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"WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION." What should do you do when a renegade band of computer nerds brings the U.S. government to its knees? Option 1: call John McClane. Option 2: dump buckets of money into their bank account and hope nobody notices. As The Washington Post reports, the Department of Homeland Security chose the latter route in a situation that makes my above-mentioned scenario seem only slightly hyperbolic. Booz Allen Hamilton wound up with 60 times the original value of a no-bid contract it received in 2003 to set up the department's intelligence operation. There's a startling accompanying graphic of how the original $2 million ballooned into $124 million.
What's impressive about this sort of thing is that the deep grip contractors have on our defense and intelligence agencies is rarely viewed as a threat to national security. Consider scenarios like this:
The department had become so reliant on Booz Allen for support that contracting officials said the information analysis office "would not be able to function, let alone attempt to carry out their missions" without the firm's employees, a contracting official later wrote.You don't need to question the patriotism of Booz Allen's employees to sense the problem here.That support work included intelligence analysis, preparation of congressional reports, budget activities and other tasks crucial to the operation of the office, documents show.
--Matt Sledge
