CBS News confirms that Lieberman’s staff met with Gorman on Nov. 7, 2007. In a statement issued to the network, the senator’s office says it gave the State Department inspector general, Howard “Cookie” Krongard, a letter and supporting documentation from Gorman about ArmorGroup’s breaches of contract. It’s not clear what action State took in response, and I’ve asked for a clarification on that question. As it happens, though, November 2007 was a hectic time for the IG: he was about to resign his office after I caught him lying to Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) oversight committee  about his knowledge of brother Buzzy’s position on the board of another State Department security contractor — Blackwater. But could the IG’s office have simply lost or forgot about the documents in the transition?

The Washington Independent has obtained Gorman’s letter to Lieberman. In it, he calls ArmorGroup a “microcosm of all that is wrong with this war,” and blasts his former employer’s “colonial attitude.” Notice the date of the letter, July 18, which is barely a month after Gorman was fired for informing an embassy security officer of ArmorGroup’s laxity. The letter, along with some added emphasis:

July 18, 2007

Honorable Senator Leiberman,

I signed on as a private contractor with ArmorGroup North America on April 4th 2007.

At that time I was enthusiastic about the contribution I would be making in the war on terrorism in my capacity as Camp Commandant of the force tasked with providing security for the US Embassy in Kabul.

ArmourGroup (AG) is a publicly-traded British owned company that has been in the security business for 25 years. ArmourGroup North America (AGNA) was established by AG about three years ago in order to bid on State Department Contracts. It is located in McLean VA. just a few miles from Washington DC. By ridiculously under-bidding the competition, on March 24, 2007 AGNA was awarded the contract to provide security for the American embassy in Kabul. The take-over date was eventually set for July 1, 2007.

By the mid-April a management team of three career Marines, myself included, was in Kabul to begin the transition process with the incumbent force. The Project Manager had actually been sent in January prior to the award of the contract.

Immediately the problems and consequences of drastically under-bidding the contract became apparent. These problems were amplified by the almost complete absence of operational experience within the AGNA headquarters staff and their complete unwillingness to heed the advice and concerns of those on the ground with long careers in the business.

I quickly found myself sitting in the middle of a microcosm of all that is wrong with this war, and all that is wrong in the world. I hardly know where to begin in describing just how much is wrong with this operation and AGNA as a security provider. I will only mention my revulsion for the colonial attitude that prevails within corporate headquarters and confine my comments to operational concerns directly relating to the security of the embassy.

In any interaction I have had with corporate level AGNA no one ever mentioned or indicated a concern for the actual security of the Embassy – the greatest and only concerns were the margin and the bottom line. The person AGNA sent to Kabul to do the security survey prior to submitting the bid on this contract was just another bean counter with no operational or security experience. AGNA won the security contract by submitting a ridiculously low bid that basically ignored operational realities. They misled the government by alluding to and claiming a depth of experience, possession of assets, and level of support that simply does not exist. Having won the bid they fully intended to stand up a security force for the US Embassy in Kabul with a minimal crew, absolutely no reserve strength, and no margin for error. Who in their right mind would pin their trust on a plan that has no margin for error? It makes little sense in peace time environment, and none at all in a war zone.

The previous contractor worked with five shifts: three eight-hour shifts per day, one shift off duty and one shift on leave. The AGNA contract states that no person shall be required to work more than twelve hours per day or have less than twelve hours off between shifts.

By starting at the maximum allowable shift length, and no reserve capacity in the event of emergency the die is cast for all manner of disaster. This is an unsustainable schedule and puts the security of the embassy at immediate risk. Twelve hours is too long for a man to be on a static post and expected to be effective. For short periods it may work, but as a standing schedule, it is a formula for disaster. Static security is inherently monotonous, and all studies done in this area indicate that effectiveness begins to decline after four hours. This decline can be expected to occur even quicker in the heat and dust of Afghanistan. Even if effectiveness did not decline after four hours the actual preparation time for going on duty and travel to and from the embassy eliminates about two hours of the twelve hours “off duty.” The Director of Operations, Michael O’Connell, a man with no operational experience, defended this schedule by arguing that preparation and travel is part of any job with a commute. This argument does not hold water, particularly when preparation means unit inspection, and commute means traveling through hostile territory where one is most likely to be attacked or hit with an IED.

The hiring of new guards for this contract has been marked by fraud, deception and incompetence. At least one person has been hired and put through classified DOS training without having provided essential identification verification or having his background checked. Others have subsequently been sent home for failing the background investigation

Without exception the input and advice of the Project Manager, a man with 30-years Marine Corps experience as well as five years experience as a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been ignored, second guessed and rejected. In the end, that ignored advice has always come back to haunt.

On June 11th the Project Manager, the Deputy Project Manager and myself were again attempting to address our concerns with, Mr. O’Connell, regarding the security of the embassy, and safety and welfare of the men on the guard force. Specifically we knew the manning level was too low. The 12 hour shift was not sustainable in the environment in which it was being employed. It would result in a reduced level of attention and an increased level of burn-out. In the event of an emergency there would be no back-up force. These factors when combined with a too-tight leave rotation and AGNA’s notorious inability to pay correctly or on time would result in high attrition and ultimately program failure. For weeks we had been pressing for a larger guard force without results. On this day while we were trying once again to make our point, Mr. O’Connell responded by pointing out that ArmourGroup was a publicly traded company, and we could not hire more people because he had a responsibility to the share holders. At this point I realized that our efforts were in vain and if the situation was going to be corrected we need to take or concerns directly to the Regional Security Officer (RSO) at the embassy, a State Department employee.

When Mr. O’Connell first arrived in Kabul about a week earlier, although his stated purpose was to help fix problems and move the contract forward I suspected his real purpose was to replace us, the management team, because we would not play the corporate game and turn a blind eye on the fraud deceptions and incompetence that characterized AGNA and the execution of the embassy contract. He scheduled numerous meetings with us, ostensibly to address our concerns but showed up for none of them. I became convinced we were running out of time when I got wind of a meeting O’Connell had scheduled with the incumbent leadership, to which we had not been invited. On the evening of June 12th the three of us made a pre-emptive trip to the embassy and made our report to the RSO. At that point AGNA was scheduled to assume the security contract for the American Embassy in Kabul in less than two weeks – A contract worth $187 million a year. They were also in the final bidding process for a $500 million contract in Iraq. Our report placed both of those contracts in jeopardy. It also placed our personal safety at some risk if we were found out. Given the gravity of what we were reporting and the financial impact it could have on ArmourGroup, the RSO asked if we wanted to stay in his apartment on the embassy compound until we could get flights out of Afghanistan. We instead requested that he hold the information until we were gone. We returned to the compound we had been housed in since our arrival in Afghanistan.

As it turned out my assessment of our time running out proved accurate. The following morning we were awakened by Mr. O’Connell’s knock on our doors. In a nutshell, he told we were done and handed tickets for a flight that left Kabul in an hour. As this did not leave sufficient time to pack or get to the airport we refused to comply. Subsequently we were restricted to the compound (house arrest?) and an attempt was made to confiscate our embassy passes. These we refused to surrender. Our flights were rescheduled and we left Kabul the next afternoon. As the tickets were purchased prior to us making our report to the RSO we surmised that he and AGNA had anticipated our intent to make a report, and the tickets and compound restriction were classic AGNA – an incompetent attempt to prevent us from doing so. When we boarded the plane and left Kabul we were confident the RSO had guarded the information we had provided.

After dismissing us and before our actual departure, Mr. O’Connell and ArmourGroup began taking steps to correct the shortages and deceptions we had been trying to get corrected for months. They had to if they wished to salvage the contract.

All warnings that we presented AGNA went unheeded until we were dismissed. Those warnings have since been materializing to an even greater extent than we had predicted. On the very day ArmourGroup assumed security of the embassy, they were out of compliance with multiple key elements of the contract and continue to be so. Why they have been allowed to proceed is a question I believe well worth investigating.

The events described in this letter in no way constitute a complete itemization of the fraud and deception AGNA has knowingly and deliberately perpetrated on the government and the US tax payer. And have so far been allowed to continue. I suspect there are careers on both sides of this contract that are being protected, and possibly inappropriate financial investments as well.

Sincerely,

John P. Gorman

USMC (Ret)

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Now a coalition of good-government and whistleblower advocacy groups has written a powerful response to an editorial that appeared in The Washington Post on Monday bashing the entire purpose of including whistleblower protections in a stimulus bill at all.  According to that editorial, which I cited in my piece and has gotten lots of attention from others (including this terrific post from emptywheel), federal employee protections don’t belong in a stimulus bill at all.

Well, except for that thing called accountability?  Remember what happened when we had none in Iraq?

Today’s letter from the coalition, which includes such groups as the National Whistleblower Center, the Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains why whistleblower protections are critical to preventing waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money — noting that even the U.S. Department of Justice has said that whistleblowers were responsible for returning over $1 billion to the U.S. Treasury in 2008 alone.  And more than 5,000 corporations recently told PricewaterhouseCoopers that whistleblowers were the most effective means for detecting corporate fraud.

As the coalition put it in the letter:

If lawmakers reject these provisions, they will be sending federal employees a very strong signal: Keep your head down and don’t rock the boat. Employees know what happens to colleagues who step forward and expose waste, fraud and abuse in government.  Federal workers who have reported wrongdoing have lost more than 98.5 percent of cases at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals since 1994, when Congress last unanimously strengthened the law. During the entire Bush administration, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board ruled only twice that the whistleblower law was violated.

It’s time to end the culture of secrecy and guarantee that the federal workforce has our support in making sure our stimulus dollars are spent honestly and effectively.

With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars planned to go out the door very quickly in this stimulus package, I would think we’d want to encourage all employees — whether of the federal government or private contractors — to vigilantly report any waste and fraud they discover in the process. Right?

While most of the debate over the proposed stimulus bill has focused on whether the federal government ought to embark on a plan expected to cost taxpayers some $885 billion, equally important is how that money gets spent. Much of the construction and other work will have to be done by private companies contracting with federal, state and local governments. But how the government contracts with private companies, and how those contracts are monitored, can make all the difference to the program’s success.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Although government watchdog groups have been largely supportive of the bill’s provisions for oversight of government contractors, some say that a key problem may have been overlooked: several important means of holding government contractors accountable are missing from the voluminous 647-page stimulus bill. Most importantly, the stimulus bill fails to adequately protect employees of government contractors, who are in the best position to blow the whistle on fraud and abuse of taxpayer money. The Senate version of the bill also doesn’t protect federal employee whistleblowers — an odd oversight given that state and local employees are protected. And neither version explains how the government is going to ramp up its own hiring quickly enough to oversee and coordinate all these new government contracts.

Supporters of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill, including President Obama, claim it will create some four million jobs. But how can the government ensure that the money is spent wisely?

The experience of government contracting in Iraq and post-Hurricane Katrina stand as stark warnings. The Bush administration, in what came to be seen as among its most glaring failures, authorized trillions of dollars in government spending with little oversight or accountability. A study by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, for example, found waste, fraud and abuse in $1.1 trillion worth of government contracts governing reconstruction work in Iraq. The Pentagon’s inspector general similarly estimated that some $15 billion spent in Iraq was never adequately accounted for. And just one company – KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary created by former Vice President Dick Cheney when he was Halliburton’s CEO – billed the government more than $2.7 billion worth of questionable and unsupported goods and services. House investigations found KBR billing taxpayers $45 for a case of soda, for example, and $100 to wash a bag of laundry; meanwhile, the company was abandoning new trucks paid for by the government that had broken down instead of properly maintaining them. Much of the key information about misspending by federal contractors came from their own employees.

Overall, Congress and the Obama administration have made extraordinary efforts in the stimulus legislation, despite strong pressure from government contractors and their lobbyists, to require transparency and accountability so as not to repeat the mistakes of the recent past. But due either to oversight or pressure from contractors’ lobbyists, several critical protections are missing.

Experts say that one key way to prevent fraud and abuse by private contractors is to protect those who report it to higher-ups at the company. But that protection has been left out of the stimulus bill. This means someone like Rory Mayberry, a former KBR manager in Iraq, who testified to Congress about KBR charging the government for meals it never served, overpaying sub-contractors, and serving spoiled food to U.S. troops, might not have job protection if he first reported the problem to one of his supervisors. The same is true for Ben Carter, a former Halliburton water purification specialist who discovered that his employer was providing US soldiers with dangerously contaminated water.

That’s because the definition of protected whistleblowing activity under the bill includes going to an Office of Inspector General or going to Congress, but not going to your own employer.

“The biggest defect in the current language in the house and senate versions, is about blowing the whistle internally,” said Stephen Kohn, president of the National Whistleblower Center and a lawyer who represents whistleblowers.

He and Adam Miles, legislative representative for the Government Accountability Project, appear to be among the few advocates who’ve picked up on this critical omission. “It will post significant problems in the provision’s effectiveness, because a whistleblower’s instinct is to report wrongdoing internally, to supervisors or others in chain of command,” said Miles. “So they could be fired just for doing their job.”

Those employees would be protected if they reported the problem to Congress or an Inspector General. “But for people not that savvy, or who don’t have such a big issue – they’re seeing, say, double-charging for meals, or a thousand-dollar toilet seat – if they report it within the company, they’re not protected. And they’re out there.”

“It’s a rare employee who takes the leap of going to a federal inspector general,” agreed Kohn. “Most employees report indications of fraud and abuse within the company.”

Certain provisions of the federal False Claims Act — which allows people outside government to sue contractors for defrauding the government and recover a portion of the damages — would seem to protect government contractor whistleblowers; but experts say the law emphasizes recovering money owed to the government, not protecting whistleblowers. And ever since the Supreme Court decided the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos in 2006, ruling that the First Amendment doesn’t protect government workers blowing the whistle as part of their job duties, advocates for whistleblowers have worried that the Garcetti ruling will end up strangling courts’ interpretation of the False Claims Act as well. As Jack Balkin, professor at Yale Law School and founder of the blog Balkinization, wrote at the time: “the effect of the Court’s decision [in Garcetti] is to create very strong incentives against whistleblowing of any kind.”

Although the Garcetti case was about a public employee, “the effect of Garcetti has been spreading like wildfire,” said Miles. “That if an employee is acting pursuant to job duties, they’re not protected as a whistleblower. That needs to be addressed in the law.”

“It’s a gray area,” agreed Kohn. “But it’s one that absolutely has to be fixed, because that’s where most employees start.”

There are other problems with the whistleblower protections in the stimulus bill. For example, while the House version protects state, local and federal whistleblowers, the Senate version strangely leaves out protection for federal employees — a protection that a broad range of public interest groups have been advocating for years. (The omission may be because the House version includes whistleblower protection for intelligence workers, which critics argue is dangerous because it would allow disclosure of classified material to federal overseers.) The result is that while the employee of a government contractor can safely blow the whistle to the government, were the Senate bill to pass as it stands now, the government employee supervising that contract could not. What’s more, the public employee protections extend only insofar as the fraud pertains to the spending of stimulus bill dollars. If the fraud is in a contract authorized under the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, for example, the whistleblower protections don’t apply.

“That’s a gigantic problem,” said Kohn. “Say a bridge is being built and the tar on the bridge is being paid for by the stimulus. But the bolts are being paid for by a state block grant. So someone working on the bridge blows the whistle to the government about the bolts being weak or broken. Unless that worker can show those bolts are being paid for by the stimulus, they can be fired,” explained Kohn. “That’s crazy — it should cover all taxpayer dollars.”

Another looming problem for accountability in the stimulus package is that the government doesn’t have sufficient qualified staff to monitor all the new contracts it will be entering into. So even though the bill includes lots of new oversight and transparency requirements, as noted by watchdog organizations such as Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Government Oversight, it’s not clear how the government is going to have enough qualified staff in place to put them to good use.

Government contract lawyers blame the lack of qualified government contract oversight officials for many of the cost overruns, fraud, waste and mismanagement in Iraq and after Hurricane Katrina. The House Committee on Government Oversight, for example, found that 70 percent of post-Katrina contracts were awarded without competition, were poorly planned and subject to little oversight, and that contractors relied excessively on subcontractors to do the work. Similar problems plagued the Department of Homeland Security’s contracts, the committee found.

In the wake of such scandals, the stimulus bill requires competition, and demands that the government post its reasons for issuing any no-bid contracts. But it doesn’t explain how the government will hire qualified workers quickly enough to oversee and monitor the bid process and its aftermath. “This is going to be a massive amount of spending very quickly,” said Jeremy Madson, spokesman for the Professional Services Council, a lobbying group for government contractors. “And as we learned with Iraq and with Hurricane Katrina, If you don’t have the people to manage it, if you don’t engineer the process well, you’re going to have big problems.”

But can the government hire the people it needs to oversee these contracts quickly enough?

Tom Abbott, a lawyer who represents major government contractors such as KBR and Bechtel, is skeptical. “It takes too long to hire people into government and get them trained,” he said. “There’s no time. You can’t build the government workforce back up in 90 days. It would take six months.” Indeed, a recent GAO report found that the Treasury Department is having trouble hiring enough qualified workers fast enough to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP. “So the talk is already that the way to solve it is to hire contractors to do the oversight,” said Abbott.

Outsourcing oversight could just create more of the same problems, however.

Government agencies have “very few knowledgeable people who can look at a contract with a green eye shade,” said Marthena Cowart, spokesperson for the Project on Government Oversight. But they need to hire them, she said, adding that the experience of having contractors such as KBR and Halliburton oversee themselves in Iraq was “not a great idea.”

“Government is supposedly representing you and me and not corporate interests,” she said. “They would be truly independent.”

As for the time pressure, she added: “People say it would take too long to hire government workers. But as my grandmother used to say, ‘You start at the beginning and go to the finish.’ ”

Just a few weeks ago, a whistleblower came forward reporting that the Justice Department had “intentionally schemed” to relocate a witness in the trial against Stevens. The whistleblower turned out to be an FBI agent, and wrote a lengthy complaint alleging various areas of government misconduct.

Now, the Anchorage Daily News reports that a U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is taking the whole mess right to the top. Sullivan has demanded an accounting from Attorney General Michael Mukasey to answer for the “several attorneys in this matter — in multiple departments within the Department of Justice — [who] may have intentionally withheld important information from the court.”

Seemingly stunned by the conduct of the Justice Department in the weeks following former Sen. Ted Stevens’ trial, the judge in the case today ordered U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to provide an accounting for how his prosecutors handled a whistle-blower complaint last month.

By 5 p.m. Saturday, Mukasey or his designate must turn the so-called “declaration” about who knew what and when about the whistle-blower status of an FBI agent who criticized the government’s handling of the case, ordered U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Friday.

Keep in mind that this was the same crack-squad of government prosecutors whose missteps forced key evidence to be excluded — and had a major typo in their federal indictment against Stevens, which the jurors found during deliberations. Stevens has filed a motion seeking a new trial.