Booz Allen Suspension: A Successful Failure

By NEIL GORDON

POGO has learned more details about the Air Force's proposed debarment of Booz Allen Hamilton's San Antonio office. This new information raises a troubling prospect about the revolving door between government and private contractors. Namely, that stopping its abuses often isn’t as easy as it seems.

According to the memorandum in support of the proposed debarment, a Booz Allen employee disclosed sensitive, non-public government procurement data. The employee, Joselito Meneses, was hired as a senior associate at Booz Allen’s San Antonio office in April 2011. He formerly served as a deputy chief of information technology at the Air Force, where he had achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

According to the memo, on his first day of work, Meneses brought along a hard drive containing non-public source selection and bid or proposal information he obtained while working at the Air Force. At 9:28 a.m., shortly after arriving at the office, he sent out an email to co-workers containing sensitive pricing and labor mix data relating to an Air Force contract for IT work that Booz Allen intended to bid on when the contract expired. The data would have given Booz Allen an unfair competitive advantage. The four co-workers to whom Meneses sent the email were also proposed for debarment, as was Meneses back in September.

Here’s where things get interesting. The memo notes that, prior to starting work, Meneses attended at least six days of orientation and training – including training on the company-wide ethics program—at both Booz Allen’s McLean, Virginia headquarters and its San Antonio branch. The memo also mentions that Meneses retired from the Air Force in May 2008.

Thus, the Booz Allen incident can be considered a successful failure of the contracting system. It happened despite the presence of the usual accountability safeguards—Meneses went through several days of (we assume) rigorous ethics training, and he was hired after a “cooling-off” period of almost three years. But the wrongdoers were eventually caught (a Booz Allen employee reported Meneses’ email to the company’s legal department), the Air Force suspension and debarment office took the necessary precautions, and Booz Allen ended up withdrawing from the contract competition. The parties involved could also face prosecution under the Procurement Integrity Act.

Nevertheless, POGO still worries about the dangers posed by the revolving door. That’s why we continue pushing for public access to the Pentagon’s revolving door database. Our 2004 report on this issue, The Politics of Contracting, specifically looked at federal officials taking post-government jobs with companies they oversaw or conducted business with as a government employee. Eight years later, the report’s central premise still holds true: a contracting system where current and former public servants use their positions for private gain allows powerful corporations to rig the system in their favor, resulting in bad contracting decisions and increased public distrust in the government.

Neil Gordon is a POGO Investigator.

Follow @NEGordon

Image via Flickr user gogoloopie.

Comments

[Notgoingquietly]

The suspension was lifted on April 13th. There will be no debarment.

http://www.boozallen.com/media-center/press-releases/48399320/49698983

[SuZieCoyote]

I don't see this as a failure. The system caught a bad actor. Ethics can be taught, but a lack of morals, such as this man showed, is a personal character failing. I don't see how it is the company's fault. It did the right thing when it discovered the wrong-doing. Sadly, the government wanted to disbar other people who got the email and were only on the receiving end of his malfeasance.

[Marvin]

We need to reflect on this.

The fired retired military officer had evidently become a bad actor while in uniform by taking data and violating regs and possibly criminal law before retiring. Then he retired, and infected the contractor.
Yes, the contractor managers acted too lamely or slowly and appear to merit the suspensions and other discipline meted out by their company.
However, the real seed was an officer violating his solemn oath, and quite possibly more.

So, it is certainly to correct to view this incident at least as much proof of corruption in government as anything else.

[Roseann]

Too common in todays world. War for profit.Trusting the private sector is highly overrated...that is how anthrax was sent to people in those envelopes after 911...privitization...your tax dollars to private corporations who's only concern is to the stock holder.

[STEVE BONZAI]

YA MEAN SOMEBODY STILL TRUSTS THE CONGRESSIONAL/ MILITARY/ INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

[Emile Zola]

If this was the exception rather than the rule, I could say, yeah, let's keep corruption out of our government, but being this America's M.O., it becomes just a bone thrown to the dogs of the integrity crowd. In many places, this kind of gotcha is nothing more than a smoke screen for worse corruption, crimes. When drug traffickers want a big shipment of drugs to get through, they contract a poor mule that will be the sacrificial lamb to detour government agents to the lamb, so the largest mamut can get through.
Corruption in government is so endemic, that it is hard to tell what came first: Corruption or government and as with what came first egg or hen, the dilemma continues to mesmerize all. Wars, some day, might be a thing of the past, it's hard to imagine so, but I know for sure, corruption is here to stay and I'm afraid forever.