“Americans need us at the Pentagon and our civilians and our contractors to do better,” Feinberg said last year. “We can’t fail, we can’t make excuses, we must succeed.” On social media, Kollitides has shown the kind of partisanship long taboo in the Pentagon but now fostered in its ranks by Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Kollitides has decried the “Democrat Party,” warned of the ills of socialism and posted that “the government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.”

like, for example, the government can take hundreds of millions of your tax dollars, and give them to me!

Over the last year, Feinberg has continued to heap responsibility on Kollitides: naming him his co-chief of staff and senior adviser; vice chairman of the Office of Strategic Capital’s investment committee; and director of two other new offices, the Economic Defense Unit and the Business Operators for National Defense, or BOND — the office with the $281 million no-bid contract. His employment status allowing him to hold any of those roles at the Pentagon is somewhat of a mystery.

I don't see what's so confusing, it says right here on my employee keycard: George K. Kollitides, most corrupt guy ever

Unlike Feinberg, who was confirmed to his post by the Senate, Kollitides was reportedly first brought onto the federal government last year as a special government employee, or SGE, a designation that allows someone to work in government for no more than 130 days a year. Kollitides seemingly exceeded that cap several months ago. But in the Pentagon’s email system, Kollitides’ name now carries an abbreviation signifying he has been designated an HQE, or highly qualified expert. His employment classification, which the Pentagon confirmed, is designed to hire people who bring “enlightened thinking and innovation”

I'm highly enlightened in graft and will innovate entirely new methods of theft

to Defense Department roles that can last up to six years. That distinction brings a unique benefit for Kollitides. Financial disclosures filed by HQEs are generally confidential, while those of high-ranking SGEs are often subject to release once a person fills a government role for more than 60 days. It’s unclear if Pentagon ethics officials granted Kollitides a waiver to keep any disclosures confidential. (ProPublica requested Kollitides’ financial disclosure forms in August, but the Pentagon has not yet responded.) Kollitides’ continued tie to Alvarez & Marsal Capital surfaced in April in a securities filing by a second company with which the defense official was taking a leadership post. Days after Feinberg named him the head of BOND, granting Kollitides deep visibility into weapons production rates of U.S. military contractors, Kollitides took a seat on the board of D. Boral Acquisition I, an offshore shell company whose affiliate D. Boral Capital has partnered with defense-related businesses. Bloomberg Government first reported the filing in July, and that Kollitides stepped down from the position at the end of September. Kollitides’ biography in the filing described his current roles at the Pentagon, then added that “he is also a Senior Advisor” to Alvarez & Marsal Capital and that he previously was a partner and co-head of one the firm’s funds. The A&M entity that Kollitides is described as still advising in the filing is essentially the private-equity partner of the sprawling Alvarez & Marsal firm that includes A&M Federal, which is now providing consulting services for his offices at the Pentagon. Though the private-equity and consulting businesses are distinct, they work together, share back-office staff for human resources and tech support, and have overlapping ownership, according to company documents. The private-equity arm describes itself as having a “strategic relationship” with the consulting side of A&M. The firm boosts its investment decision-making by working with the consulting firm’s thousands of employees around the globe to assess particular companies. And after the fund takes a stake in a company, it deploys the consulting arm’s employees to improve that firm’s operations and make the company more valuable. In other words, the fund’s success hinges on the consulting firm’s.

Whether Kollitides violated government ethics rules hinges on details that he and the Pentagon have declined to provide. A Defense Department official told ProPublica that Kollitides “does not and has never had” any investments or financial relations with A&M consulting. The official said Kollitides is also “recused on any conflicted matters related to A&M Capital,” which could be referring to Defense Department decisions related to companies A&M Capital has a financial stake in. Ethics experts said that without a written waiver, executive branch officials are generally barred from participating in decisions, such as the awarding of a contract, that would have a direct impact on their financial interests. That law, the experts said, could apply even if the official doesn’t have a stake in a company but just draws a salary — the rationale being that they’ve improved the odds that the company will be able to continue paying them. The Pentagon official did not answer specific questions about whether Kollitides was being compensated by A&M Capital when the contracts were signed, if he played any role in the contract decision-making process or if he sought or received an exemption to do so.

A “Blank Sheet of Paper” Contract

A&M’s first contract with the Pentagon was signed in December, months after Kollitides joined the government. That $67.6 million deal was awarded to Alvarez & Marsal Federal through a Defense Department entity focused on efforts to strengthen the nation’s industrial base. The full scope of work that A&M provided is unclear. But documents reviewed by ProPublica show that by late last year, the firm had begun helping to vet possible loan deals for the Office of Strategic Capital, the lending unit then run in part by Kollitides. Like that first contract, the larger, $281 million deal that followed to advise Kollitides’ BOND office came in the form of what is called an OTA, or other transaction agreement, which allows agencies to bypass regular federal contracting rules on public disclosure and oversight. Congress first authorized the Defense Department to use the contracting method in the 1980s to fund breakthrough technologies without publicly disclosing much about the work. The Pentagon has increasingly turned to OTA contracts over the last decade to quickly fund a broader range of one-time costs, including prototype weapons and urgent production needs, even as government auditors have lamented OTAs as a “blank sheet of paper” arrangement with little oversight or accountability.

Still, experts said an OTA contract for consulting work was extraordinary. That’s because consulting is one of the simplest services the military can buy, and it has a long history of doing so through competitive bidding. Firms often publish the hourly costs for their associates, managers, and other work before solicitations are posted. But like black-box OTA contracts for secret weapons systems, the funding mechanism has hidden from public view details of what taxpayers are getting for the money. The sheer size of the A&M contract stunned experts. At $281,089,206.65, the consulting contract is among the largest OTAs funded through the Defense Department’s main support division in the last decade, including for top-secret semiconductor projects and underwater drones, records show. The Pentagon has said little about the impact of BOND since Hegseth claimed in February that the new entity would revolutionize military purchasing. The defense secretary said that under the program, the military would embed former corporate executives, or, as he put it, “elite, private-sector patriots”

ELITE PRIVATE-SECTOR PATRIOTS oh my fucking god

to help optimize and accelerate the manufacturing of critical munitions. Hegseth said he thought the exercise would help the Pentagon increase resiliency in supply chains. The “era of managed decline is over,” he said.

the time of the managed crash right into a wall has come

In private recruitment materials for those executives, as well as for candidates to fill posts in other Kollitides-run units, the stakes and the mission for BOND were described in even starker terms: Neoliberalism and trade deals have left the U.S. as a country that “can no longer manufacture ships, munitions or planes in a timely manner.” The recruiting materials cast the job of fixing that systemic problem as part-time work: “Recently retired Fortune 100 executives spend five days per month solving public- and private-sector operational challenges,” read pages viewed by ProPublica. Two people familiar with A&M’s work for BOND said the firm’s consultants have accompanied former executives on trips to review work at major defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and BAE Systems. BAE acknowledged a visit by BOND representatives but declined to comment further. Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and other companies contacted by ProPublica did not respond to requests for comment. Contracting experts said that A&M is likely not guaranteed the full amount, and that contracts like these typically span several years, but records show A&M has already been paid about $31 million.