This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies and today for Cherry Gross.

When the COVID crisis hit in 2020 and the federal government needed far more N95 masks and

other protective equipment that it had, it began awarding contracts to companies promising

to provide them, often at a steep markup.

Our guest pro-publica reporter David McSwean says a shocking number of those companies

had no experience in providing medical equipment. Indeed, when McSwean and other reporters

started combing over the data, they found that two months into the pandemic, the federal

government had already handed out more than a billion dollars to companies that had never

before had a government contract. Many were run by people with a history of fraud allegations,

all of them available in public records if anyone had bothered to check.

McSwean's new book is a colorful account of the many ways unscrupulous operators profited

from the nation's health crisis and ways the government failed to protect the public

from financial predators. The book also takes us inside the reporting process, as McSwean

pours over records and has some contentious and sometimes funny encounters with his subjects.

David McSwean has been an investigative reporter for the Dallas Morning News and the Austin

American Statesman and has won many awards. He's now a reporter in Pro-Publica's Washington

office. His new book is Pandemic Inc. chasing the capitalists and thieves who got rich while

we got sick. David McSwean, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thanks for having me. Many of the colorful stories of proprataring

here involve efforts by the government to buy personal protective equipment, especially

in 95 masks, which were very much in short supply because of decisions in previous years

to reduce funding for the national stockpile. The government in a jam, you introduce

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