WT - Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security

From my archive of press clippings:

Washington Times

Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security

Bill Gertz (Contact)


Wednesday, March 26, 2008


This is the first in a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):


"Public Printer Robert Tapella, the Government Printing Office's top executive, told a House subcommittee on March 6 that increased demand for U.S. passports produced "accelerated revenue recognition," and "not necessarily excess profits."

The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times."

"The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government's official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs."

"GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government's documents, from federal agency reports to the president's massive budget books that outline every penny of annual federal spending.

Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country."

&

"GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands."