Army's use of IT contract to hire U.S. interrogators in Iraq questioned

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of the Interior's inspector general is reviewing the contracting procedures that allowed the U.S. Army to use an IT services contract to hire civilian interrogators for work in Iraq, including the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The contract in question is a $500 million blanket-purchase agreement for IT services administered by the Interior Department on behalf of the Army. The deal was originally awarded in 1998 to Fairfax, Va.-based Premier Technology Group Inc. But it was transitioned to Arlington, Va.-based CACI International Inc. last year when that company acquired Premier Technology Group.
Frank Quimby, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said that a formal investigation isn't under way and that all existing delivery orders under the contract will be fulfilled. New requests for services under the pact, however, will be denied until the review is completed, he said.
"This is not a criminal investigation; it is a management review and audit to see if all of the rules and regulations were followed and whether this was an inappropriate contract vehicle to provide these services," he said.
According to Quimby, contracting officers are responsible for determining whether the services sought fit within the scope of work defined in the contract. "In this case, the contracting officer determined that the interrogators would be using the IT equipment provided by the contract by entering information into databases, analyzing the information collected using IT software and disseminating the intelligence to other military commands using the IT systems," he said.
Quimby added that existing rules set by the U.S. General Services Administration justify the contracting officer's use of the IT contract for the interrogator services. However, he acknowledged that there are "obvious questions about the processes, contract and decisions that were made."
So far, 81 orders have been issued under the contract totaling $132 million. However, only 11 of those orders deal with work being performed in Iraq, and they cover a wide variety of services. In addition, only three of those 11 Iraq-related orders have dealt specifically with interrogation or intelligence work, and only two deal with intelligence personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.

Robert Nichols, an attorney at Piper Rudnick LLP in Washington and a member of the law firm's homeland security practice and Iraq reconstruction task force, said federal IT contracts often provide a lot of latitude in defining the scope of work. In addition, there have been widespread instances where the government has gone beyond the scope of work to include non-IT-related services in IT contracts,