PETALUMA, Calif., May 28, 2015/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pentagon has filed their appellant briefwith the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in a Freedomof information Act case filed by the American Small Business League (ASBL).

The ASBL originally won their Freedom of Information Act caseagainst the Pentagon in November of 2014. The ASBL had requested the most recentsubcontracting plan submitted by Sikorsky Aviation Corporation to thePentagon's Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program (CSPTP).

The ASBL believed the CSPTP was created to allow the Pentagon'slargest prime contractors to cheat small businesses by eliminating alltransparency and penalties for non-compliance with small businesssubcontracting goals. In September, Professor CharlesTiefer, a leading expert on federal contracting law,agreed and wrote a legal opinion calling the CSPTP a "sham" and "seriously harmful" to smallbusinesses.

Federal District Court Judge William Alsupin San Francisco ordered thePentagon to release the Sikorsky data to the ASBL after reviewing theinformation and determining nothing in thereport constituted as trade secret, proprietary or confidential financialinformation.

In his ruling, Judge Alsup described the ASBL as being an underdog in a David and Goliath battle against the"big company" and against the "big government." He alsoaccused the Pentagon of "covering it up" in reference to the information theASBL requested. In a subsequent hearing, Judge Alsup accused the Pentagon andSikorsky of trying to "suppress the evidence."

During the District Court case, Judge Alsup instructed thePentagon and Sikorsky on two separate occasions to "tab and highlight every part of the requested document"that they believed was proprietary and explain why they believed the informationshould be exempt. The Pentagon declined to comply with Judge Alsup's request.

The Pentagon and Sikorsky have now filed two separate appellant briefs. Theyare objecting to the release of the phone numbers and email addresses ofSikorsky's employees along with the names of Sikorsky's small business subcontractors. 

"I believe the reason that the Pentagon and Sikorsky arefighting so hard to withhold this information is because it could beincriminating and will expose the fact the Pentagon has knowingly allowed primecontractors to cheat American small businesses out of hundreds of billions, ifnot trillions, of dollars since the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan TestProgram began in 1989," stated ASBL PresidentLloyd Chapman.

The ASBL has begun filming a documentaryon their campaign to end fraud in federal small business contracting programs.

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PETALUMA, Calif., May 21, 2015/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to a damaging investigative reportreleased on May 6 by Public Citizen, Louisiana Senator andChairman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, David Vitter, has sent a letter to SBA Administrator MariaContreras-Sweet concerning the accuracy of the SBA'scontracting data. Specifically, Vitter requested the list of every contractorthat was counted towards the government's small business procurement goal forFY2014. Vitter also requested the size of the contractor and the amount ofcontracts awarded to that contractor.

The investigative report titled "Slighted" was based on research from the AmericanSmall Business League (ASBL)and interviews from its President Lloyd Chapman.Public Citizen found a wide variety of what they described as accounting tricks that the SBA has used to fabricate and inflate both the volume and percentage offederal contracts that were awarded to legitimate small businesses.

In the letter to Contreras-Sweet, Senator Vitter wrote,"Serious flaws undoubtedly exist in calculating and accurately reportingthe number of government contracts annually awarded to small business,"referring to over a hundred billion a year in contracts excluded from the SBA'scalculations.

An article from the Washington Business Journals by Kent Hoover quoted SBA spokesman John Shoraka admitting that the SBA had nojustifications for excluding overseas contracts from their small businesscalculations.

Also this past March, the House SmallBusiness Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to request a new Government Accountability Office investigation into fraudin federal small business contracting programs and why every year smallbusiness contracts are given to large companies, base on research done byChapman's ASBL.

Every year for the last decade, the SBA Inspector General hasnamed the diversion of federal small business contracts to large businesses as thenumber one problem at the agency. A long series of federalinvestigations have also uncovered widespread fraud and abuses in federalsmall business contracting programs, particularly focused at the Pentagon.

A number of investigative reports from the mainstreammedia have also uncovered firms like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Rolls-Royce,Lockheed Martin and Chevron have all received federal small business contracts.

The SBA was scheduled to release their Small Business ProcurementScorecard for fiscal year 2014 at the White House on FridayMay 8, but the meeting was abruptlycancelled after stories began to surface regarding the Public Citizenreport that found the SBA numbers were inflated. Even Senator Vitteracknowledged this when he implied the SBA "cancelled at the last minute after learning that questionswould be asked about how that number was achieved."

The SBA has yet to reschedule the release of the data.