Somebody did! Think this whole episode was over a $13, 400 payment?
Why didn't he just pay the money back?
Compared to the rest of this administration, Chuckie got chump change.
So why kill yourself over it, Chuck?
Something STINKS, readers!
"Life Was Lost in Maelstrom of Suspicion" by GINGER THOMPSON and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — Friends of Charles D. Riechers, whose Air Force career took him from the back of a B-52 cockpit to the front of the service’s $30 billion procurement office, said something was telling in the fact that his suicide note to his boss was typed. They described it as an effort to set the record straight by a meticulous man who felt deeply misunderstood.
“I first and foremost express my deepest regret for a situation based on my naïveté,” Mr. Riechers’s note read, according to a person familiar with it. “I’ve created a scandal.”
On Oct. 14, neighbors found the body of Mr. Riechers, a 47-year-old husband and father, in his garage in Loudoun County, Va., just outside Washington, dead apparently from the fumes of his car.
Mr. Riechers, who was the second-highest-ranking official at the Air Force procurement office, had come under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee after a news report that said the Air Force had arranged for him to be paid by a private contractor during the two months he awaited White House approval for the job.
The report, which came three years to the day after Mr. Riechers’s predecessor, Darleen Druyun, was sentenced to prison on corruption charges, prompted accusations by several contractors that Mr. Riechers had favored a competitor. It also led to inquiries by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon inspector general, which are continuing.
The Air Force, which stood by Mr. Riechers (pronounced REE-kers), said there was nothing illegal about the contract arrangements it had used to hire him. Air Force officials also said they have found no evidence of wrongdoing in the work that Mr. Riechers did after being appointed in January.
When pressed to explain what they believe pushed Mr. Riechers to take his own life, Air Force officials said he was an engineering wizard — with a penchant for writing computer software code and reading Wired magazine — who fell victim to the ruthlessness of political Washington. In the wake of his death, the Air Force has begun an aggressive campaign to clear his reputation and its own.
Privately, however, officials acknowledged that the inquiries surrounding Mr. Riechers had uncovered questionable practices in a proliferating and poorly regulated side of Pentagon procurement that involves contracting for temporary consultants.
“Here we had some Air Force official telling a contractor to pay somebody $13,400 a month for work not being performed for that company,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said in an Oct. 4 hearing by the Armed Services Committee. “I think it makes you ask, ‘What is going on in the contracting world?’”
But would that make a guy -- an Army guy -- kill himself?
Because he is publicly embarrassed?
He wasn't the only one who was corrupt, and many in the Pentagon were far worse!
Mr. Riechers, a native of Ohio who was known to his friends as Chuck, seemed to thrive in the contracting world. Colleagues said that his engineering background — with degrees from the University of Michigan and California Polytechnic University — and his experience as a combat navigator gave him a unique ability to communicate the needs of troops to scientists developing new technologies. He flew radar-jamming missions in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
His reputation as a straight arrow gave him a boost of credibility that the Air Force needed after the scandal involving Ms. Druyun. She steered contracts to Boeing in exchange for jobs with the company for herself, her daughter and her son-in-law.
“You don’t find a guy like Chuck Riechers very often,” said Sue C. Payton, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.
This doesn't sound like a guy who would kill himself over $13,000 dollars!!
When she approached Mr. Riechers about becoming her principal deputy, Ms. Payton said, he was considering several offers from private companies. The Air Force, she said in an interview, would not be able to hire him until the White House approved his appointment.
Not wanting to lose her top candidate because of a sluggish bureaucracy, Ms. Payton arranged for Mr. Riechers to be put on temporary contract.
Mr. Riechers worked for the Air Force, essentially doing the job for which he was seeking clearance, but was paid by a Pennsylvania nonprofit, Commonwealth Research Institute, Ms. Payton said. His monthly salary was about $13,400.
“I got a paycheck from them,” Mr. Riechers said in an interview with The Washington Post, referring to his responsibilities to Commonwealth Research. “They did my benefits, and all that kind of stuff. But I really didn’t do anything specifically for C.R.I.”
The report published by The Post on Oct. 1 set off a political firestorm. Commonwealth Research and its parent organization, the Concurrent Technologies Corporation, were well-known beneficiaries of Congressional spending projects, known as earmarks. The companies have won hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts for work that included consulting on counterterrorism, developing software and designing ejection seats for pilots.
That sounds like a MOTIVE to me!
Reports that one of those contracts had been used to pay Mr. Riechers prompted a formal protest by the Pemco Aviation Group, which a month earlier had lost a $1.1 billion bid for Air Force work to Boeing. In an amendment to its protest, Pemco Aviation, based in Alabama, charged Mr. Riechers with favoring Boeing, which was a client of Commonwealth Research.
CUI BONO, readers? Who might want to shut Mr. Riechers up?
“In retrospect, I regret this so much,” Ms. Payton said, holding back tears. “If I had let him go, if I hadn’t been so aggressive about bringing good people in, the guy would be alive today.”
I don't think that was it, lady! Something else going on!
Beyond the headlines, Mr. Riechers’s mood swung from surprised to angry to ashamed.
“I remember asking him, ‘Have you been Googling yourself?” said a friend of his, John Scott. “He made a face at me that indicated he had. I told him, ‘Just stop.’”
Air Force colleagues described Mr. Riechers’s emotional state as gloomy the day that The Post story was published, lifted when colleagues reassured him that interest in the report would not last, down the day his name surfaced in Congress and up when colleagues reassured him that he would not lose his job.
Oh, he was up, he was down, he was up, he was down.
How could an emotional flip-flopper like him succeed in the Army?
I'm smelling a COVER STORY, readers!
On Oct. 12, government auditors announced that Pemco Aviation had named Mr. Riechers as part of its protest over the Air Force’s decision to award an airplane maintenance contract to Boeing. Mr. Riechers was found dead two days later. He left notes for his wife, Colleen, and for Ms. Payton.
Two people familiar with the note to Ms. Payton said Mr. Riechers apologized repeatedly for giving rise to a “doomsday scenario” in which “the Darleen Druyun replacement unit” had become the target of a new investigation.
There is, of course, no way to know everything that was going through Mr. Riechers’s mind the day he died. Friends and Air Force colleagues to Mr. Riechers said they did not believe he had a history of emotional or mental health problems. They said they were not aware that he had any serious personal issues.
Yup, it's a mystery!
One the Times will never get to the bottom of, that's for sure!
This IS the government hand-out.
And if he had those problems, the government would know!
Part of his background check, right?
Mr. Riechers’s wife and mother refused interview requests.
Friends said he was devoted to his wife. Mr. Riechers bragged that his son, Christopher, was as passionate about music as he was about space shuttle operations manuals. He and his wife had just celebrated Christopher’s engagement and were making plans for the day they would become grandparents.
This guy didn't kill himself!!!!
People who plan suicides don't plan for the future!!
WHO KILLED CHARLIE RIECHERS?
Mr. Scott and John Wilcox, another friend, said Mr. Riechers often told them he never expected to accomplish all that he had. And the friends said he feared his reputation was ruined.
“I remember Chuck saying to me, ‘I keep playing this thing over and over in my mind, and I don’t think I did anything wrong,’” Mr. Wilcox said.
Then, WHY WOULD HE KILL HIMSELF?!
Wouldn't he want to FIGHT IT?
Ms. Payton echoed that thought. “Of all the problems I’ve seen Chuck solve,” she said, “this was a problem I’m not sure he could solve from an engineering, intellectual, academic, technical point of view."
This tale of suicide STINKS!!!
This guy didn't kill himself.
HE WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE KNEW SOMETHING!!!!
