Month: June 2008

Obama and McCain Agree on Transparency

Although he’s been busy with some other matters, Sen. Barack Obama found time this week to introduce legislation that would expand the amount of information made available to the public on federal procurement contracts. The measure was introduced with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who had joined Obama in a previous bipartisan initiative that resulted in the 2006 passage of legislation creating the USA Spending database. The original co-sponsors of the new bill (S.3077) are Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.).

S.3077 calls for an expansion of the data provided via USA Spending, the creation of which also needs to be credited to OMB Watch, which built its own contract database, FedSpending, on which the federal resource ended up being based.

As summarized by Obama’s office, the bill would add to USA Spending:

– A copy of each Federal contract in both PDF and searchable text format.

– Details about competitive bidding, the range of technically acceptable bids or proposals, and the profit incentives offered for each contract.

– The complete amount of money awarded, including any options to expand or extend under a contract.

– An indication if the Federal award is the result of an earmark.

– Information about government lease agreements and assignments in the same manner that information is reported for contracts, grants, and other assistance.

– An assessment of the quality of work performed on Federal awards.

– Information about Federal audit disputes and resolutions, terminations of Federal awards, suspensions and debarments, and administrative agreements involving Federal award recipients.

– Information about any civil, criminal, or administrative actions taken against Federal award recipients, including for violations related to the workplace, environmental protection, fraud, securities, and consumer protections.

– Information about Federal tax compliance by Federal award recipients.

– Information about parent company ownership that will be made accessible, along with other data on USASpending.GOV, through application programming interfaces.

– Links to publicly available Government reports.

Legislation covering the bullet point about disclosure of the legal track record of contractors—along the lines of the Project On Government Oversight’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database—has already passed the House.

It is not clear whether the new Obama-Coburn bill would do anything to address a problem highlighted by Secrecy News—the fact that intelligence agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have been refusing to submit data on even their unclassified contracts to USA Spending. As noted in the last issue of the Digest, the intelligence agencies are outsourcing more and more of their work, so disclosure of those contracts becomes all the more important.

Over the Counter Intelligence

Tim Shorrock, a veteran investigative journalist and a longtime subscriber to the Dirt Diggers Digest, has just come out with a book called Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Shorrock describes how an activity that used to be handled by spooks on the federal payroll has been steadily transformed into a $50 billion Intelligence-Industrial Complex.

Thanks to the contracting scandals surrounding Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, the public learned of the extent to which the Pentagon has turned over routine functions to private military companies. The outrageous behavior of Blackwater has highlighted the use of mercenaries to protect U.S. diplomats and other VIPs in Iraq.

Shorrock shines a light on another group of corporations that are carrying out a more sensitive function that most people have no idea is being handed over to the private sector. Careful readers of the revelations concerning abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would have learned that interrogators alleged to have abused detainees included civilians employed by a company called CACI. But that is only the tip of a lucrative iceberg, Shorrock shows.

For example, he writes, more than half the people working at the super-secret National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia are employees of companies such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The Center’s terrorist database is maintained by The Analysis Corporation, which subcontracted collection activities to CACI.

Since 9/11, Shorrock says, the Central Intelligence Agency has been spending 50-60 percent of its budget (or about $2.5 billion a year) on contractors—both individuals and companies. At the CIA and its sister spook agencies: “Tasks that are now outsourced include running spy networks out of embassies, intelligence analysis, signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection, covert operations, and the interrogation of enemy prisoners.”

Shorrock devotes an entire chapter to Booz Allen Hamilton, known to most people as a management consultant for large corporations but which pioneered the intelligence outsourcing industry (though it recently agreed to sell its federal business to the Carlyle Group). When Mike McConnell, a former Booz Allen executive, was named by President Bush as Director of National Intelligence, it was the first time, Shorrock notes, that a contractor was put in charge of the country’s entire spy apparatus.

Spies for Hire has much more to offer that cannot be adequately summarized here. I recommend that you read it in full. But let me let also note that profiles of some of the intelligence contractors discussed by Shorrock—such as CACI and ManTech International—can be found on the Crocodyl wiki to which I contribute. Also note that the updated edition of Jeremy Scahill’s valuable book Blackwater, recently issued in paperback, has a discussion (p.453 forward) on the mercenary company’s move into another form of privatized intelligence—a product called Total Intelligence Solutions that is designed to bring “CIA-style” services to Fortune 500 companies.

Where the Revolving Door Spins Fastest

The movement of federal officials through the revolving door into lucrative private-sector positions is a well-known story, but a new report by the Government Accountability Office provides some quantification of the phenomenon and names companies that are most frequently involved.

GAO focused its research on the Defense Department, which seems hell-bent on outsourcing as many of its functions as possible, thereby intensifying the desire of contractors to hire ex-officials with the right contacts. The agency found that in 2006, 52 major contractors were employing a total of 86,181 individuals who had left military or civilian positions with DOD since 2001.

Special attention was paid to those individuals whose former positions made them subject to the limited restrictions on post-government activity that exist in federal law. GAO found that, as of 2006, the 52 companies employed “2,435 former DOD senior and acquisition officials who had previously served as generals, admirals, senior executives, program managers, contracting officers, or in other acquisition positions” to which the rules apply.

Not surprisingly, GAO found that the companies employing the largest number of former DOD senior and acquisition officials are the top military contractors, especially the following seven:

  • – Science Applications Intl. Corp. (263 former key officials employed)
  • – Northrop Grumman (260)
  • – Booz Allen Hamilton (243)
  • – L-3 Communications (241)
  • – Lockheed Martin (221)
  • – General Dynamics (207)
  • – Raytheon (146)

(Booz Allen has announced it is selling its federal business.)

Together, these seven employed 1,581 former key DOD officials, or 65 percent of the total found by GAO. The report notes that the numbers reported to GAO by the contractors themselves substantially understated  the former DOD officials on their payrolls. GAO got more accurate figures by checking confidential Internal Revenue Service data.

GAO also helpfully notes that the seven top employers of former officials received DOD contract awards worth some $61 billion in fiscal year 2005. With that amount of money at stake, it is no wonder that the companies like to invest in the revolving door.

For an overview of revolving-door issues, see the 2005 report of the Revolving Door Working Group (in which yours truly wrote the section on the reverse revolving door—the movement of lobbyists and corporate executives from the private sector to public positions). Also see the revolving-door section of the Open Secrets database.