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Supply Master

By Dickey, Beth
Publication: Government Executive
Date: Saturday, October 1 2005
HEADNOTE

Alan Estevez is making sure every military service member has exactly the right equipment at the right time-no more and no less.

A year ago, agents from the Government Accountability Office paid an Internet

liquidator $483 for 42 pairs of cold-weather boots that had cost the Defense Department $5,670, or $135 each.

The footwear, still new, had been written off as junk when it appeared at a Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office in California without identifying paperwork. Not long afterward, the Defense Logistics Agency ordered 31,420 new pairs of the same boots. As the GAO reported in June, this is one example of the $3.5 billion worth of new or barely used supplies and equipment that the military declared surplus from 2002 through 2004, then spent at least $400 million to replace.

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