Mismanagement of a nearly $1 billion contract by major defense contractors and State Department officials has left the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan guarded by people who may lack security clearances and who wasted millions of dollars on work that wasn’t performed.
The contractors could not show that “guards are properly vetted,” according to a new audit by the State Department’s inspector general, which “places embassies and personnel at risk.” Some didn’t appear to have security clearances, and others didn’t appear to be at work for hours the government paid them.
The security weaknesses at embassies in volatile regions echo the shortcomings that allowed U.S. personnel to perish during an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
The specter of civilian contractors with access to sensitive information, even if they should not be trusted with that information, is a reminder of Edward Snowden, the former Booz Allen contractor who leaked thousands of classified documents he gathered while working at the National Security Agency.
Aegis Defense Services provides nearly 1,000 guards, half of whom are from foreign nations, to protect U.S. facilities in Afghanistan. The State Department contracted with Aegis in 2011 to provide security in Afghanistan and has renewed the contract twice despite early failures and lack of action to correct previously identified shortcomings.
The Kabul work is part of a multibillion-dollar arrangement with other embassies involving Aegis and other contractors.
Eight percent of daily bills for guard services were unsupported by time sheets, amounting to $141,000 in the 1.5 percent sample of time sheets reviewed — a rate that could translate to $9.5 million in potentially improper billing.
Officials “noted issues with Aegis’s candidate screening and record-keeping in a November 2012 deficiency notice, requiring remedial actions to resolve this. Nevertheless,” the 2014 review found that “seven Aegis U.S. citizen employees working various positions in Kabul had no documented security clearance investigations” and “14 Aegis explosive detection dog (EDD) handlers did not have documents showing they had completed required training.”
Aegis was supposed to use biometrics to make sure employees were actually working, but its system wasn’t ready and the paper sign-in sheets the company was forced to rely on were sometimes missing.
Some of the guards were exceptionally well paid. The audit notes “a missing sign-in sheet and biometric data needed to support $36,197 in labor costs for an EDD handler for the month of July 2012.”
Another contractor billed the government for a weeklong vacation in a foreign country.
State Department officials in Virginia promptly paid the bills without making sure the contractors adhered to agency rules. Some documents were even “signed without review.”
The IG also reviewed $217 million in invoices and found that $9 million worth were approved by the government even though they appeared not to be allowed under the contract or lacked adequate documentation.
State Department officials also readily paid nearly $1 million in “questionable” or “unallowable” travel costs.
Even when briefed of the IG’s latest findings, State didn’t take decisive action.
It acknowledged the shortcomings but merely said it is “working … to mitigate and resolve file management issues and continues to conduct site visits to Kabul and Aegis headquarters to ensure compliance.”
The IG noted that it “did not identify any corrective actions.”
