2003 and Beyond: Pentagon Slashes Oversight of Iraq Military Logistical Support

After the US invades Iraq (see March 19, 2003), the US Department of Defense begins drastically curbing its oversight of private contractors providing logistical support to US troops, while at the same time ramping up its outsourcing of critical troop support jobs. The prime beneficiary of the Defense Department’s decisions is former Halliburton subsidiary KBR. While Army contracts will quadruple from $23.3 billion in 1992 to $100.6 billion in 2006, the Army halves its number of contract supervisors, from 10,000 in 1990 to 5,500 in 2007. As a result, fraud runs rampant (see October 2006 and Beyond). Subcontractor Christopher Cahill, whose company has spent a decade working under the LOGCAP logistics program, will say: “I think we downsized past the point of general competency. The point of a standing army is to have them equipped.” Cahill will serve 30 months in prison for fraud. A KBR spokeswoman will say, “Ethics and integrity are core values for KBR.”
Monitoring - Military auditors claim they closely monitor the various layers of KBR subcontractors who actually perform most of the LOGCAP work, but prosecutors will show that US-based auditors can manage reviews that are limited at best over the plethora of deals constantly being brokered between KBR and a host of multinational subcontractors. One of KBR’s Houston office buildings houses a 25-member team from the Defense Contract Audit Agency; in 2007 they will admit that they cannot perform any oversight because they have “no communications” with any “personnel on the ground” in Iraq or Kuwait.
Consequences - Without oversight, many KBR officials begin openly displaying and bragging about the Rolex watches, leather jackets, prostitutes, and other “perks” provided to them by Middle Eastern businessmen. “[T]he KBR guys weren’t shy about bragging about the fact that they were being treated to all that stuff,” according to Paul Morrell, whose firm the Event Source ran several mess halls as a KBR subcontractor. In return, subcontractors become indispensable to the logistical functioning of the Army, and throw their weight around. Former KBR subcontract manager Harry DeWolf will say that when subcontracts came up for renegotiation, the firms would say: “‘Fine, we’re going to pull out all of our people and equipment.’ They really had KBR and the government over the barrel.” [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]