DARPA from their own website states, “In 2005, Dugan Ventures founded RedXDefense.”

Ms. Dugan is “Founder and CEO, 2005 to 2009,” stated in Dugan Ventures website. 

2001 says RedX - “In 2001, Dr. Dugan co-founded Dugan Ventures, where she has served as President & CEO, with primary responsibility for identifying new opportunities, due diligence, and investment transactions.”

This shows that Dugan’s two companies give conflicting dated for the inception of Dugan Ventures. Certainly it will be easy to document by checking the dates of incorporation of both companies, RedX and Dugan Ventures, but it does seem odd.

Just trying to fill in the lost years.

Agenzia journalistic/press agency titled their article from March 3, 2011, “Who is Regina Dugan.”  The Agenzia bio was more complete in some respects, like date of birth, and her first stint at DARPA during the Clinton administration, in 1996, where she “oversaw a $100 million in portfolios,” including “Dog’s Nose” which dealt with land mine detection based on chemical assessment rather than searching for a shaped or formed object, wire, etc... 

All right, let’s get this straight: first Ms. Dugan goes to work for DARPA in 1996 and oversees the $100 million for a variety of projects in her section. That means that the United States Government made $100 million in projects available to Ms. Dugan, for her perusal, management and development. In this capacity, she works primarily on chemical analysis land mine detection. Then she quits in 2000, to start her family business forming a startup to help startups, in so doing, they develop their own startup, RedXDefense which specializes in chemical analysis for ordinance detection. I breath deeply as I take this all in.

An unsubstantiated quote by an ex-DARPA employee states, "You could pull a lot of money out ot that placeif you really wanted to. There really isn't any due diligence there," made public by Aftermath News. 

It’s strange because then Ms. Dugan goes back to work for DARPA. Now if Jay Leno were doing standup, would he say, “Didn’t she get enough?” 

So Regina Dugan is “called back” to DARPA in 2009 for the director’s position. And if POGO hadn’t been prompted to make inquiries, no one might have noticed this serious irregularity.

The RedX, XPAK product has been “deployed since 2007.” In 2009, RedX called their product The XPAK Portable Explosive Detection System. In 2009, with their XPAK-1  system the operator of the device collects and analyses trace explosives, as well as performing a variety of other forensic studies. Then using “RedX’s proprietary XPAK SPOTLIGHT” software, “quickly” identifies the hot zones.

New and Improved - Now just like Tide Laundry Detergent, in the American tradition of “New and Improved,” see the RedX pictures for 2011 - where the commercial says, “Portable Trace Explosive Detection,” … “User Friendly”… “Robust,” … “Reliable,”…(and of course) “Affordable.” With a large photograph of the item and a man using one - resembles a movie camera of sorts.

March 7, 2011, the internet magazine Wired, broke the story by highlighting an article in their section, “Danger Room” how DARPA had given Ms. Dugan’s own company a contract for $400,000 (granted, it’s only a small amount), and that she has recused herself from any personal dealings with the RedXDefense contract. They say the recusal took place on the first day she started back to work as the director.

Then it was found that Ms. Dugan continued to maintain her company ownership of $15,000.00 in stock (again a small amount). “She should have divested herself completely of stock in the company she founded, to avoid the appearance of impropriety,” says Nick Schwellenbach of POGO.

How privileged was the information - Consider another issue might be that Dugan gleaned privileged information on certain technology when she was working for DARPA the first time, which led her to develop the RedX technology. There might be all kinds of conflicts of interest, making for a complicated nightmare of sorting.

Not the first Darpa contract for RedX - Deepening the issues, according to Danger Room, this was not RedXDefense’s only contract with DARPA. There was the research contract for $410,000 on February 24, 2009 (before she was appointed director July 20, 2009), while the first research contract worth $349,788 was issued to RedX on November 13, 2007 during her time as CEO of DV. 

Danger Room continues, “RedXDefense has also received contracts from the Departments of the Army, Air force and Navy for its ‘signature explosives detection services’ between 2007 and 2010,” but for lesser amounts. One would suppose the detection services was the military buying Ms. Dugan’s product, RedX’s XPAK SPOTLIGHTS.

A photo from April 13, 2011, in The New York Times, shows a hard business type pose from Ms. Dugan, far removed from the bright starry-eyed young woman in the Dugan Ventures photo from 1996. It wasn’t that long ago; people’s faces usually don’t change that fast.

At the end of the Aug. 17, 2011 article by Charles S. Clark, on the website, governmentexecutive.com, space was made available for comments. This is one of those comments - it is very telling.

“As a former DoD Federal Manager, I was required to identify all my company affiliations and investments to the legal department (annually) who reviewed for conflicts of interest. I learned through training and experience that it was also the "perception" of illegality that was important. Therefore, I made sure I had no connection "in any way" to companies or industries I was doing business with. Recusing yourself from decisions alone does not satisfy policy. It appears that either DARPA or this Acquisition Chief neglected this policy requirement. The fact that investments were held in the company and profits were made tell me that either DARPA and/or the Acquisition Chief had erred. This warrants an investigation and appropriate action.
YOURCONSTITUENCY” “Posted August 25, 2011 7:18 AM”

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