LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday amid revelations of his company’s political proximity — and his own closeness — to the White House and Obama administration officials.
The Daily Caller first reported one week ago on emails and documents that indicate political ties and numerous meetings between LightSquared and Obama administration officials as the company was undergoing regulatory review.
Ahuja’s resignation comes after Obama’s FCC suspended conditional approval of a waiver LightSquared needed to complete its high-speed broadband network. Until two weeks ago, the company’s final approval appeared imminent. . . .
Ahuja will remain LightSquared’s chairman.
Philip Falcone, the CEO of Harbinger Capital Partners — which created LightSquared from its predecessor, SkyTerra — was appointed to the LightSquared board on Tuesday as well. The Obama administration FCC approved Harbinger’s purchase of SkyTerra after what appeared to be a series of favorable regulatory decisions amid White House visits.
In the press release, Falcone said he remains confident in LightSquared’s future despite these new revelations and the company’s reported challenges related to GPS interference issues. . . .
There have been a lot of corruption issues with the Obama administration pushing for the LightSquared project. Well, the case seems to be dead for now (see here).
The lawyers are investigating the merits of a potential suit against the Federal Communications Commission, which this week rejected LightSquared's plan for a broadband network, and the Global Positioning System industry. GPS companies and Defense Department officials have argued that LightSquared's signal could interfere with their networks.
Mr. Falcone, who runs Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, is betting that telephone companies will face shortages in broadband capacity in the future, forcing them to pay providers like LightSquared a premium to use their networks. But if the recent FCC decision prevents LightSquared from launching operations, the value of investment may boil down to the strength of the company's legal claims. . . .
The Obama administration has been accused of putting pressure on the military to drop their opposition to LightSquared. The military was told to say that there wasn't really much to be concerned about. A new report puts the lie to that belief. George Soros and other wealth Democrats are said to be big investors in LightSquared. From the WSJ:
New government tests show wireless start-up LightSquared's network could knock out a "great majority" of GPS devices, according to a congressional aide who has seen a draft government report on the tests. Preliminary data from recent government and industry tests of LightSquared's network suggest that the start-up hasn't solved concerns that its network would knock out a large number of personal or military GPS devices, the report said, according to the aide. LightSquared, a startup funded largely by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, wants to build a national wireless broadband network and offer wholesale Internet access to companies including Leap Wireless International Inc. and Best Buy Co. LightSquared's airwaves are close to those used by GPS devices. After government tests this summer showed LightSquared's network would knock out a large number of aviation, commercial and consumer GPS devices, the company said it would only use the frequencies that are farthest away from the GPS signals. . . .
Wireless company LightSquared has refused a request from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to release its communications with the White House and the Federal Communications Commission.
Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested the documents earlier this month to probe whether the company benefited from improper influence in its effort to secure regulatory approval. LightSquared told Grassley it would "respectfully decline" his request in a letter Wednesday night. . . .
With one billionaire supporter of Obama linked to the Solyndra scandal, now there is another Obama supporter linked to the LightSquared problems. It seems clear why so many billionaires support big government because it provides all sorts of wealth transfers to them. From Fox News:
Billionaire financier and liberal activist George Soros has been financially linked to LightSquared, which is at the center of allegations that the White House pressured a Pentagon commander to change his prepared congressional testimony to benefit the Virginia-based telecom company that once received a $90,000 investment from President Obama. LightSquared is seeking to establish a new wireless broadband network that many, including Air Force Gen. William Shelton, believe could interfere with critical GPS systems used by the U.S. military. But Shelton, head of Space Command, confided to lawmakers that he thought his testimony had been leaked to LightSquared, and that he had rejected requests from the White House to downplay his concerns. The company is being funded by private equity titan Philip Falcone, the founder of Harbinger Capital Partners, a hedge fund that has counted Soros as a "significant" investor since 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal. Soros also funds four groups that have lobbied on behalf of LightSquared in regulatory and policy fights. . . . . A spokeswoman for Open Society Foundations did not respond to a request for comment. . . .
Also note how all this fits in with Obama's DOJ shutting down the AT&T - T-Mobile merger. Economist will tell you if competitors are upset about a merger, it is likely to be pro-competitive. If they are supportive, it is more likely that the reverse is true. In this case, Sprint is very upset about the merger. Yet, Obama's DOJ is stopping the merger. From Fox News:
Soros also funds four groups that have lobbied on behalf of LightSquared in regulatory and policy fights. The Washington Examiner first reported this week that the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, which includes the Soros-funded groups Free Press, Media Access Project, the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge, filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission in April 2010 supporting Harbinger's attempt to become a national player in the wireless industry over the objections of AT&T and Verizon. . . . .
AT&T threw a wild card into the mix earlier this week. On the eve of the Justice Department suit, the company promised to return 5,000 call center jobs to the U.S., which had previously been outsourced abroad. The company also committed to maintaining the two companies’ existing call-center workforce of 25,000. . . .
Top executives from a bankrupt California solar energy company pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times Friday in a congressional hearing that went nowhere but gave members the opportunity to pose dozens of questions about the loss of a half billion dollars in government loans.
Solyndra Inc. CEO Brian Harrison and the company's chief financial officer, Bill Stover, had notified the House Energy and Commerce Committee they were going to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to decline to testify to avoid self-incrimination.
That didn't mean lawmakers didn't have questions for the executives, leading to complaints from committee Democrats that House Republicans were badgering the witnesses.
The Supreme Court has ruled it's considered prosecutorial misconduct when the government calls witnesses with the flagrant intent of questioning them to invoke their Fifth Amendment, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, who led the hearing, said that Democrats had agreed to the format ahead of time.
I agreed to the format. That doesn't mean I agreed to badgering the witnesses, said ranking committee member Diana DeGette, D-Colo.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., told Fox News that the members asked questions that they would have liked to have answers. But he said the executives used their Fifth Amendment rights becaise they feared their testimony would incriminate themselves. . . .
More evidence that the Obama administration has been using the Stimulus to favor donors. The damage caused by this program is available here.
Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News. Republicans have raised questions about whether the project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades. The Virginia-based satellite and broadband communications company has plans to build a nationwide, next-generation, 4G phone network that many, including Shelton, think would seriously hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems, a product used most commonly by the United States military. A source familiar with the technology told Fox News that the LightSquared spectrum would be 5 billion times stronger than the military's GPS system, rendering the military's system almost useless. "Imagine trying to have a telephone conversation while your neighbors are hosting a rock concert," the source told Fox News. "That’s the situation the military is facing." Shelton, in testimony Thursday before a House Armed Services subcommittee, refused to suggest that interference problems could be mitigated, as he allegedly was being pressured to say. . . .
UPDATE: Second witness now alleges that the Obama administration tried to get him to change his testimony.
LightSquared, a wireless network backed by billionaire Democratic donor Philip Falcone, could beam broadband Internet everywhere—but some military officials fear it could interfere with critical GPS signals. Now, as The Daily Beast's Eli Lake exclusively reports, two U.S. officials allege the White House tried to influence their testimony to rush key testing, to LightSquare's benefit. A second government official has come forward saying the White House tried to influence his testimony concerning a wireless broadband project backed by a Democratic donor that military officials fear might impair sensitive satellite navigation systems. Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, told The Daily Beast he rejected “guidance” from the White House’s Office of Budget and Management suggesting he tell Congress that the government’s concerns about the project by the firm LightSquared could be resolved in 90 days, a timetable favorable to the company’s plans. “They gave that to me and presumably the other witnesses,” Russo said. “There is one sentence I disagreed with, which said that I thought the testing could be resolved in 90 days. So I took it out.” Russo said he objected to that language because “I have low confidence that we can complete all of the testing in 90 days.” He estimated that such testing would take at least six months. Russo called the White House efforts to alter his testimony “guidance rather than pressure.” Russo’s comments come just days after four-star Air Force Gen. William Shelton, who heads U.S. Space Command, told Congress in a classified briefing that he felt pressured by the White House to change his testimony about the same project to make it more favorable to the company. . . .
This may be a story about how the Obama "Stimulus" program will do many tens of billions of dollars of damage. From the Economist:
The “NextGen” air-traffic control system, which uses GPS satellites to pin-point every plane’s precise position in the sky once a second, plus onboard radios that let each aircraft continually see (and be seen by) all others nearby, is to be rolled out in 2012 and fully implemented by 2022. . . . . . . due to regulatory haste and shortsightedness, GPS coverage of America could soon go dark in places and become patchy elsewhere. Not only airlines would suffer. There are over 500m GPS receivers in use throughout the United States. Motorists, mobile-phone users, boat-owners, television broadcasters, the police, the armed forces, the emergency services and even farmers would be adversely affected. . . . The ultimate source of the trouble is a decision made in 2003 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to grant special dispensation to a broadband satellite operator called SkyTerra, allowing it to fill gaps in its coverage by means of ground-based transmitters. SkyTerra’s chunk of spectrum (1,525-1,559 megahertz) abutted a crucial frequency (1,575 megahertz) used by GPS satellites. However, SkyTerra’s signals being mere whispers from space and its few proposed ground stations designed to operate at low power, any threat to GPS was dismissed as highly unlikely. Everything changed when Harbinger Capital Partners, a New York-based investment firm founded by subprime-mortgage billionaire Philip Falcone, bought SkyTerra in 2010 and renamed it LightSquared. . . . Mr Falcone quickly persuaded the FCC to rewrite the former SkyTerra licence. Instead of being conditional on offering an internet service primarily by satellite, with ground stations filling in only where satellite coverage was inadequate, the revised licence accepts that the network will rely almost exclusively on terrestrial transmitters. And not just low-powered ones for serving inner cities. . . . How this came about is a sorry tale of greed, haste and incompetence. Though politically savvy, the FCC is not noted for having the sharpest technical knives in the drawer. According to Aviation International News, last year it accidentally sold the total block of frequencies reserved for the B-2 stealth bomber. In the case of LightSquared, the FCC has no excuse for allowing a national network of high-powered transmitters to operate so close to GPS’s frequency. . . . But in the rush to reallocate underused parts of the spectrum—to fulfill the White House’s promise to deliver high-speed internet connections to everyone in the country—the FCC has been guilty of riding rough-shod over objectors. . . .
