Tag: State Dept

Use Contractors To Investigate Contractors

Yet another move by the Bush Admin to let the “fox guard the hen house”.  When will the American taxpayer finally have had enough?  OMG!  I love this stuff–we are gonna let the bankers, who caused the economic crisis oversee the bailout and now this.

In an apparent violation of federal regulations, the State Department has outsourced to private contractors the responsibility to investigate possible crimes committed by security contractors in Iraq.

Earlier this year, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security hired the private firm U.S. Investigations Services (USIS) to fill positions in the newly created Force Investigation Unit (FIU) that investigates potential misuses of force against civilians by U.S. security contractors. The contract investigators have been in Iraq since this summer.

The FIU was created in the wake of last year’s deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, when 17 Iraqi civilians allegedly were killed by security personnel employed by Blackwater Worldwide who were guarding a State Department convoy. The case sparked widespread outrage and prompted calls for greater oversight of security contractors in Iraq.

According to a contract obtained by ABC News, the company was hired to supplement Diplomatic Security personnel. However, the eight USIS contractors hired for the team represent the majority of the full-time team, an apparent violation of federal regulations that prohibit such work by contractors.

According to Federal Acquisition Regulation part 7.5, it is not permissible to hire contractors for jobs “considered to be inherently governmental functions” including “the direct conduct of criminal investigations.”

But The US Is Not Into Nation Building

Somewhere I remember a spokesperson for the present administration saying that the US was not into nation building.  Sorry, cannot remember which pea brain uttered those words.  But guess what?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice inaugurated the U.S. government’s first-ever civilian nation-building team Wednesday in a bid to learn from missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction efforts.

The “active” component, called the Civilian Response Corps, is a team of 250 federal employees from several agencies – diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others.

Their primary responsibility is to deploy to crisis spots around the world within 48 to 72 hours.

“This is a mission that requires the integration of security, diplomacy and development,” Miss Rice said at a State Department ceremony.

For the team’s active members, the response corps will be a full-time job. Another 2,000 who have other federal jobs will serve as the “standby” component, said John Herbst, the department’s coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.

About 37 percent of the active corps will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about 30 percent from the State Department and the rest from the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Treasury, Mr. Herbst said.

Members of the nation-building corps already have deployed to missions in Sudan, Chad, Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, although the numbers are much smaller than the targets of 250 active members and 2,000 standby members.

Only 100 active members have been hired so far because the $75 million appropriated by Congress is less than needed to fund the operation.

The administration later created Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, which usually are headed by senior diplomats and include other civilian specialists working with the military.

Because of the need to help stabilize and rebuild weak, war-torn or poorly governed countries, Miss Rice has advocated “transformational diplomacy” as a part of the Foreign Service’s future.

OOPS!  The the Washington Times article pretty much punched a huge hole in the lame statement from the recent past.