Most Republicans at Heather Wilson’s confirmation hearing to become the next Air Force secretary seemed largely uninterested in probing her alleged ethics missteps, instead saluting her experience and supporting her nomination.
Aside from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) inquires, it was Democrats, led by Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who grilled the former Republican House lawmaker from New Mexico Thursday about contracts she received for nuclear lab consulting. An Energy Department inspector general probe in 2013 that found she earned $450,000 from facility contractors without providing evidence that work was performed.
When Reed asked if Wilson was aware of requirements to provide evidence supporting 50 hours of work for $10,000 month for Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories, Wilson said she did the work, complied with the contract, the review found no fault with me and the DoE auditors never even talked to her. Reed, in his opening statement, made clear that Wilson was not found culpable of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, he said these allegations were serious and merited closer scrutiny.
“I was in very close contact with the people at Sandia, they knew exactly what I was doing,” Wilson testified. “We worked often several times a week together on things they wanted me to do. I fully complied with the contract and I did the work.”
Lydia Dennett, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) in Washington, said Thursday POGO was very pleased to see McCain and Reed take the lead in questioning Wilson on her contracts with the labs. She said POGO is concerned about Wilson’s reluctance to say that she didn’t think it was a problem that she did not provide a detailed accounting of her work for the labs, as well as her failure to commit to holding government contractors to a higher standard.
Wilson said she was concerned about the low percentage of the Air Force’s budget spent on research and development. She said the pace of innovation is stunning and the service is either going to continue to innovate, or it’s going to get left behind. Wilson highlighted autonomous systems, networked systems and advanced materials as fields ripe for investment.
Wilson vowed to prioritize Air Force research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) funding for basic and applied research. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) lamented during the hearing that too much of RDT&E spending is used for latter stages development and testing as opposed to basic research. Warren said the Air Force has been asked to cut basic research spending for the third year in a row, a 7 percent decrease since fiscal year 2015.
Wilson believes there may be things the scientific and technology (S&T) community can do today that were not possible 10 years ago to help the Pentagon be more aware of what its adversaries are doing. She said that since Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States’ entire intelligence system revolved around indications and warning to prevent surprise attack. Wilson wondered how DoD could systematically assess the S&T community to prevent surprise at the scientific and technical level.
Wilson served in the House from 1998 to 2009. She was a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and chaired the House Permanent Select Intelligence technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee. Wilson also served on the House Armed Services Committee from 2001-2003.
Wilson has served as president of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology since 2013. If confirmed, she will become the first Air Force Academy graduate to become the service’s top civilian (Defense Daily, Jan. 23).
Sandia National Labs are managed by Lockheed Martin [LMT]. Los Alamos is managed by Los Alamos National Security, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWXT Government Group and URS, an AECOM [ACM] company.