Editorial: Army lax on critical contract

Saturday, April 8, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

A standard duty for nearly all lower-ranking enlisted Army soldiers and junior officers is guard duty. The duty, generally performed during nighttime, calls for protecting the perimeter of Army bases from intruders, and for checking the identifications of those walking or driving through the gates.

After 9/11, though, with so many troops sent to either Afghanistan, Iraq or other trouble spots around the world, Congress suspended guard duty for regular soldiers and authorized the Army to hire civilian security guards.

Since then the Army has spent $733 million on the contract guards, with nearly $495 million of that going to two Alaskan companies in no-bid contracts.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on the program this week, and it wasn't pretty. The GAO found fault with both the contractors' management of the guards and the Army's management of the contractors.

Training was a big issue, with the Army not overseeing it or even checking to see if the civilians had received it. Many hadn't. One contractor was found to have falsified training records, yet the Army "subsequently paid the contractor over $7,000 to requalify the guards."

The Army also paid millions in bonuses to the contractors even though their work was not exemplary.

Background checks were found to lag way behind the hiring of guards. At two installations, the GAO report said, the Army discovered 89 guards who had criminal records that included assaults and other felonies. Such backlogs "put the Army at risk of having ineligible guards protecting installation gates," the report said.

The Defense Department has agreed to put in place recommendations made by the GAO to correct these deficiencies. Nevertheless, it is inexcusable that laxness in such important contracts was allowed to persist.