KBR Gets Cut Out of LOGCAP Work in Afghanistan

It looks like the extensive misconduct history of Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) may finally be catching up with it.

This week, the Army awarded task orders under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP IV) military support contract to DynCorp International and Fluor worth over $7 billion each. Under the task orders, DynCorp and two partners, CH2M Hill and Taos Industries, will provide logistics support at Army installations in the southern region of Afghanistan, and Fluor will do the same in the north. The companies will provide a top-to-bottom range of support services, including electrical power, water, sewage and waste management, construction services, laundry operations, food services, and motor pool operations.

Missing out on the action is KBR, the third prime LOGCAP IV contractor. KBR, which currently provides services in Afghanistan under the prior LOGCAP contract and will remain in the country until the transition to LOGCAP IV is complete, will not provide any further work in Afghanistan, according to the Army.

Rumor has it that KBR got the brush-off because of its past performance history. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, said in a press release on Wednesday the Pentagon told him that past performance was one of the reasons. Dorgan is quite familiar with KBR. Since 2003, he has chaired 19 oversight hearings on waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan, and KBR's poor performance has repeatedly come up during those hearings.

"KBR's poor performance became the issue so frequently at our hearings that I came to wonder why the Pentagon keeps awarding it contracts," Dorgan said in the press release.

Dorgan welcomes the Pentagon's decision to award the LOGCAP IV task orders to other companies, but he still has concerns. "This decision suggests that the Pentagon is finally beginning to give a contractor's past performance the consideration it deserves when awarding contracts," he said. "But we need more evidence of that. Time will tell whether this is a serious change in policy that sends a strong message that a Pentagon contract is not a blank check and that contractors will be held accountable.”

-- Neil Gordon