The Scene
The $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing plan known as Jedi fell apart years ago, but the bitter battles between tech giants vying for the contract left lawsuits and allegations in their wakes, some of which are still swirling today.
In the latest example, a court deposition this summer that hasn’t been previously reported adds new details to Oracle’s efforts to discredit Amazon’s bid.
In 2018, when it appeared as if Amazon was going to win the entire Jedi contract, reporters said they had been given a “dossier” containing allegations that British investor André Pienaar and others had conspired to influence the Jedi contract in favor of Amazon through ties to a then-Defense Department adviser.
The files contained accusations that Pienaar was deeply involved with Russian oligarchs, a familiar theme at the time, when another dossier about Donald Trump alleged Russia had compromised the sitting president.
News outlets reported that it couldn’t be determined who, exactly, had commissioned the Pienaar allegations. Oracle, which eventually lodged a formal complaint about the Pentagon’s handling of the contract with the Government Accountability Office and took the case to court, was the rumored source at the time. (The GAO and the court found no wrongdoing).
But in a deposition earlier this year in a federal court proceeding brought by Pienaar, who claims all of the allegations against him are fabricated, an attorney hired by Oracle said that damaging accusations against Pienaar indeed originated with the company founded by Larry Ellison.
Pienaar told Semafor that the deposition gave him a “huge sense of relief that this has finally been admitted on the record in a form that is admissible evidence.”
He also said that he met with Oracle when the “dossier” was being sent around, but the company said it had no knowledge of the matter.
Reached for comment, Oracle Senior Vice President Kenneth Glueck said he’s never tried to hide the fact that the firm was building a case against Pienaar accusing the financier of dishonest business practices and having close ties to Russian oligarchs — allegations Pienaar denies. Glueck said he doesn’t believe that Pienaar ever met with anyone from Oracle.
“We stand by every comma in everything we’ve ever said to law enforcement, lawmakers, and the media,” Glueck told Semafor.
He said he instructed his attorneys to make sure to put on the record that Oracle was the source of the allegations against Pienaar.
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But Glueck added that he never circulated a dossier, a word he said makes the effort sound salacious. Rather, he said he showed lawmakers, law enforcement and journalists PowerPoint presentations and provided documents to back up his case that Amazon had essentially rigged the bidding process. Glueck said he hired private investigators to conduct the research.
Pienaar said those investigators provided fabricated information to Oracle, possibly tricking the company into thinking he was corrupt.
A former national security official who has worked with Pienaar for the past seven years and declined to be named for fear of retribution said the allegations are untrue. “He’s always shared with us the dossier and it was discredited information then and we see it that way now,” the person said.
In 2019, after Oracle lost its court battle to derail the bid, Amazon said Oracle’s claims were “meritless and a desperate attempt to distort the facts.”
“In all disinformation, you need a little bit of truth and you need to mix it up with lies, and then you’ve got to repeat those lies over and over again,” he said.
Pienaar said he studied the Russian intelligence services when he was in college and wrote his master’s thesis about the KGB. He later worked at the investigations firm Kroll. “My whole life, I’ve worked against Russian targets,” he said, including one of the oligarchs he’s accused of cozying up to.
Glueck noted that Pienaar had not sued Oracle and said that was because all of the allegations would be provable in court.
“All of this was true then and it’s true now,” he said.
Step Back
More than 20 years ago, Oracle made headlines for its attempt to dig up dirt on Microsoft by hiring private investigators, who went through the company’s trash and offered bribes to janitors.
When Oracle’s involvement was revealed, Ellison, who was then CEO, owned up to it and said the tactics were justified because they revealed Microsoft’s donations to nonprofits, which then came out in support of the company and helped it defend against antitrust scrutiny.
“I feel good about what we did,” Ellison said at the time.
Reed’s view
When I heard about the deposition tying Oracle to the famous “dossier” that was mentioned in so many news articles about the Jedi contract back in 2018, I thought it was a simple story of a mystery, really an “open secret,” solved.
Glueck’s response was surprising. He said he’d been out in the open all along and stood by everything he had shared with reporters.
But if you go back and read all the articles written at the time, it’s pretty clear that there was a lot happening behind the scenes. For instance, Glueck said he spoke openly and often with Naomi Nix, then a Bloomberg reporter, about the information.
I mentioned to Glueck that when Nix wrote in 2018 that Oracle was accused of being “behind the 33-page anti-Amazon dossier circulating in Washington,” she wrote that Glueck “wouldn’t respond to the allegation.” Glueck didn’t say he ever sent his PowerPoint presentation to Nix. It wasn’t until later that more rumors about Oracle’s involvement bubbled up.
Glueck said it was six years ago. And he’s certainly not circulating things as an unnamed source these days. He said in no uncertain terms that he believes everything was accurate and offered to walk me through a new Powerpoint that’s been updated in recent months with even more evidence.
I can’t judge the veracity of the allegations against Pienaar and others. I just don’t know enough.
What’s fascinating is how long this has gone on without an actual resolution. And it’s surprising that Oracle is still adding to the famous dossier after all these years.
It’s also rare to hear someone from a big company speak so openly about hiring private investigators — something that is usually not acknowledged publicly.
Going back and looking at these allegations is a good exercise. The $10 billion mega contract for Jedi was eye-popping at the time, but it may seem like peanuts compared to what the US is about to spend on the AI race.
The lobbying efforts will be intense and there are more opportunities for dossiers galore.
Room for Disagreement
Various publications have done deep dives into the evidence in the case. In August 2018, Defense One investigated the dossier’s claims and said they “do not stand up to close scrutiny.”
The Daily Caller, in its own investigation, concluded the conflicts of interest inside the DoD that favored Amazon were concerning.
The Associated Press, in another investigation, found Pienaar had close ties to Russian oligarchs. Pienaar is suing the reporter for defamation.