Argon Talks to Feds

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At the request of the federal government, a Virginia-based defense contractor with close ties to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) is providing information for a criminal investigation in Florida surrounding allegations that three men skimmed money from earmarks, according to sources familiar with the case.

Federal investigators pursuing the Florida case have interviewed employees and reviewed documents from Argon ST, a Fairfax, Va., defense contractor, according to sources with knowledge of the case.

A spokesman for the company told Roll Call, “We can’t comment on an ongoing criminal investigation,” though apparently Argon has been told that it is not the target of the investigation and has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Argon bought one of the companies that was named in the Florida indictment, and investigators are apparently interested in information now in Argon’s possession about that company.

A federal judge in February unsealed an indictment in Florida charging three men with a scheme to pocket some of the proceeds of contracts from an Air Force research program that was driven by Congressional earmarks. The men deny the charges, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in June.

Part of the allegation in the Florida case is that in September 2005, Mark O’Hair, an Air Force program manager, approved an $8.1 million contract to a Pennsylvania company called Coherent Systems for an integrated battlefield communications system called the “Ground Mobile Gateway System.”

The government alleges that Coherent paid Schaller Engineering Inc. $200,000 for a component of the system that Schaller never provided, and that O’Hair and two directors of Schaller Engineering — Richard Schaller and Theodore Sumrall — each pocketed about $60,000 from the transaction.

The money for Coherent’s Ground Mobile Gateway System was inserted into the March 2005 tsunami relief supplemental appropriations bill, but there is no indication which Congressional office added that language. At the time, Murtha was the ranking member on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. He is now the chairman of that subcommittee.

Mark F. Sypher/Roll Call

In 2007, Argon ST, based in Fairfax, Va., bought a company that was later named in a criminal case scheduled for trial in a federal court in Florida in June. Argon has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Murtha’s spokesman said the Congressman provided a $1.4 million earmark for the Ground Mobile Gateway System in fiscal 2007, but the office had no information about funding for the program in other years, or the language in the tsunami relief bill.

In August 2007, Argon bought the assets of Coherent and, at the end of the year, hired Murtha staffer Gabrielle Carruth as vice president of government relations.

Carruth had been on Murtha’s staff since 2002 and was listed in a 2007 Congressional directory as his “Appropriations associate staff.” She registered as Argon’s lobbyist in January 2008, apparently the first person to serve as an in-house lobbyist for the firm.

Carruth terminated her registration with Argon on March 6 and left the company. She is now a lobbyist at the defense giant Lockheed Martin, where she first appeared on a lobbying registration form dated April 17.

Argon has not registered another in-house lobbyist since her departure.

Argon has some history with Murtha.

In May 2002, Murtha announced in a press release that a Virginia company called SenSyTech Inc. would be opening a local office in his district. In August 2003, the Congressman attended the ribbon cutting for the company, and in July 2004, Murtha announced that SenSyTech was among the local companies getting earmarks in the Defense appropriations bill. Argon Engineering Associates bought SenSyTech later that year, and the company became Argon ST.