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12A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2016 Salvage Chief: Hundreds have crewed the vessel Continued from Page 1A retrieving a sunken wave energy buoy near Coos Bay in the late 2000s. Most notable among the Salvage Chief’s exploits was the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker it reÀoated in Alaska’s Prince Wil- liam Sound and towed to San Diego. Hundreds of people have crewed the vessel, Floyd said, not including the welders, divers and other salvage professionals the ves- sel took along on jobs. The only fatality in the vessel’s entire history was Floyd’s father, who died of a heart attack. Floyd said the Salvage Chief Foundation recently received the OK from Englund Marine & Indus- trial Supply to develop an exhibit on the vessel at the company’s former location at the foot of 15th Street on the Astoria Riverwalk. The group also hopes to place sections of the hull it took from the Exxon Valdez to place along the waterfront. Lackey said the vessel often doesn’t get its due for the impact it had on the maritime industry and the environmental disasters it helped the region avoid. He gave one example of when the Salvage Chief had to tow two barges — one ¿lled with munitions and another with benzine — off the sand near the Long Beach Peninsula in Wash- ington state, potentially averting a disaster for local seafood. “There are a lot of ships we’ve saved,” he said. People take a tour of one of the engine rooms of the Salvage Chief. Joshua Bessex The Daily Astorian Oracle: After March 10, public has chance to see full documents Continued from Page 1A Company has blamed state Oracle repeatedly has blamed the failure of the Cover Oregon website project on state misman- agement and politics. It has found plenty of backing in thousands of documents already released pub- licly by the state of Oregon. The state, meanwhile, has argued that Oracle knew its work was faulty and kept vital infor- mation from the state. What’s more, the state says it now has internal documents that support that claim. But, because Oracle has designated the documents as con¿dential, the state has been unable to share publicly what it calls proof of its claims. Last month the Oregon Attor- ney *eneral’s Of¿ce submitted a 24-page brief in Marion County Circuit Court arguing that Oracle was wrongly classifying its inter- nal documents as con¿dential. The brief said several examples of Oracle’s internal correspon- dence are not trade secrets and should be disclosed. But, because the documents remain under seal, the passages are redacted — cov- ered with a black bar. Last week, however, the Pamplin Media Group was able to review a version of the brief without the redactions. The pas- sages include summaries (and a few selected quotes) of pri- vate exchanges between Oracle employees. They reveal: • Some of Oracle’s own employees in reports and emails dissed the company’s work for Oregon, according to the brief. One company assess- ment in November 2013 found its software development “didn’t pass the ‘laugh test.’” • In a Nov. 22, 2013, inter- nal email that appears to contain two typos, one Oracle developer wrote that an “army” of pro- grammers for the company was “rapoing the state f Oregon on something that will never work well,” according to the brief. • Yet another passage, from a March 16, 2012, internal email, suggests a company executive may have opposed the state’s plan to hire a prime contractor to oversee Oracle’s work out of a desire to preserve the company’s lucrative position as Cover Ore- gon’s prime contractor. Oracle now, in contrast, says this lack of oversight is at the heart of the project’s problems. • Concerns about the project prompted Oracle’s founder, bil- lionaire Larry Ellison, to request daily progress reports in a Nov. 16, 2013, email. In a statement in January, Oracle said the state’s motion includes “misleading state- ments.” Asked Monday about the excerpts, Oracle issued a comment, attributed to spokes- woman Deborah Hellinger, which characterizes the state’s motion as “a handful of cherry picked documents out of more than 2 million documents in this case. There are thousands of documents that tell the true story and that clearly establish that the State was responsible for the outcome of Cover Oregon.” Secrecy questioned According to the state’s motion, the passages above and other documents that are labeled secret “belie Oracle’s public relations story, undermine its lit- igation defenses, and strongly support plaintiffs’ claims.” Oracle defended its use of the con¿dentiality designation, saying some “involve personal information about individuals. Still others include information about Oracle’s other customers and trade secrets.” But the state contends that Executive opposed Oracle has misused the con¿- oversight dentiality order to prevent the Perhaps the most interest- state from “providing the Ore- ing excerpt of Oracle correspon- gon Legislature, Congress, fed- dence concerns the state’s initial eral authorities, and Oregon citi- plan to bring in the equivalent of zens with a complete history” of an IT general contractor, called the project. a systems integrator, to oversee Oracle also sealed docu- Oracle and manage the project. ments that already are public, The failure to hire an integra- as well as innocuous emails tor was, in Oracle’s more recent such as ones accepting a meet- portrayals, an incredibly dumb ing, booking a conference move. room, and forwarding a state “Oracle has never worked email with- on a project of out comment, this size and ‘Oregon according to complexity the state’s a sys- screwed its without tems integra- motion. Tung Yin, a population on tor in place,” Lewis & Clark according to this project.’ a PowerPoint Law School professor, says presentation Todd Williams the state’s Oracle shared a management consultant motion may with members well be a hard- of Congress. ball attempt to extract a gener- Not ¿lling that position cre- ous settlement. Citing emails ated a huge management void such as the one saying Ora- and “created massive problems” cle programmers were “rapo- for the Oregon project, the Ora- ing” Oregon may be intended cle PowerPoint continued. to show the company how this According to the state’s would look in court. motion, however, an Oracle Since the “o” and “I” are executive in March 2012 rec- adjacent on keyboards, Yin ommended in an internal email says “rapoing” appears to be a that the company discuss how typo for “raping.” to stop the state from hiring an “The worst possible read- integrator, apparently because it ing of that email would be, would diminish Oracle’s role in I think, that there were peo- the project. ple who knew (the website) If the state hired an integra- would never work, but they tor, it “could displace or reduce were still selling it to Oregon our role signi¿cantly,” wrote the and taking the money,” Yin Oracle executive, according to says. the version of the state’s brief Even if that isn’t what the email’s author meant, the quote could force Oracle to play defense in court, Yin adds. The art of settlement negotiations “is always about making your case look as strong as possible and your opponents’ case as weak as possible.” Veterans: Hoehn has personally found more than 1,200 photos since the project started Continued from Page 1A The photos are being compiled on the Wall of Faces online memorial and will be featured in an Edu- cation Center planned adja- cent to the, memorial. Janna Hoehn, a Hawaii- based volunteer with the project, said this week she completed the Clatsop County photo search after working on the effort for nearly two years. “Found them all for Clatsop County,” Hoehn said. “Sometimes it takes forever it seems.” Hoehn has personally found more than 1,200 pho- tos since the project started six years ago. She began in Hawaii, then her hometown in California, followed by Washington state, Idaho and Oregon. She only has 13 photos left to find in Oregon. Searching for photos can be difficult, Hoehn said, since military records and local memorials don’t always match. In addition, the names are of veterans who enlisted in a county and may not have grown up in the area. Clatsop County is the “home of record” des- ignation for the 12 local veterans. Across the Columbia River in Pacific County, Washington, two Vietnam casualties are listed with photos. See the online memo- rial at www.vvmf.org/ Wall-of-Faces. 13 MORE TO GO IN OREGON Volunteers only need 13 more photos of veterans in Oregon to match them with the names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. Clackamas County: • David L. Cooper, 1945-1967 Curry County: • Walter G. Anderson, 1924- 1968 Douglas County: • Santford B. Kempke Lane County: • Arthur Haddock, 1926-1968 Linn County: • George E. Gilliland, 1936- 1972 • John L. Holmes, 1943-1968 Washington/Multnomah Counties: • Michael R. Bartell, 1946-1968 • Richard D. Benzel, 1932-1962 • Donald W. Lovett, 1945-1965 • Rex D. Morelock Jr., 1950- 1969 • George W. Watson, 1931-1963 Wasco County: • Charles W. Bauman, 1936- 1966 To send a photograph or information to Hoehn, email her at neverforgotten2014@gmail. com. AREA VETERANS KILLED IN VIETNAM The 12 Clatsop County veterans who were killed in the Vietnam War: • Ronald Stanley Anderson, 21, of Astoria, U.S. Air Force, died March 23, 1972. • Alan Lynne Barnett, 17, of Astoria, U.S. Army, died November 4, 1965. • Patrick A. Cadwallader, 21, of Astoria, U.S. Army, died December 20, 1969. • Francis Duncan Campbell, 35, of Gearhart, U.S. Navy, died January 16, 1969. • Carl John Green Jr., 21, of Seaside, U.S. Army, died April 24, 1969. • Melvin Derward Hebert Jr., 20, of Seaside, U.S. Army, died October 4, 1968. • Richard Jerome Holman, 21, of Astoria, U.S. Army, died June 5, 1969. • Dan Thomas Klindt, 19, of Astoria, U.S. Army, died December 27, 1969. • Daniel Edward Lloyd, 20, of Astoria, U.S. Marine Corps, died July 28, 1968. • Kenneth Duane Phares, 19, of Astoria, U.S. Marine Corps, died May 18, 1967. • Terry Allen Rippy, 23, of Hammond, U.S. Army, died April 22, 1966. • Gordon Lee Zimmerle, 21, of Seaside, U.S. Army, died March 23, 1970. Two Pacific County, Washington veterans were killed in the Vietnam War: • James W. Emerson, 22, of South Bend, U.S. Army, died August 25, 1966. • Thierry Timothy G. Maxim, 19, Ocean Park, U.S. Army, died Sep- tember 21, 1970. reviewed by Pamplin Media Group. “It isn’t clear what we can do about this other than pray that they keep deferring the SI (systems integrator) selection. But since hope is not a strat- egy, this topic deserves some discussion.” The email substantiates one of the most explosive claims in the state’s lawsuit against the company, that a former Oracle employee said the ¿rm engaged in a secret effort to dissuade the state from hiring an integrator. Oracle told Oregon it would ¿ll the role instead, the state lawsuit claims. Oracle’s legal ¿lings stop short of mocking the state’s decision to go without an inte- grator. But they do suggest it made failure inevitable. As the company argued in its federal lawsuit, “That decision was akin to an individual with no con- struction experience undertak- ing to manage the processes of designing and building a mas- sive multi-use downtown sky- scraper without an architect or general contractor.” Mixed responsibility The public could get a chance to see the full documents after March 10. That’s when a Marion County Circuit Court judge will consider whether to unseal them. IT experts who’ve followed the project say both sides share responsibility. Todd Williams, a management consultant and author of a book on problem projects, focuses blame on the state side. The head of eCam- eron, a Camas, Washington, project management consult- ing ¿rm, he knows people who worked on the project and gives trainings in which his audience role-plays how to oversee it. The excerpts cited by the state raise questions for Wil- liams, but they don’t change his view that the state bears most of the responsibility for Cover Oregon’s failure. He’s reviewed numerous documents from the project, as well as news reports showing the state used poor con- tracting, poor management, and ignored the advice of its own employees and consultants. “I do believe Oregon is much more at fault,” Williams says. “Oregon screwed its pop- ulation on this project.” That said, he adds, the doc- uments indicate that Oracle was “not a good citizen” on the proj- ect, either. “Oracle should have seen many areas where Oregon was setting the project up for failure. As good partners in the project, they should have been advis- ing the state to go in a less-risky direction,” he says. “As it was, Oracle had a very low-risk contract with no obliga- tion to take on this role. Hence, they seemed to be more interested in their short-term pro¿t rather than the long-term relationship and viability of the product.” The Capital Bureau is a col- laboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group.
