Runaway Spending on War Contractors

By The New York Times | Editorial

18 September 11 

Excessive reliance on badly supervised private contractors indulging "vast amounts of spending for no benefit" is the heart of the problem, according to the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a bipartisan panel established by Congress, which conducted the three-year study.

In Washington's current cacophony, there is no guarantee that the 240-page final report will be noticed or its lessons absorbed. It should be. Lives, money and this country's image are all on the line.

The Pentagon and the State Department have sent more than 260,000 private workers to Iraq and Afghanistan. And the report makes a compelling case for the need to cut back substantially on the practice. It also argues that the contracts should be made far more competitive and subjected to far more oversight by government managers.

The report cites a host of problems, including kickbacks paid to civilian officials and members of the military, and faulty construction work that has led to the death of American troops.

Contractor malfeasance has also filled the enemy's coffers. The report notes that contractors, particularly those in Afghanistan, are often willing to pay local warlords and insurgents for "protection." The commission found that in some cases, these extorted payments ate up 20 percent of the value of the contract. There were comparable payoffs to warlords for allowing, say, electricity to flow from projects financed by the United States.

Contractors contend that the frenetic pace of war, not profiteering, drives the waste.

As military operations wind down, and American troops are withdrawn, the use of contractors may actually grow in some spheres. The commission estimates that the State Department will need to double private security contractors for embassy protection in Iraq.

Congress should impose tight limits on no-bid contracts to favored companies. It should heed the commission's call for greater powers for government monitors to suspend contractors with bad records, and for a senior "dual-hatted" overseer to serve at the Office of Management and Budget and participate in meetings of the National Security Council. And it is long past time to create a permanent inspector general to track contractors plying the modern battlefield.