"It's all the ordering of equipment that in hindsight looks suspicious," said a third expert, who is familiar with the secret federal projects that Dr. Hatfill worked on.
The good running order of equipment depends on the standards of maintenance.
However, there was significant variation in the working order of equipment across facilities (on average, 56% at hospitals and 35% at polyclinics), the percentage of tests performed and the adequacy of supplies across and within facilities of the same type (See Table 1).
In April, big increases came in orders of electronic equipment, which surged nearly 28percentt, and large-scale machinery, up 4.2percentt.
Orders of semiconductor equipment grew an astonishing 90% this year, to $63 billion but may grow a puny 9% in 2001, says Risto Puhakka, an analyst with San Jose, Calif.-based VLSI Research.
And vendor financing, which is the practice by which companies essentially pay customers to take on big orders of their equipment, is not a new thing — it was particularly strong in the late Nineties and early 00's when telecoms networks were rapidly updating legacy infrastructure and building new mobile and digital networks.
She has ordered bits of equipment that have helped him remain in the home where he has lived for the past 30 years: a rail by the back door and in the bathroom; a walking frame to let him continue gardening, and so he can get food from the kitchen to the room where he eats; and an emergency button he wears around his neck, in case he falls.
A backlog of work orders for equipment repairs has dwindled to fewer than 130, from more than 560 a year ago, they said.
And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters.
Most of the District Health Officers are reluctant to get their out-of-order equipment repaired due to fear of audit objections.
