Le Show; 2009-09-13

From deep inside your radio. Ladies and gentlemen from London, England, again, think of it. This edition of the broadcast, which oddly enough, although it's originating in London, will be of special interest to our New Orleans listeners and to anybody who asks the question, how are things going down there these days? How are things doing? I'm pleased to welcome to the studio today, a special in studio guest. Just flown over from Washington, I guess, for a relaxed weekend. Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, welcome, sir. Hope you enjoy the broadcast. Thank you. You suck. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a couple of notes at the beginning here, maps provided by New York City's Department of Buildings show that coastal sections of Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn are special flood hazard areas. Why wouldn't anybody live in a place where it floods? Practically all of Coney Island, much of the Rockways, the Long Island Sound, Hugging

Strip of the Country Club neighborhood of the Bronx, and the southeast coast of Staten Island are all edged in the dotted blue that on the city's maps signifies susceptibility to major flooding. I don't want my tax dollars to go to help those people. God knows. Don't they know better than that? You eat poodle duty. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, who's number one? A question we're asking on this broadcast now because of Americans need desire to be number one and to think we're number one, even when we're not, according to the CIA World Factbook, we are not number one in life expectancy. That would be Macau, followed by Andora, Japan, Singapore and San Marino. So where does the United States fit on that list? Number 48 is Portugal. Number 49 is Wallace and Fattuna. I didn't even know there was a Wallace and Fattuna, but there is. It's not a comedy act.

It's a nation. Number 51, Albania. Albania, ladies and gentlemen, and that means number 50 coming right in at number 50. The good old U.S. of A. We are not number one. Congressman Wilson, who is here doing the fundraiser for the Republican Tourette's Association, and we wish you all good fortune with that, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, General Motors announced this week they are selling Opel, their German subsidiary, to a Canadian-based auto parts company called Magna, which has Russian financial involvement. That bodes well for everyone. And makes me wish that a song about the rapidly downsizing General Motors had just become available on iTunes this week, thanks to the host of Hello, Welcome to the Show. And it would sound something like this. When you used to rule the streets and the track like a fuel burn in a giant, you fought

hard so your engines wouldn't be pollution compliant. You put your brother cars, prospered by me, ain't you, firent, and you had such big fun. To know mama took the company away from me, a little TTO, we won't see you around, we got the word, gonna shut you down, you'll be winding all the way back from the bank, we don't need TTO, nothing left in your take. When you had a rough winter, you're lookin' at a grapier summer, you're closing down

your party act, lookin' hard to dump your holler, babe, from sea bias, be it owned by the fans is a plumber, but you had such big fun too, a bottle take the company away, but the little TTO, you used to be so big, you were in a holler, you'd be doing too deep, there's still candy Chevy, new egg for pop, little TTO, rollin' to a stop. When you're shuttin' down dealers, cleanin' it out like a swiffer, go in 62, zero, maybe

your mileage will differ, killing a hot brother, goin' out of the snapper, but you had such big fun too, a bottle take the company away from me, but the little TTO, shippin' down you first, you were never the best, you were never the worst, all that's left is a big fine yourself, little TTO, you were too big, not too thin.

This is a show and as regular listeners to this broadcast know I have an abiding interest in matters relating not just to New Orleans in general, but to the United States Army Corps of Engineers and its role in the protection, in quotes of New Orleans, a role which it performed with a certain lack of a plumb in 2005, or we learned that in 2005, and now they're busy at work, doing it right supposedly. My guess today is somebody who would put a question mark at the end of that last sentence, a rare bird in American public life today, a real whistleblower, a former, I would have to say I don't know whether you're still working for the Army Corps of Engineers or not. I'm not former yet.

Okay, but you never know, Maria Garzino, welcome to the show, and thank you for being with me today. Thank you Harry, it's pleasure to be here. You are a Californian who found yourself in New Orleans at a certain point in time, describe to me how that came to be. Well when Katrina hit a call in out nationwide throughout the Corps for engineers to respond mainly for the FEMA contracts that we're going to be going out, but also for some of the rebuilding efforts and some of the emergency work that was initially ongoing. My district and myself, we put ourselves on an emergency wait list to go immediately. We were told at any time we could be called in deployed. It actually never occurred. It took me over I think 45 days to finally get in country as we say, and it was only through a FEMA project, not through actual Army Corps, so I initially responded to Louisiana, rather, to work on one of the FEMA contracts.

And you'd been with the Army Corps for how long at that point? Nine years. And what kind of an engineer are you? Well, I'm a little unusual for the Army Corps. I don't fit the norm. My undergraduate is in mechanical engineering, and I finished the coursework for a master's in environmental. My job title, however, is civil engineering, but as you know, most all engineers in the Army Corps are civil. Well, until you rile them. And you are not a soldier. You're not a member of the Army. You're the Army Corps of Engineers, but- Oh, goodness no. Yes. Yes. Because that's confusing, I think, to a lot of us is that- Oh, we're all civilians. We're all civilians, basically, with, we're commanded by what we call a green shooter. And we do have some majors and other lieutenant colonels thrown in there. But for the most part, we're 99.9% all civilian. And you don't salute? No. Okay. Now that we've got that out of the way. So you find yourself down in New Orleans. And at a certain point in time, you get involved with a project that a lot of us are familiar

with. If listeners remember, there were three so-called outfall canals that poked their fingers deep into the heart of New Orleans from Lake Poncho train. And it was along those canals that levees and flood walls disastrously failed flooding the heart of the city in 2005. So the Army Corps was tasked to fix that situation. And so the idea that they were working on was to build gates to keep lake water from coming into these canals so that they wouldn't have to fix the walls of the canals, which had been so disastrously breached, right? Well, that's not my background, specifically. But from what I understand, the original plan was to restore the levy walls. And after they looked at it, they decided that that wasn't feasible. In the interim, they decided that the best solution would be to put gated closer structures at the mouth of those canals in order to prevent lake surge from entering into the city

should another storm event happen. That wouldn't affect pretty much take the levy walls out of play. And my part in this has to do with once you close those gated closer structures, you then are subject to the rainwater that begins to fill the city from the storm. And the city is pumping that rainwater into the canals. You have to have some way to take that water that they're putting into the canal and lift it up over the gates and back into the lake. And that requires a pump. Yes, it does. Now it gets interesting because at some point in time, you felt that the pumps in these canals were not being tested appropriately, is that correct? Correct. When I first got to New Orleans, my understanding was too pronged. I was brought in specifically to first oversee the testing that was going to take place at the Contractors Testing Facility in Deerfield Beach, Florida. And the second part of my mission was to once these pumps supposedly finish testing

and were shipped to New Orleans. I would oversee the installation of the pumps and the commissioning of them to bring them online. So, I deployed down to Deerfield Beach to observe the testing that was going to take place. We basically follow whatever the Contractors tells us is going to happen and we just watch and observe. And what did you see? Well, every... Well, pretty much every time we turn something on, something would fail in a way that was very unnatural. I had never seen anything quite like it. We had testing parameters set by the Contract. And what occurred was when the Contractor was trying to successfully meet those parameters they were not able to because the equipment would fail in multiple ways, either components

on the drive unit would fail or the pump assembly itself would fail. Were these pumps rejected or were they installed? Well, it's not quite that simple. They were failing testing and we originally had testing requirements which required that every pump be put in the water and run to generate what's called a performance curve. We were supposed to manually hook these pumps up to a dinometer and generate that curve but the Contractor didn't have that piece of equipment. So they asked the Army Corps if they could put it into testing tank and instead use that as the work that was going to occur and then generate the curve that way. And the Army Corps in New Orleans district agreed. So we went down and we observed the testing facility and the first thing I noticed was this testing facility doesn't look like it can meet what are called hydraulic institute standards for testing.

So I had great grave concerns that we wouldn't be able to meet the requirement but was continually overridden by New Orleans district that the Contractor was adamant that everything was fine and everything would work out fine. We don't get involved in how the Contractor does their work so we just let them go about doing it and simply observe. So that's where we went from there. What we did observe was that in fact you really cannot perform a test the way the Contract requires in that testing environment. But in addition to that when we were trying to run testing and the Contractor could not meet that requirement they would ask for and receive lesson testing requirements, everything from number of data points taken down to it resolved itself to be finally we're not even going to put a pump assembly in the water anymore. The sort of thing that every student dreams of at the SAT time is can we just make the test easier?

Yeah it's like here can I can I can I get a pass on the last two three three quarters of the test and you're going to give me the passing grade and I'll just here here's the first quarter. I think three quarters of the pump assemblies never saw a water and the problem with that is pretty much almost half of the ones that did see water had catastrophic failures. O-ring failures problems with the Ryanair motors etc excessive vibrations that were it's not just the failures that that we were witnessing that was wrong. It was the response of the Contractor to these failures that was wrong which was. It was when we had a failure they simply pulled it up pulled it out put a new one in and kept going. Okay who was the Contractor? Ryanwater Industries M.W.I. and how many bitters were there for this contract? Originally three I believe one was considered non-responsive so two.

Okay so there was a competitive bid for this and I should say a couple things here for to put this in context and I mentioned on this broadcast a couple weeks ago that a couple of friends of mine in New Orleans are knowledgeable about this situation had sort of waved me a little bit away from this story and one of the things they both said is you know the Army Corps was under extreme pressure to get these pumps installed at these canals there was a deadline I believe congressional imposed deadline of June 1st the year after Katrina to be ready for the following hurricane season so the Army Corps could say the hurricane season after Katrina we are prepared for any such disaster we fixed it and so everybody was working supposedly at great under great pressure and at great speed these pumps ended up being installed at the canals did they not? Yes they did. And were they tested on site?

No they were not. I remember reading in the paper at the time that there were reports of vibrations coming from these pumps as people I guess started to put them into action but did we actually saw vibrations at the testing tank also when we installed pumps at Orleans was one of the first canals to have the pumps installed in Ron when we turned when I was there when we turned them on in the field we had vibrations then I understand after I left and went home they turned the pumps on at 17th Street and they had to shut them down too due to vibrations also yes. So when you went home what did you do then how did you become a whistle blower? Oh you have to understand it it's it's a little bit more complicated than just that when I was there I was trying to I was trying to explain to the New Orleans District Army Corps people that what we had were were failures that were not normal and we had a response from a contractor that was not appropriate on an engineering level and we were actually

at the end I was only supposed to be in Deerville Beach for three days at the most I ended up staying there for 30 and I finally just left because when the New Orleans District Army Corps made the decision to ship pumps without testing I said I think I'm coming back to New Orleans because I'm no good here because all of my advice had been there no the advice given it's fine that it's not heated but there was no point for me to be there anymore so I came home my job then was to install them and I tried to explain to the leader of the pump team that we don't know whether or not we can turn these pumps on in the field and test them that's an unknown because there was a design defect that the Army Corps unfortunately had built into the pump platform it happens it's normal it's not unusual it's not a bad thing necessarily it happens what happened was the pump platform drawings went to the site contractor with a certain pump elevation level and the pump manufacturer got this level

pump on elevation and they built that pump to that head well they then went and changed the elevation for the pump platform without realizing the pump contract already went on the street so now we have pumps that sit two feet further out of the water which means you don't know if you can turn them on without damaging them because you're not running them at design level anymore and I tried to explain we need to keep them in the testing tank in dear field beach but I was overridden on that and they went to New Orleans and they tried to turn them on and we couldn't get them running we also had hydraulic denison hydraulic pump failures we had high pressure line failures again we had overheating and we had failures with the pump assemblies themselves so nothing changed and we also had a problem where we actually had to wait for a storm event before you could run a pump even for a limited amount of time so you couldn't get a very long run time the mechanical

integrity of these pumps which was already questionable there was no way to test it and they're still they still haven't been mechanical there has not been a mechanical integrity test yet done now as I understand at the Army Corps says that last year during I can hurricanes I can Gustav these pumps were run and they make reassuring sounds about them as a result you have a somewhat different view of what happened during I can and Gustav do you not yes I do I think the term they use is battle tested nothing could be further from the truth none of the there just so it's it's a little bit confusing after I came home to New Orleans or came back to New Orleans that was home because you ended up living there I wrote a memo I my job I know what my job is as an engineer I'm to report forward and if I believe something is critical in other words I believe it's going to harm someone I have a duty and my duty is to report to my highest level in my chain as far up as I can

go to the responsible authority what I believe to be true I wrote a memo memorandum which I think people probably saw first on May 4th which reported defective pump equipment being installed to the contracting officer and for people that don't know that's reporting it to a responsible authority means they have to do something with that information they either have to ignore it or do something with it this will be 2006 correct right and what do they do with it they ignore it or do they take action I want to go back to your original question okay Army Corps says these are battle tested they would they they got to work during I can Gustav that they proved they're they're ready to protect New Orleans no matter what well I had done preliminary calculations in my first response to the DODIG I was trying to figure out if they were telling the truth originally back in May when they said they had run pumps and you realize when you run a pump at 100,000 gallons a minute and you say you run it for two hours that that equates to a particular volume of water that had to be in the canal and I did the calculations and I said gee was God there with a big bucket

thrown it in it was like there were the what there was no rainfall there was there was not enough water I said those statements don't ring true is an understatement so what happened was there was a person here a reporter here in Los Angeles who had through FOIA gotten what's called skater data for the I can Gustav pump runs it's like on the airplane there's a black box and if the airplane crashes you go to the black box and it tells you everything you wanted to know to figure out how this accident happened well the skater data does the exact same thing for the pump runs so I was given the skater data for I can Gustav and when I initially looked at it I said there's something really really wrong here and it took me quite a long time and the skater data was also handed to the independent expert from the US office special counsel who also concurred but we looked at it and when I came what I came up with was none of the hydraulic pumps were initially run to bring

down canal water levels when they were at their highest between three and four feet in some areas and I think what some people may not know is there are direct drive pumps and there are hydraulic pumps installed when I reported the hydraulic pumps defective they had already put on the street for like 30 or 40 more hydraulic pumps and they pulled the contract immediately and they only gave six that's the additional six hydraulics that went to to 17th Street and then they reissued the contract for direct drive pumps which they should have had in the beginning so when I can Gustav hit you had direct drive pumps and you had hydraulic pumps they ran the direct drive pumps to bring the water levels down they never once turned these hydraulic pumps on to bring that water level down to the one and a half to two feet and the safe level well it was already at the safe level what what people should understand is you didn't even need to turn the pumps on you didn't

even need to turn to close the gates I think there was only one gate that needed to that even remotely approached the safe water level the hydraulic pumps themselves during both events were were turned on and off and on and off and they were never run at full speeds or pressures in addition the only pumps that really ran for any longer length of time were the six hydraulic pumps that were put in at 17th were they corrected the design flaw and they actually submerged them two feet more in the water so it it would be I think fair to call it a straw man will continue this conversation moments from now on the show at first the apologies of the week well yes we all know now formally obscure representative Joe Wilson Republican of South Carolina he launched an apology tour kind of on Thursday for calling president Obama a liar in the president's nationally televised health care

speech to Congress on Wednesday night Obama accepted the apology all involved quickly turn to raising money off the dispute a possible contender for representative Wilson's congressional seat next year he should have fund raising appeal Wednesday night and the congressman himself responded in kind let's rob Miller the possible opponent he reported raising $200,000 just after the congressman stood up and said you lie and he insisted that it was a spontaneous response even though he tweeted earlier on his Twitter account that he was going to go back to Washington do something anyway he apologized he's sorry we move on in other legislative apologies recently resigned Orange County California Assemblyman Mike Duvall is denying he had an extra marital affair a day after he resigned after he was caught on tape bragging about

having kinky sex with the female lobbyist and another woman as website he says I want to make it clear my decision to resign is in no way admission I had an affair or affairs my offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling and I regret my language and choice of words he was caught on a hot mic on a state legislative video camera telling a colleague about sexual trists involving spanking with two women both married both lobbyists in Sacramento one works for firm which represents utility companies which he was on a committee that regulated he's married with two adult children he received a hundred percent rating from a conservative advocacy group group for his votes on pro family legislation he represented parts of your Belinda full of an Anaheim placentia and orange he apologized for the comments that he was overheard making on his campaign website daylight Chicago religious publisher affiliated

with the archdiocese has apologized for offering a prayer that lavished praise on the late Ted Kennedy who's views on abortion collided with those of the Roman Catholic church the publisher Chicago based liturgy training publications also ended up rewriting the prayer made available for use at Sunday Mass following the senator's death number of Catholics howled about the language because Kennedy was a strong supporter of abortion rights the church considers abortion a sin if not worse other orange county apology columnist max wicker of the orange county register is apologized for a column that clearly clearly offended and outraged large portions of the newspapers readership about jc du guard he apologized I'll try to earn back the trust of those customers in my future endeavors he said I regret this incident and apologize to all concerned

finally here in London British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he sorry for the appalling way world war two code breaker Alan Turing was treated because he was gay he was prosecuted in 1952 for gross indecency after emitting a sexual relationship with a man two years later he killed himself the prime minister writing in the newspaper the daily telegraph said his treatment of course was utterly unfair I'm pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him mr. Turing deserves recognition said the prime minister for his contribution to humankind you deserve so much better the apologies of the week a copyrighted feature of this broadcast this is the show and we're continuing our conversation with Maria Garzino of the United States Army Corps of Engineers now let's get to the point where you have gone up the chain of command you have found that the response is not appropriate and you you gain the status

of a whistleblower well the way that happened was when I was in New Orleans I was trying to convince when I came back in May of 2006 I was trying to convince people you having your possession defective bumping equipment and they said no no no no no we don't yes you do no we don't it took me over a month to finally convince someone and we only did it and you have to realize that I'm in the field I did I barely have a computer that hooks up I have to go into the the Federal Reserve Bank to plug into a wall to get internet and email and and I'm working 16 to 18 hours a day seven days a week and I'm trying it with with no books I have no engineering books and I can't find any anywhere so I'm basically making measurements and giving schematics over to somebody who has access and we finally come up with calculations for the inlet pressure the denison pump and we prove that it's too low and that is the root cause for why we were going through mountains of what I call

mountains volumes of denison hydraulic pumps they were failing so I finally got permission to pull four and look inside and when I did they were shredded and you have to understand these pumps are meant to go for like thousands of hours not three and then be shredded and so at that point it took me the effort to get to that level was so extreme that and I finally I felt there was a breakthrough I still had hope that I mean I was not I did not have the big picture that I do now and what we did is we instituted a repair we came up with that we can easily fix this problem of air being sucked into the denison and destroying the the denison pump by putting retrofitting of what's called a flooded suction raise the reservoir higher and just dump manually let gravity dump the hydraulic fluid into the denison so that you're not going to take the chance of air being entrained and being sucked

in and destroying it so I had worked in the contracting officer had written a document it's called a modification to a contract it's actually an order from the contracting officer to go perform work and I'd coordinated with the site contractors how they were going to get the work done I stayed over in my deployment in order to coordinate this fix I then proceeded to get on a plane and come home thinking I had done my duty I'd solve this one problem and I promptly find out that the day I left they canceled all work they meaning the contractor or the core I have no clue I think both the work never got done the only reason the work got done was when the internal technical review happened and outside engineers from the Army Corps said this is a life safety issue and a year after the general instituted get this work done and a year it took a year and a general for somebody to finally go in there and retrofit those those those drive units and at that point during that time

I did find out a few months after what had happened that the work was was not being done and I said there's something really really wrong here and I started the process of an and what's called it internally went up my chain of command and I we started what's in the Army Corps is is an internal review and I was involved in that for for about a year so and what did you what was the outcome of that internal yeah the outcome of the review the the problem with it was general career asked me to attend I wasn't involved in the setting it up setting in the initialization of it I had no idea what they were investigating I had no idea what they were reviewing I was just on blind faith until I showed up for the final product in Vicksburg, Mississippi and I'm looking down at the document and I'm looking at it and I'm saying our job is to investigate these I don't quite remember but these five bullet points and they had nothing to do with

my concerns a lot of good came out of the internal technical review because of my back and forth with the technical engineer you know the technical expert we got a lot of good out of it but it's just simply a step forward it does not address the issues that I was trying to bring forward and I found out later that it was the lawyer division lawyer that decided what points would be investigated not the engineer so at that point it was the Army Corps of Lawyers I was I it it seems that way it it doesn't seem appropriate it would have been in my view if if if a report is entitled to address Maria Garzeno's concerns I would think you would address Maria Garzeno's concerns yes yeah and you might actually include me do these and address your concerns and that never happened okay we you mentioned

the earlier some some initials the D.O.D.I.G. which is the Department of Defense Inspector General they got involved in this well they yes they did they got involved they got involved mainly because at that point after the internal technical review came out I realized that we still had no way of under of knowing that these pumps would work if if needed in a hurricane event and I was to say deeply disturbed doesn't quite go far enough it was at that point not just a life issue but we had wasted in my view that amount of time we should have been working on a solution instead of playing this this back and forth game so what I decided to do was I went to the website and there is there are two ways to proceed and I consider both up my chain command one was to go to a higher level than the Army Corps which would have been an IG of some kind either an Army Corps IG an Army IG or D.O.D.I.G. but there was another option out there that I was very drawn to for a specific

reason that was the office special counsel and it was not for the whistleblower status at that time it was that the office of special counsel said if you file with us what will happen is this we will look at your concerns we will ask the IG to look into it when the IG gives their report back you Ms. Garzino will be able to review it and provide your comments in response we the United States office special counsel will then look at your response look at the D.O.D.I.G. and decide which of you is more credible and if we think you're credible we'll say D.O.D.I.G. or whatever IG you didn't do your job go back and do it right it's almost like an arbitrator it is but it it saves another year of having to wait with pumps that you that aren't going to work if they're needed and that's what I was after at the time I was trying to avoid the cycle and that at the time was was to me the most expeditious way to get to a resolution that would be good okay so the office of special counsel comes

in they batted over to the the IG of the Department of Defense yes they actually did and it was they went to the highest level they didn't go the army they didn't go to the army court they went directly to the to the to the to the D.O.D. and that was a little that was very good but then the D.O.D.I.G. did a report and I responded to it I think my response was three times as thick as their report it was to say the least a horrific example of investigatory effort and I think I do a pretty good job of documenting that in my response office special counsel agreed with me everything came to an end at that point they said yes we agree with Ms. Garzino and if you read the 2008 analysis document you can see a long laundry list of what they think is wrong in the wrong doing and the problems and the likelihood that these pumps are not likely to work at that point what they do is they take

their findings they write it up and they send it to the president of the United States and to Congress and it's up to the president and it's up to Congress to do whatever they want with it. So they sent it to in the in 2008 president George W. Bush and Congress and then why did it come back through the Office of Special Counsel again this year? Well it was very unusual something that's I think has never happened I'm not sure but I think it was the Secretary of Defense said or issued a press release that said we do need to do more investigation into whether the pumps are adequately tested and to evaluate the likelihood that the pumps could be vulnerable to failure in the event of hurricane. He sent it back to the DODIG and they decided at that point they would hire an outside quote independent investigator to look into this.

And this was Parsons Engineering yes? Yes. Which is a company that has a long history of doing contracting work for the Army Corps of Engineers? Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. They turn it over to Parsons Parsons does what? Well they put together a report that I think that fall short in on a grand scale. What happened when Parsons submitted its report? Well this was what was very interesting and what was really wonderful about this whole process at this point because of all of this back and forth and all of the lack of truly addressing the issue and trying to resolve it and trying to come up with real answers. The OSC decided that they themselves would go out and independently contract with their own technical outside technical expert in this field.

They did it very quietly and his job was to review all of the previous investigations, all of my responses, all of the technical information which there's mountains of it that I provided for the pumps, videotape, photographs, notes, and his job was to look at that. And then when the Parsons report came in, I was to do my response document to it which I did. It's about a hundred and I don't know, it's very long and detailed and very explicit. And his job was to look at my response also, not just the Parsons report, but my response to it and to provide back to the Office of Special Counsel, his determination and findings. And his conclusion? I was completely validated on all points except I think one was not applicable.

And based on that report from their own expert, the Office of Special Counsel, and this is what I first saw in May or June of this year, you sent me the documents in which the Office of Special Counsel now remanded to you as a police term, the issue, having decided that your criticisms were vindicated back to the President and to Congress, is that correct? And now it's going to President Obama and Democratic Congress. And that was in June. Have there been any response from either the White House or Congress to your knowledge up to this point? No, there's been no official response yet. And you still work for the Army Corps? Yes, I do. And what's that been like? You've been basically battling the Army Corps for the last two, three years on a pretty judging by your own story on a pretty dog-ed basis and yet you go to work there every day.

Oh, absolutely. It's doing my job. It's not battling. It's doing my job. There's nothing adversarial about it at all. Yes, it shouldn't be. It's also outside of my district. So it's not as if it's something that I walk in every day and look at and address the very people that I'm redressing in my documents, so it's very different. But you've not been subjected to any negative treatment as a result of this experience so far. Well, that's not quite true. Okay. Correct me. Yeah. Well, I believe the term marginalized would apply. Got it. Okay. In terms of what you're allowed to do in terms of your professional involvement? Yes. Okay. There's a fairly well-known whistleblower who came up against the Army Corps of Engineers in terms of there.

I believe they're contracting practices in Iraq, a woman by the name of a bunneteen greenhouse. How would you compare your experience as a whistleblower vis-a-vis the Army Corps with hers, or are you familiar with her case? I am, but I think we're very different on many levels, but maybe similar when it comes to marginalized, I believe they demoted her, however, and I think for lack of a better term, I don't know if she had any work assigned. Wow. But I don't know. She is a very high-level person. It would be two very different types of entities, really. Okay. You said earlier, there was a point where you didn't know the big picture that you do know now. What's the big picture? I hope it's understood how, how really, very proud I am to be an engineer working for the Corps, and how proud I am of my career, and including now what I'm doing now. I think that as a Californian who responded to New Orleans, it was a privilege and an honor to be down there trying to do work, especially given the circumstances.

We had an opportunity, we have an opportunity in front of us to repair what we ourselves have done wrong, and to do that, it's critical to get it right for many reasons. I think that's what has been the largest driving factor for me. Okay. Let me ask you based on your working with people down there on this project. You said, get what we did wrong. Do you think that the people in the Army Corps in New Orleans believe what two independent forensic engineering reports said, and what the Corps's own reports said, that it was something they did wrong that precipitated the flooding? I'm sure they would, our generals stood up and took responsibility, I don't know why they wouldn't, if your commander stands up and says so, I don't see any other reason

not to. Okay. The Corps in a story about this that was published earlier this week in the New Orleans Times Picky, which gives considerable space to the response of the Corps, or the Corps spokesperson in New Orleans. She says, referring to you, Maria Garzino hasn't been here on site with these pumps in quite a while, and we're here every day. Well, she's right physically, I mean technically, but not correct as far as the overall picture goes. I've been involved, not just from the time I was physically there, but during the entire technical review process and subsequent to that in every investigation, in detail, in addition, I've been involved in follow-on acceptance testing records, compilations, skater data. I think overall, it means maybe to marginalize what I have to say.

I'm not sure that I've got this right, but in some of the reports I was reading about this. I seem to remember that there was at least a point in time when these pumps were supposed to be a part of the permanent solution. Is that right? Yeah. And then they were then declared temporary. Tell me about that. Well, when I showed up in New Orleans, I looked at the structures that they were building. They were monoliths. I looked at the pumps and the different costs, and this was interim, the capacity was interim at that time. We could only put in so much. And I said, the name of the contract was temporary, as do you mean these things are temporary? And the head of the pump team said, no, the capacity is what's temporary. We have limited ability in what we can put in to meet our June 1st deadline. But I noticed something that when I came back and said these hydraulic pumps are defective.

And as we went forward and it was discovered more and more, they are. And as the investigations went forward, there became this tendency from, no, the pumps are permanent and they're going to be part of the permanent solution. They're going to be incorporated to, no, we're going to get rid of them. They're only supposed to be there five years. There was this shift that happened. And that was very disturbing, but that was the intent. And if you go back and look at the congressional documents, and if you go back and look at the laws, the PL 109-234-110-252, and if you go back and look at what are called project information reports, that's where you really see the intent. And project information reports are documents that are put together in an emergency situation like this was by the Army Corps in the field, the New Orleans District. And what they do is this.

They kind of, it's a format they have to follow and it has to be signed off and formally signed off by everybody. And it's sent forward headquarters and then Congress sees this. And in there, they say, Congress, it's kind of like saying to Congress, here's the project we have a concept. And this is what we'd like to do. And this is how much it's going to cost. And in the economic analysis, they use a 50-year lifespan. And they come up with a 7.3 to 1 benefit to cost ratio to justify the project. In other words, that will justify here, Congress. This has a positive, very good benefit to cost ratio. Therefore, you'll want to give me money. So Congress in improving this project believe they were building something with a 50-year lifespan? Yes. Yes. And the lifespan now is- Well, if it's five years, and if you do that, you actually end up with a less than one benefit to cost ratio, which means you're losing money. You were better off doing nothing. And how much did these pumps cost? Well, the pumps themselves are not that expensive in the realm, in the complete, in the total

picture. I think maybe in total, maybe $40 million for everything or something like that. But what is important, you have to put those pumps on something. You have to put those drive units on something. And those pump platforms, and those drive unit platforms, and the piping, and all the work that goes into it, and incorporating it into the closure structure, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to do that. And so we're going to have to spend more hundreds of millions of dollars to replace them. Well, there's a report. It's dated April 27th, 2009. It was actually done by the Army Corps, but it was started a couple of years ago. And it actually analyzes that very thing. And it looks at it. And it says, how do we turn these interim closure structures, gated interim closure structures with installed pumps into a 50-year lifespan? And they say very clearly in that report, well, first, you keep all the direct drives. Keep them, but you have to take out all the hydraulic pumps, and all the structures,

and replace them with direct drives. At a cost of, do we know? Did they ask me? Yeah. About 270 million. Maria, I want to, as we come near the close, I want to sort of focus on two questions. One is that there are these direct drive pumps, which I guess you and the Corps, and everyone who's looked at this, agree, do work. Oh, they work wonderfully. The Patterson pumps work great, and sort of the Fairbanks more, see. And so is there enough of them in each of these locations on these three outfall canals to assure New Orleansians that in the event of a major storm surge incident, they are protected by this temporary setup? Goodness, no. Okay. Absolutely not. All right. No. That the missing piece is these hydraulic pumps, which you believe are not reliable. One of the things that the Office Special Counsel's expert came up with was, he said very clearly,

while the issues I brought forward are correct and they're valid, he said, I actually didn't go far enough. And the findings of what is wrong, engineering-wise, with these pumps is extraordinary. The design defects are significant. The report itself goes into great detail explaining them what is wrong. And the backup documents, those limited backup documents from the acceptance testing even back it all up, with failures noted in the field for dress drives, and we know that when you turn these things on, there's no reasonable way to ever believe that they will run during an actual hurricane event due to these design defects. The other question is, given what you've discovered in your, let's call it, your journey, how safe do you think New Orleans should feel tonight, knowing that these are the people

who are controlling their safety in the case of a hurricane event? That may be above your pay grade, but I'm throwing it at you just in case. Well, I would respectfully disagree with Brigadier-Gene, I would say this, I would respectfully disagree with Brigadier-General Walsh's op-ed that was running the Times-Pikyune, Jesslyn Radack and myself wrote a rebuttal to that very thing, I think, in his op-ed, he was trying to reassure New Orleansians that everything worked right and to implore them to let the core build, what was called option one, but the rebuttal that Jesslyn Radack and myself came up with, I think, would have been a very good answer to that question, however they refused to run it. The paper did. If you had this to do all over again, would you do what you've done? Well, I think I'd have to.

It's something that, as an engineer, you have to do, and it's something also, I think, being an engineer working for the federal government becomes even more important that people be able to do this very thing. So yes, I would have to do that. Okay. And one final question, and it's a more emotional one than any of these others, I guess. People in New Orleans have gotten used to, if not enured to, as part of the defense of anything that the core does, that gets criticized, the statement by people at the core, we live here too. What do you say to that? Are they really vested in the same way? I don't think so in the same way. Are they really living the way the average individual has to survive? I don't know.

A lot of people are. There are a lot of Army Corps people that were very hurt by the storm event. But in essence, you know, to say we live there too, I think minimizes what a lot of other people are going through and have gone through, especially when you're transplanted. Maria Garzino of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, who I am sure you are speaking today in your personal capacity and not as a representative of the core. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for you, and I really appreciate you spending the time with me today. Thank you here. And one thing more, ladies and gentlemen, news from inspectors general, the US Internal Revenue Service is struggling with an aging workforce where more than a third of the executives

are eligible for retirement as an area that puts its mission at risk. According to the Treasury Department's Inspector General, the IRS faces a loss of leadership and technical employees that it could threaten its ability to provide American taxpayers the service they've come to expect, unquote, from the IRS. That concludes this week's edition of La Show. The service you expect from this broadcast will return next week at the same time over these stations over NPR worldwide throughout Europe, the USN440 cable system is paramount around the world, the facilities and the American forces network up and down the east coast of North America via the shortwave giant WBCQ, the planet 7.415 megahertz shortwave on

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