"T" sent this, apparently from St. Andrews U, (or at least from one of their e-mail accounts). There is a lot of truth here. Nevertheless, I would say that there is a lot of good work being done by consultants in areas in which, to be frank, the government does not have the intellectual resources that can be marshaled by the contractor companies. It is true that the big "beltway bandit" companies are very good at feathering their own nests. One of the principal ways they do that is by hiring as "Vice President in charge of Intelligence Projects" or something like that men who were directors of the biggest agencies in the IC. pl
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"It's true that laying responsibility on contractors for our current mess, even the parts in which they were specifically involved, is ridiculous. However, it is valid to say that the contracting process is broken, or at least has become so flawed that it is impacting our republic in a negative way. I worked as the 'college kid' supporting the retirees you mention for one of the large contractors out at Tysons for several years. To generalize from my experience, these retired military/intel/GS personnel are public servants whose motivations are honorable and patriotic, and sometimes selfless. On a personal level, they would do their jobs with the same level of commitment, professionalism, and sense of duty that I'm sure they had while in actual public service (i.e. variable, but largely on the good side). However, the problem was that at the end of the day, they were working for a private company that was out to make a profit. This is true no matter what the PR departments of Lockheed, Booze, SAIC, or Bechtel churn out. On an employee level, many contractors are out to protect and serve their country and to support their family. On a corporate level, however, they are out to make a buck. Period. In other words, this profit motive always outweighed, in my experience, any lower level desire to either serve the country, or - more disturbingly - even to get the job done. Of the 3 major contracts on which I worked, I felt that 2 of them were both major wastes of taxpayer money and damaging to our national security. The waste came from the fact that the work quality (i.e. 'mission accomplishment') was always subordinated to the real goal of extending or expanding the contract, getting the next one, and making more money. In other words, the focus was on just doing the job well enough to convince the customer to buy more. But, whatever, companies are out to make money and try to make as much as possible while the gettin's good. Good on 'em. The damage to national security is of course more important and my real concern. I won't claim that the work we were doing in these contracts was somehow central to the survival of the republic, but they were a couple of multi-multi-million dollar programs that were touted in the media as pieces of what makes us safe, secure, and warm and fuzzy in this 'new and dangerous world.' The problem was that for all the money we were paid, we never actually achieved our stated missions on those two contracts. We were hired, we worked often long hours, we submitted deliverables, we met technical contract requirements, but we never really achieved the true goals of the project. I.e. on a particular critical infrastructure contract, we never actually developed a system capable of protecting the critical infrastructure. But we did get paid, and satisfy the contract, and even got it extended for another few years to fix the problems. In my view, this was not for the negligence of the workers, but because of a management structure that clearly had other priorities. We did get lots of new contracts, of course, but from my naive eyes I didn't really see how we ever finished the job we were paid to do. But now I'm starting to think that that just wasn't the point in the first place. Now if one loves Michael Moore and thinks that all threats are fabricated in order to make more money for the military-industrial complex, then all this is unsurprising and irrelevant. But, like most US citizens, I think that we actually need most of the what contractors are supposed to be doing to be done and done well. The intelligence work is an prime example. However, from my experience, the taxpayer gets mismanaged work and have to pay out of the $%@# for the privilege. Anecdotes of this abound: e.g. BAH's DHS contract, SAIC's FBI computer system and their Iraq Media Project, CACI's interrogation contract. I understand that many of the contracts started out as a blind plea for help from the government to confront multiple problems at once after 9/11 and with the start of Iraq, and that many contracts suffered from unclear or contradictory government requirements or even direct meddling from Straussian know-nothings. But the contractors at a corporate level bear much responsibility. They have completely exploited this situation to provide high priced crap. Lots of money spent, no actual solutions, initial problem still around (presumably to be solved by another contract). So, my question as a citizen is why has our government allowed itself to accept and continue to purchase poor quality work, especially in these critical areas? Most immediately, I saw that the government procurement officers (also very good people on the whole) simply did not have the resources (time, authority, and sometimes experience) to effectively resist the whirlwind caused by the revolving door between government and the private sector. This seems to be the underlying bureaucratic problem that needs to be fixed. Under-resourced contracting officers and poor procurement oversight leads to corporate exploitation of government needs. I think that is essentially what Eisenhower said would lead to bad things. Of course, some or much of this might be a deliberate effort of the Bush/Cheney anti-Constitutionalists, and as the former head of OMB was indicted, I wouldn't find it surprising. But I think that this is a deeper problem. I think that the relationship between government and contractors, especially related to national security, was not settled when Smedley Butler or Eisenhower spoke of it, and it is definitely not settled now. I guess it is just yet another real issue that is being simultaneously exacerbated and ignored in our current slide towards Empire." T
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