David Petraeus

Feinstein, Petraeus Say Wartime Contractors Must Go

Susan Crabtree | September 13, 2011, 12:46PM

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

After the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence community, consisting of everything from the CIA to the Homeland Security Department, is outsourcing too much of its work to private contractors and is breaking a pledge to reduce the number of private contractors hired to help conduct, collect and analyze information.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the Intelligence Committee, pointed out the broken promise at a hearing Tuesday, noting that the intelligence community is not living up to a commitment to reduce private contractors by 5 percent a year.

"We had an agreement in 2009 to reduce [intelligence community] contractor numbers by 5 percent a year, but it's clear that progress has not been maintained and sufficient cuts are not being made," Feinstein told a joint-hearing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to assess progress in U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis over the last ten years.

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Commission on Wartime Contracting

U.S. Needs To Improve Safeguards To Avoid Rehiring 'Bad Actor' Defense Contractors

Susan Crabtree | February 28, 2011, 1:58PM

The U.S. government's dependence on private contractors for work in Afghanistan and Iraq has hampered competition and favored incumbent contractors regardless of whether they have a record of criminal or fraudulent activities, according to a new report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

That finding was a focus of a Commission on Wartime Contracting hearing Monday that discussed methods to exact more accountability from private contractors, including recording incumbent contractors' performance assessments into a federal database accessible to all government agencies. Michael Thibault, the former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, and former Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) chair the commission.

"If you hired somebody to paint your house and they tracked paint all over your carpet, you probably wouldn't use them again and you might even negotiate a price that was less than you originally agreed to," said Wartime Contracting Commissioner Grant Green.

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Iraq

Report: U.S. Has Wasted Tens Of Billions Of Dollars On Contractors In Iraq And Afghanistan

Susan Crabtree | February 28, 2011, 10:05AM

private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A new report from a bipartisan commission set up to scrutinize the unprecedented use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan concludes that the United States has wasted tens of billions of the nearly $177 billion that has been spent on those contracts and grants since 2002.

The report, titled "At What Risk? Correcting Over-reliance on Contractors in Contingency Operations," said its estimate may even understate the problem because it may not take into full account ill-conceived projects, poor planning and oversight by the U.S. government, as well as criminal behavior and blatant corruption by both government and contractor employees.

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