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Black Prime Contractor Sues U.S.
By Maynard Eaton
Atlanta GA.
December 12, 2004
Freedom N.Y’s passionate president is a fierce and formidable
fighter as the U.S. Defense department has come to realize over the
past two decades. Henry Thomas is a rare breed. He’s a Black Prime
Contractor who has courageously sued the U.S. for race based
discrimination and for creating a segregated all white Meals Ready
To Eat [MRE]
Industrial Preparedness program.
Freedom N.Y., Inc. says that as a result of filing its $150 million
discrimination suit, its contract claims down at the Armed Services
Board of Contracts Appeals [ASBCA] are being “whitewashed”, as to
the damages said Thomas, while on a recent trip to Baldwin County
Alabama where he was invited to look for a new 500,000 square foot
plant to resume its MRE operations.
The $150 million discrimination suit has a $5 billion punitive
damages request and was filed in the U.S. Federal District Court in
Washington D.C., it is before Judge Reggie B. Walton.
Freedom N.Y., Inc. a Bronx N.Y. based Defense Prime MRE Contractor
that thrived in the 1980’s, has demanded in a document filed at the
ASBCA to recuse itself and transfer the 20 year old contract case to
the United States Court of Federal Claims for not standing up for
its final and conclusive finding at the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Federal Circuit.
The contractor’s claims are deeply rooted in the 1987 WEDTECH
scandal and the activities of the New York payment office of the
Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The then U.S. Attorney, Rudy
Guiliani, prosecuted the Wedtech case but left in place some of the
Wedtech tentacles that had reached into the New York DLA payment
office. That office has since then been trying to sweep its
involvement with Wedtech and its contract actions on Freedom under
the rug by forcing Freedom into the administrative legal system for
the last 17 years.
Documents show that the same contracting officer called an ACO was
handling payments to both Wedtech and Freedom at the same time and
was over paying Wedtech on its invoices while at the same time
wrongfully not paying Freedom for their invoices. As Guiliani was
investigating the activities of the Wedtech ring in 1986, which
included former Congressman Mario Biaggi, his law partner then Major
General Bernard Ehrlich, former Bronx Boro President, Stanley Simon
and then New York SBA Chief Peter Neigler, the ACO of the New York
office froze all funds to Freedom’s contract. At the time the firm
had over 400 employees producing MRE’s in a massive 400,000 sq. ft.
plant in the South Bronx, but because the company’s funding was
illegally halted Freedom was forced to halt its production lines of
MRE’s which are the sort of meals now being fed to our troops in
Iraq. As a result of these wrongful breaches of contract, Freedom as
a business was destroyed with the loss of its MRE Industrial
Preparedness Prime contractor position within the Department of
Defense, over 442 jobs were lost as well as it’s then massive
400,000 sq ft U.S.D.A. approved plant in the South Bronx of N.Y.
Freedom appealed to the ASBCA in 1986 for contract relief.
Finally in 2001, 15 years later, the ASBCA, found that this same
ACO’s actions of not paying Freedom had breached Freedoms contract
over 26 different times starting in 1984. The ASBCA said in its
decision that it “could not find anything that Freedom had done
wrong doing that period”.
“Since, the ASBCA has found that Freedom has done nothing wrong,
then Freedom should be reestablished as a business and reinstated to
its full status as a MRE Industrial Preparedness Prime contractor
along with millions of dollars of MRE contracts,” said Cicero Wilson
CEO of MDB Economic Development Corp in the Bronx. “This corrective
action would right the wrongs done to Freedom and its employees in
the Bronx and re-create over 800 jobs, as our nation is now under
mobilization for the war in Iraq and MRE’s are a major war supply
item to our front line troops.” Wilson said.
Wilson has also asked the questions “if Freedom has done nothing
wrong, and was not in default in 1986, then why was it put in the
Defense administrative legal system in the first place? And why has
it been kept in the legal system for so long? Wilson also wants to
know “what steps are being taken by the DOD to correct these past
wrongs?”
“It has taken over 17 years for the ASBCA to get around to
establishing government fault and liability in this case” says Bruce
Luchansky, Esq. one of Freedoms attorneys in Baltimore MD. “The
ASBCA has royally botched the presentation of this case by first
being ‘confused’ and then by bifurcating the claims and starting the
case backwards”.
The ASBCA board has admitted to their confusion in a document in a
1996 reversal and correction of a then wrong decision in this case.
Thomas said “that Freedom is at that same folk in the road again,
with another recent wrong decision of the ASBCA on damages and it is
now time to move this case to a real court of law”.
“It appears they are trying to ‘white-wash’ the effects of damages
on their finding of facts of the breaches of contract that they have
already found” Thomas said.
The ASBCA has determined that the Freedom contract was continuously
breached over 26 different times by the same New York ACO, but has
not yet considered the Wedtech impact or the connection of the
Wedtech ring to the ACO or even asked why and what his motivations
and reasons were for the many wrongful breaches of the Freedom
contract.
“The Defense Logistics Agency would like to keep this Wedtech
connection and another scandal called CinPac covered up”. Thomas
says. “I would like to drag the DLA - CinPac MRE and operation
desert storm scandal right out into the sunlight for all to see. It
will prove how black owned firms are routinely ruined by deliberate
and willful government actions”.
The judicial wrongs done to black contractors is so egregious there
appears to be a “bone yard” of destruction of black contractors by
the Department of Defense. The Freedom story is but one frightening
example.
maynardeaton@hotmail.com
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