Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Military commandoes may be great at taking down terrorists in the dead of night, but they’re not so good when it comes to financial oversight. An investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general found the U.S. Special Operations Command allowed a private contractor to approve its own overtime and decide whether it was doing a good job or not.
The contractor in question is L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, which has been providing logistics support for U.S. Special Forces around the world, at a cost of $1.7 billion. The company handled repairs and maintenance of equipment used by Special Forces that totaled 2,148 separate tasks—but only one government employee was assigned by Special Ops command to oversee all of the work, according to the inspector general. As the IG’s report noted, “It is not feasible for one individual to effectively oversee 2,148 task orders requiring surveillance in 20 locations.”
The current contract with L-3 Communications has been extended until October of this year, because a new 10-year contract potentially worth $5 billion has been put on hold by the Pentagon. Special Ops command has reportedly put more people in charge of overseeing contract work to avoid repeating the same mistakes with L-3.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Special Operations' Oversight of Contractors Is Faulted (by Walter Pincus, Washington Post)
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