Army Contract Overseer Didn’t Check That Paravant Was a Blackwater ‘Shell’

In an interview with Senate staff, former “Paravant” vice president Brian McCracken said that the only reason a company called Paravant ever existed was because Blackwater wanted a piece of Raytheon’s contract with the Army to train Afghan security officials — without the “baggage” of the Blackwater name. (You know, like killing Iraqi civilians.) So Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) asked Steven Ograyensek, the contracting officer at an Army office responsible for overseeing the contract, whether he had any idea Paravant was part of Blackwater. There was “no indication” of that relationship in Paravant’s bid for the Raytheon subcontract, Ograyensek replied. Yet it took Senate staff a fairly short time to determine Paravant was a shell company for Blackwater.

Did Ograyensek even check Paravant’s references? “We didn’t call those references,” he said. “That was the responsibility of Raytheon.” Your contracting oversight at work.

“Paravant had never done anything,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) interjected. “But they represent in their [request for the contract] that they had 2000 personnel deployed overseas. They had no one. … It’s just a shell.”