European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - November 5, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 4 the stars and stripes saturday. November 5,1989 full of hot air an inflatable Model of King Kong the celebrated movie monster lurks among the rooftops of in Francisco. The pumped of Gorilla was set afloat to Welcome same 1,000 members of the Urban land Institute whose annual meeting starts in the Golden Gate City next week. Questionable consultants costing Dod study says by Norman Black a military writer Washington the nation s largest defens contractors Are routinely Billing the Pentagon for hundreds of millions of dollars spent on outside Consul Tants frequently without justifying or explaining the work they perform a special audit has found. The defense department is itself partly to blame because its procurement regulations Are so vague according to the report released Friday by the defense contract audit Agency. But the internal business discipline one would expert at a Large company for hiring outsiders is in most cases non existent the auditors added. In a review of 12 of the top 100 defense contractors the auditors labelled As questionable claims for $43 million out of the s236.s million charged to the government Over the past year Tor consultant services. If anything the total for questionable claims is understated the audit adds. The 2 companies picked by the auditors included the Boeing co., general dynamics corp., Hughes air Craft co., ism inc., Litton industries inc., Lockheed corp., Martin Marietta corp., Mcdonnell douglascorp., Northrop corp., Raythelon co., Uniss corp., and the United technologies corp. At five locations we encountered specific facts which caused us to suspect irregular activity and referred the mat ters to the appropriate investigative agencies the audit said. It did not identify the five sucs. Often contractors simply could not explain what work their consultants had performed the auditor wrote. And in some cases it appears the consultants performed lobbying or publicity work that should not have been reimbursed. The Ducaa audit spawned by a massive fraud investigation at the Pentagon paints a picture of a clubby Atmo sphere in which major contractors rarely ask that Consul Tant contracts be put in writing and frequently hire consultants without soliciting competitive bids. The Ducaa also expressed concern about the number of consultants it encountered who were former High level. Military and civilian  the department. We found that contractors were spending consider Able sums supplementing and complementing virtually every in House activity with professional and Consul Tant services the auditors wrote. Under existing regulations the auditors continued a defense contractor May Bill the government for its expenses on outside consultants As Long As it can show evidence of the nature and scope of the service  that Standard is so Loose that it docs nol Force con tractors to truly document what they Are paying for or to demonstrate How the work benefits the military the audit concluded. The Pentagon in releasing the audit announced it had already written new regulations to address the Ducaa s concerns. A Public comment period on the new regulations will end dec. 5, at which Point they can be made final the Pentagon said. The Ducaa audit was ordered last july 25 by de sense Secretary Frank c. Carlucci in the aftermath of disclosures that Federal prosecutors were conducting wide ranging fraud investigation focusing on contractors and their outside consultants along with selected Pentagon employees. The 2-year-old investigation centers on allegations that consultants paid bribes to defense department officials to gather inside information that was useful to companies bidding on multimillion Dollar projects. While no charges have been filed As yet indictments arc now Cape coca later this month. Halt of official language vote urged Miami a opponents of a measure that would make English the slate s official language won support from the . Justice department in their Effort to persuade a Federal court to remove the measure from tuesday s ballot. A three judge panel of the 11th . Circuit court of appeals on thursday heard arguments and said it probably would Rule before the vote on amendment 11. The Justice department Aig cd that the petition drive that put the measure on the ballot violated the voting rights act  distributing petitions in Spanish As we . At thursday s hearing. Mark die slag attorney for the group Florida English which collected More than 500,000  s position. The Justice department Brief is incompetent and misleading die slag said. " they chose to ignore All the cases we re talking about which created the body of Law surrounding the voting rights act after the hearing Don Middlebrooks attorney for speak up now which challenged the ballot measure said the department s decision could be a boost. Generally courts give some deference to the Agency responsible for enforcing the act and that s the Justice department Middlebrooks said. . Shuttle astronauts Call soviets copycats. " -.,  _.  f space Center Houston up the soviet Union s new space shuttle appears to be an outright copy of its . Counterpart says the skipper of the shuttle Atlantis which is scheduled to blast off at the end of the month on a secret military night it sure does look like they copied ours Veteran shuttle commander Robert Hoot Gibson said in an inter View thursday at the Johnson space Center and while agreeing that the soviet vehicle is a copy Crew Mac Jerry Ross added he is impressed that the soviets managed to get As far As they have in making the copy work. Gibson and his four Crew mates co Pilot Guy Gard Ner. Richard Mike Mullane Ross and William Shep Herd Are scheduled to take off aboard Atlantis around the end of the month on the second Post challenger flight a classified Mission to launch a spy satellite. In two previous classified defense department shuttle flights interviews with Crew members were forbidden because of the hush hush nature of such missions. But Theair Force made an exception in the Case of Atlantis Crew although no Mission specific questions were allowed. When the astronauts showed up for their interviews thursday they were sporting Black Lone Ranger style masks apparently poking Good natured fun at these Crecy surrounding the 27th shuttle Mission. Gibson said he believes the soviet Union s new shuttle called  a rip Oft of Nasa s Overall design and that if the outline of one was placed atop the other a near perfect fit would result. Arc Smaic Ross agreed but he said the soviet shuttle nonetheless marked a bold step for the soviets. Obviously we documented our program very Well and they bad Access to it he said. "1m nol sure i that s Good or bad quite frankly. But even though we made in the .a. Or yet documented they still had to have the technology an capability to use that documentation and go build a vehicle. I am impressed that they be got the vehicle to the Point they do  soviets attempted to launch their first shuttle on its Maiden voyage oct. 29, but trouble with ground equipment forced them to delay the unmanned two orbit flight until later this month. In All likelihood Buran Wilt Tak Ott before Atlantis. We either have to feel we were really Brilliant when we developed ours because they did it completely independently and came up with the same answer or we have to think they re no dummies and Why spend Al that Money and All that time developing something. When they could just copy something that was out there Gibson said. One of the soviets Well known mottos is better Isa severe enemy of Good Enoish. So Why develop some thing that might be better than ours when ours is Good enough and they can just Flat outright copy it and tend to think that s what happened. Ross said the very existence of the soviet shuttle was a Clear message to the american people that the russian space program is committed to leadership on the High Frontier Overall i think it s an extremely bold step and quite frankly i Hope that it works be cause it will hopefully get the american Public s an the Congress and the White House s attention that they re pressing on they re not slopping Ross said. When sputnik went up everybody became shocked . Well that s a Small Pebble in a Pond compared to what they re doing Day in and Day  Atlantis on a launch pad at the Kennedy space enter and with Buran on its pad at the Bai Konur cosm drome in soviet Central Asia inc scr. Pcs shuttle activity h at a fever pitch. But because Atlantis pay Load is classified the second Post challenger shuttle flight will be conducted in strict secrecy. The precise launch time will not t c known until nine minutes before liftoff the Landing Lime will not be revealed until 24 hours before touchdown and no radio transmissions or television pictures from the shuttle Wilt be released to the Public throughout the flight. Officials say the secrecy is required to prevent the soviet Union from precisely tracking the shuttle or its satellite payload