Senior HUD Official Resigns Amidst Investigation

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004760.php

Senior HUD Official Resigns Amidst Investigation
By Paul Kiel - November 21, 2007, 5:34PM

Federal investigators are bearing down on Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson for setting up his buddies with contracts and then telling Congress that he didn't "touch contracts."

One contract in particular that prosecutors are scrutinizing involves Jackson's friend, Atlanta lawyer Michael Hollis, who was paid approximately $1 million for managing the Virgin Islands Housing Authority, the National Journal reported last week, adding: "Before landing at the authority, some sources said, Hollis had no experience in running a public housing agency." When asked about the contract, Hollis told National Journal that "he had negotiated his contract with Orlando Cabrera, a senior HUD official, and 'people on his procurement staff.'" A grand jury has issued a subpoena for documents relating to Hollis' contract.

Well, perhaps it's a coincidence, but Cabrera, the Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing, announced that he would resign about a week before that National Journal piece came out. The resignation would be effective January 4th.

Why is he resigning? Cabrera told The Miami Herald, "I've had a wonderful experience these last few years, and I just want to take a few months to spend time with my wife and kids.... I know it sounds like the standard Potomac line, but it's not." He has "no firm career plans," the paper reports. The paper didn't ask him about the investigation, but you gotta wonder.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader BK for the tip.

many interesing articles here

http://www.dunwalke.com/sidebars/andrew_cuomo.htm

“HUD is Being Run as a Criminal Enterprise”

In 2000, three and a half years after Andrew Cuomo became Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), I met with a senior staff assistant to the Chairman of one of the appropriations committees for HUD. When I asked what was going on at HUD, the staff assistant said, "HUD is being run as a criminal enterprise." I replied, “I don’t disagree.”

Cuomo’s reign at HUD was not the first time that HUD had been run by a New Yorker with ambitions for higher office. From 1989-1990, I served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration and watched Jack Kemp, a former Congressman from Buffalo, try to balance the politics of getting ahead with the needs of citizens and communities at a federal agency in which special interests had traditionally had the upper hand.

At the beginning of the Clinton Administration in 1993, Kemp was replaced by former San Antonio mayor, Henry Cisneros, who recruited a new team of HUD political appointees, including Andrew Cuomo as Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0208/S00057.htm

QUESTIONS: INFORMATION SOVEREIGNTY

When the federal government outsources its computer, accounting, payment and information systems, non-governmental employees control and manage the government’s most confidential databases and operational and financial flows. This raises questions as to whether or not a government can be sovereign when government workers loyal to the oath of government office do not have control or intellectual mastery over government work, cash flows and information and do not have the power (whether for reasons of politics or operational dependency) to fire private corporations for failure to perform.

In 2000, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) Inspector General refused to certify HUD’s financial statements as required by law, referring to the failure of HUD’s accounting system, HUDCAPS. HUDCAPS was a then-new accounting system installed by HUD contractor American Management Systems (“AMS”) that, presumably, ran on computer hardware and systems provided by the HITS predecessor contractor, Lockheed Martin and its numerous subcontractors, including DynCorp. Despite the fact that HUD had paid AMS $206 million for this system and that HUD’s Acting Chief Financial Officer recommended HUD not use the HUDCAPS system, HUD did not terminate AMS’s contract for failure to provide a working system <8> and HUD continued to use the HUDCAPS system, the implication being that HUD was too dependent on AMS to fire them. <9>


http://solari.com/articles/ethnic_cleansing_drug_dealing.html

"Ethnic Cleansing" Connected to CIA Drug Dealing in Los Angeles
by Catherine Austin Fitts - May, 1999

I was ten years old when the combined action of HUD housing investment and heroin trafficking destroyed my West Philadelphia neighborhood. The combined real estate and drug play destroyed the equity in our homes and businesses. Many of us left. Those who stayed were embroiled in the increasing stress of what happens as neighborhoods deteriorate into crime and decay. I decided that I would learn how money worked. I was too young to understand fully how the combination of HUD investment and drugs could move control and ownership from the many people who lived in a community to a few people who lived outside the community.