 

Tens of thousands of donated or abandoned items are under investigation,
including expensive printing equipment, classified radar systems, military
night-vision equipment, tractor-trailers and naval landing craft. 

Eight investigators from the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division
spent much of November and December sifting through warehouses and
offices in Panama to find out where the equipment went. They even raided
three Panama offices of a major U.S. defense contractor, Virginia-based
DynCorp Inc., to seize computers and thousands of documents related to
the giveaway program. 

A DynCorp spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified, said that the
company is cooperating with investigators and that DynCorp does not
appear to be a target of the inquiry. DynCorp is under contract with the
Southern Command to administer the transfer of surplus items to nonprofit
groups. The U.S. Agency for International Development also has
auctioned off a small number of military cars and trucks not included in the
donation program. 

Investigators also are looking into reports by diplomats that some heavy
U.S. Army machinery from the Panama bases, including front-loading
tractors and other earth-moving equipment, has wound up in Cuba.
Military sources said the equipment's serial numbers have been traced and
confirmed in Havana, although it is not clear how the items got there. 

Jorge Bush, owner of the used-car lot where some military equipment is
being sold, insisted that he purchased the items legally through individuals in
Panama who said they bought them from the U.S. government. He said
anyone who received charity items and resold them for profit "should be
hanged." 

At least six regional nonprofit groups have been ordered by the Southern
Command to provide an accounting of items that they received from the
U.S. military in Panama along with documentation on the equipment's
whereabouts, said officials of those organizations. 

The Southern Command decided to abandon or give away much of its
equipment and supplies after negotiations broke down in 1998 over a
continued U.S. military presence in Panama. 

In February, when it became apparent that the military might not be able to
clear out its five remaining bases by the end of the year, the Pentagon's
Defense Logistics Support Command authorized the Southern Command
to streamline procedures for dismantling the bases. 

U.S. officials said the new procedures allowed the military to give away
any items valued at less than $1,000. Items valued at more than $1,000
could be given away with oral authorization from a supervisor known as a
"property book officer." But because of the huge backlog, in many cases,
enlisted personnel were put in charge of valuing items and clearing them out
quickly. 

As a result, a $230,000 Xerox copy machine, less than 5 years old, was
valued at $999, said Carlos Cardenas, an Army reserve captain who helps
administer the DynCorp operation in Panama. 

"Just imagine a town the size of 30,000 people, and everything that goes to
support that town. That's how much stuff we were giving away," Mr.
Cardenas said. "They were putting values of $999 on everything just so
they could hurry up and wash it through the system. This is the first time in
my military career that I've ever seen anything like this." 

Terry Stillman, a retired Army logistics officer who worked with DynCorp
until early December, said he gave to one nonprofit group, at the Air
Force's request, $250,000 worth of unused fiber-optic cable. He also
gave away a late-model, bulletproof Jeep Cherokee as well as 42 new
tool sets, each valued at $15,000, that were the type used by ground
crews at Howard to maintain jet aircraft based there. 

In the rush to leave Panama, communications broke down among the
service branches, so there was little, if any, coordination in an attempt to
hold down moving costs, Mr. Stillman added. 

While Howard was being dismantled, the Air Force was in such dire need
of forklifts and cranes that it had to rent them locally to move equipment.
At the same time, Mr. Stillman said, the Army had up to 63 forklifts that it
was preparing to give away at its Corozal installation, just a few miles from
Howard. 

At two nonmilitary warehouses near Panama City's Tocumen airport, the
U.S. Marines abandoned large quantities of equipment similar to that used
in counter narcotics operations in nearby Colombia. The equipment
included rubber boats, outboard motors, 2 1/2-ton trucks, computers and
night-vision equipment, Mr. Stillman said. 

A few days before the military vacated Howard, an Air Force colonel was
conducting a routine inspection when he found a door ajar to a group of
offices inside a facility known as Building 706. 

The air base was to have been cleared out and sealed, but inside Building
706, Mr. Stillman said, the colonel found highly classified radar equipment,
consoles, computers and manuals used to track narcotics flights out of
Colombia. The abandoned items were quickly crated and shipped out
before the base was handed over. 

"You would spend a lot of days looking at all this stuff and getting very,
very upset," Mr. Stillman said. "They just wanted to get the hell out of
Dodge in a hurry."