By JAKE WIENS
If history is any guide, the State Department is going to have a tough time overseeing the massive influx of private security contractors it will be soon be responsible for managing in Iraq as the military departs at the end of this year. But the bottom line is that they're pretty much stuck with the contractors--and lots of them--so they had better get their act together quickly.
That's the major takeaway from Monday's Commission on Wartime Contracting hearing, in which the commissioners questioned State's top management official, Patrick Kennedy, about the steps his agency has taken (and not taken) to ensure the Department is up to the daunting--and historically unprecedented--task.
The commissioners acknowledged that State has been working hard to prepare for this transition, but they also raised concerns about State's opposition to a number of the recommendations in the latest CWC report. In his opening statement, Co-Chair Christopher Shays called some of State's responses to the recommendations “cursory,” and others “logically dubious.”
Shays referred to these two recommendations in his opening statement:
- A requirement that suspension and debarment officials document--in writing--justifications for overturning recommendations in favor of suspending or debarring a contractor by other State Department officials.
- The establishment of a permanent, government-wide special Inspector General for
contingency operations.
The commissioners called State's opposition to the commission's first recommendation--that it would be overly burdensome--“beyond silly.” After Kennedy could not answer how often recommendations for suspension or debarment are overturned, Shays asked how it could be so burdensome if State didn't even know how frequently it occurred.
The commissioners were also skeptical of State's opposition to a permanent, government-wide Inspector General (IG) for contingency operations. They cited historical examples of State's history with IGs to support their skepticism of State's position. For instance, just a few days prior to the hearing, the The Washington Times published a story about attempts by State to oppose an investigation by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) based on lack of jurisdiction. (Read more about the need for aggressive IG oversight at State in POGO's November 2010 letter to President Obama.)
More generally, Commissioner Charles Tiefer questioned State's will to hold its contractors accountable, citing the example of First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading. Tiefer noted that a 2009 audit by the State Department IG recommended that State attempt to recover $132 million from the contractor for its exceptionally shoddy work constructing the Baghdad Embassy. It has now been almost two years since the release of that report and as Kennedy acknowledged in the hearing, State still has not asked the company to pay up.
To make matters worse, despite First Kuwaiti's wretched past performance, the company continued to get work building embassies as a subcontractor through an American company called Aurora, LLC, which some State Department officials suspect was established to serve as a front company for First Kuwaiti.
Considering the coming surge of contractors State will soon be managing, the Department's resistance to the Commission's recommendations and its history of failing to hold its contractors accountable are not good signs. It's time for State to get its act together.
Jake Wiens is a POGO Investigator.
Image: CWC.
There is a certain symmetry in the unsurprising, but still disgraceful, performance of the State Department officials on Monday. For every contract performance that is wasteful, abusive, or fraudulent, there is a US government offical(s) who paved the way, turned the other way, was negligent or incompetent, or who was too busy to do the right thing. They are, sadly, as wrongful as the contractor.
The State Dept. crew on display Monday should be cashiered.
That said, in the total set of federal contracting, blown performance is not the norm, far from it. But overseas, especially in our multiplying war zones, the tendency to blunder has never been reversed.
Few government employees or contractors suffer personally except if they were easily tagged as felons. Companies and government offices, however, are harder to tag. The people who planned and oversaw and now defend the goodness of the Embassy Giganticus in Baghdad all belong in the slammer.
There is scant chance that the State Dept. will not FUBAR the upcoming security contracts. The walls of the Green Zone are not high enough to keep it safe.
Posted by: Observer IX | Jun 09, 2011 at 02:12 PM