Who knows, dude. Nevertheless, this AEY, Inc./Efraim Diveroli story just keeps getting better and better. The American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, has been implicated in the cover-up:

An American ambassador helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that a Pentagon contractor bought to supply Afghan security forces, according to testimony gathered by Congressional investigators.

A military attaché has told the investigators that the United States ambassador to Albania endorsed a plan by the Albanian defense minister to hide several boxes of Chinese ammunition from a visiting reporter. The ammunition was being repackaged to disguise its origins and shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a Miami Beach arms-dealing company.

The ambassador, John L. Withers II, met with the defense minister, Fatmir Mediu, hours before a reporter for The New York Times was to visit the American contractor’s operations in Tirana, the Albanian capital, according to the testimony. The company, under an Army contract, bought the ammunition to supply Afghan security forces although American law prohibits trading in Chinese arms.

The attaché, Maj. Larry D. Harrison II of the Army, was one of the aides attending the late-night meeting, on Nov. 19, 2007. He told House investigators that Mr. Mediu asked Ambassador Withers for help, saying he was concerned that the reporter would reveal that he had been accused of profiting from selling arms. The minister said that because he had gone out of his way to help the United States, a close ally, “the U.S. owed him something,” according to Major Harrison.

Mr. Mediu ordered the commanding general of Albania’s armed forces to remove all boxes of Chinese ammunition from a site the reporter was to visit, and “the ambassador agreed that this would alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing,” Major Harrison said, according to his testimony.

[...]

According to messages obtained by Congressional investigators, Major Harrison urged embassy officials to inform the committee of the Nov. 19 meeting between the ambassador and minister, but the embassy omitted any reference to the meeting in its official response to the committee’s questions.

Embassy staff members seemed sympathetic to the Albanians’ alarm. The day after the November meeting, the embassy’s regional security officer, Patrick Leonard, wrote an assistant an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “NY Times just arrived today and might be doing a story on this and it might get ugly. Ambassador is very concerned about the case.”

When The Times published its article on March 27, it was quickly forwarded to embassy officials. In an e-mail message to several embassy officials, Mr. Leonard said that the article focused on the arms company’s dealings. “No mention of Embassy involvement — thank God!”

Seriously, when will people ever learn? Forget e-mail and use the damn telephone!

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) held a hearing today on this ammunition fiasco:

A Congressional investigation revealed on Tuesday that by the time the Army had awarded the bid, State and Defense department officials had already canceled or delayed at least five earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for shoddy quality or late deliveries.

But that information, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000 Beretta pistols for Iraq’s security forces, was either ignored or omitted from databases that American military contracting officials use to weed out companies suspected of involvement in illegal arms deals.

Moreover, Congressional investigators found that the Afghanistan ammunition contract may have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania had offered to donate the same kind of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the Afghan forces use.

[...]

Then there was the parade of previous contracts with AEY that were canceled or delayed, many of which apparently never raised red flags with contracting officials because they fell under the $5 million contract value that was the threshold for warning.

In October 2005, for instance, AEY delivered a shipment of damaged helmets to the American training command in Iraq. One American inspector said in an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “The helmets came to Abu Ghraib by mistake. They are not very good. They have peeling paint and a few appear to have been damaged such as having been dropped.”

At about the same time, the committee found, AEY failed to deliver more than 10,000 Beretta pistols under contract to Iraqi security forces. According to the contracting officer, Mr. Diveroli’s excuses for the tardy delivery included a plane crash that destroyed important documents and a hurricane that hit Miami.

In April 2005, U.S. Army Special Forces partly canceled a contract with AEY for ammunition, complaining of a failure to deliver “acceptable goods.”

All of which left lawmakers on Tuesday angry and puzzled how the Army could miss tell-tale warning signs of trouble when it awarded AEY the Afghan ammunition contract in January 2007.

“Obvious evidence of consistently shoddy performance was somehow missed or ignored as substandard or illegally-obtained munitions were apparently being sent to Afghanistan,” said Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Republican.