In a stunning move last week, the Bush administration announced it was awarding a new, multimillion-dollar contract to a private company currently being investigated for abuse at the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
CACI International initially was paid $66 million for its work in Iraq, which included supplying the military with interrogators. (No one seemed especially concerned that the company had no actual experience in professional interrogations.) In return for this contract, the U.S. government received interrogators like Steven Stefanowicz, the CACI employee considered by Major General Antonio Taguba to be "directly or indirectly responsible" for encouraging the horrific abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. Today, the company is ensnared in five separate probes into misconduct, including an investigation by the General Services Administration, which would ban the company from receiving future government contracts.
Instead of punishing CACI, however, the White House turned a blind eye last week and rewarded the computer company with a brand-new $88 million contract to supply computer support for the Navy.
How is this possible? The contracting system in Iraq is one in which no one is responsible for wrongdoings and everyone is rewarded at the end of the day. In fact, in one of his first moves after taking office, President Bush relaxed contracting rules, rolling back a regulation designed to stop companies convicted or penalized during the previous three years from obtaining new contracts. And with no real strategy in Iraq, again and again the White House has given new contracts to companies with records of fraud and corruption. Since 2000, 10 separate companies had to pay more than $300 million in penalties and fines for selling defective military equipment, padding bills with million-dollar overcharges and damaging the environment, all while continuing to receive billion-dollar contracts in Iraqi.
For example, the Titan Corp. has also been implicated in the abuse at Abu Ghraib, with employees charged with committing "indecent acts" and "cruelty and maltreatment." This wasn't Titan's first brush with trouble: One employee working at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was arrested last year for espionage. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are conducting separate investigations into bribery charges. And payments to the company earlier this year were stopped when the Pentagon suspected the company of overbilling. Still, the White House gave Titan a $675 million contract in Iraq.
The list goes on. Northrop Grumman, which was awarded a $48 million contract to train the new Iraqi army, has paid more than $191 million in penalties over the past four years for overbilling the government and supplying the military with defective, shoddy parts. Before receiving a windfall to provide airport telecommunications in Iraq, the Lockheed Martin Corp. was fined $85.5 million for defrauding the Pentagon, illegally transferring missile technology to China and damaging the environment.
And don't forget the granddaddy of them all, Halliburton. That company's list of transgressions is long and varied: overcharging the Pentagon $27.4 million for unserved meals; price gouging in the Balkans; defrauding the government in California by inflating prices for work on a military base; allegedly milking the Army for millions in inflated gasoline prices in Iraq; bribing officials in Kuwait. But the company continued to rack up one government contract after another.
(Ties to the company's former CEO, Vice President Dick Cheney, probably haven't hurt in keeping Halliburton coffers filled. Although Cheney told Meet the Press last September, "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of -- in any way, shape, or form -- of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," an internal Pentagon e-mail obtained by Time magazine suggested his influence and involvement was very much intact. The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official, said a multibillion-dollar contract was approved contingent on informing the White House, but that the Corps of Engineers "anticipate[s] no issues since the action has been coordinated with the [vice president's] office.")
The administration has mishandled contracting procedures in Iraq with a blend of favoritism, neglect, and myopia. The administration had no long-term strategy for peace in Iraq. Instead, the White House punted responsibility for reconstruction to outside contractors, hastily passing sensitive and important jobs off to inexperienced companies looking to make a buck. There are currently 20,000 security contractors from 60 companies working in Iraq; according to estimates, that number will triple in the next few months. If success is to ever be realized in Iraq, the White House has to step up to the plate, acknowledge it has ultimate responsibility for reconstruction, and provide the oversight and accountability so sorely needed.
Christy Harvey is the Deputy Director of Strategic Communications for theCenter for American Progress and co-author of The Progress Report, adaily review of the reality behind the news.
