Although the audit doesn’t say its name the contractor is DynCorp. As Christine Spolar of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund previously reported last fall, administration officials shifted oversight of police training from the State Department to the Defense Department. The transition was supposed to take place by February. But the company that holds the State Department contract, DynCorp International, filed a protest.
State Department and DynCorp officials said the civilian police contract has now been extended through the end of July while the Government Accountability Office reviews the company’s appeal.
DynCorp, which for years has trained police in Iraq for the State Department, received an 18-month, $317 million contract in 2008 to do the same work in Afghanistan. The program focused on law enforcement skills. But as the Taliban stepped up its attacks on recruits, U.S. military leaders pushed to include more counterinsurgency and tactical training.
This is not the first time DynCorp has been in trouble over training police in other countries.
In April 2003 the U.S. State Department awarded DynCorp a one-year contract in a limited competition against SAIC worth up to $50 million to support law enforcement functions in Iraq.
In May 2003, under the Department of State Advisory Support Mission (DASM) contract, DynCorp International deployed, supported, and equipped U.S. law enforcement personnel to provide police presence, enhance public security, and assist in reestablishing the Iraq National Police by providing necessary training to local police. SAIC was brought in by DynCorp to cooperate in the contract delivery.
The United States Investigative Services (USIS) also played a role.
Under the contract, up to 1,000 civilian technical advisors with 10 years of domestic law enforcement, corrections, and judicial experience, including at least 2 years in specialized areas, were to help the government of Iraq organize effective civilian law enforcement, judicial, and correctional agencies. Advisors would work with Iraqi criminal justice organizations at the national, provincial, and municipal levels to assess threats to public order and mentor personnel at all levels of the Iraqi legal apparatus.
In February 2004, Computer Sciences Corporation won a State Department contract for civilian police (CIVPOL) services worth about $1.7 billion over five years. On July 15, 2004, functions being performed in Iraq under the DASM contract were shifted to the CIVPOL contract, which was one of three planned contracts that were awarded under the State Department’s Civilian Police Program.
CSC was to recruit up to 2,000 experienced American law enforcement specialists to serve in civilian policing missions overseas.
Initially the training of Iraqi police forces was a haphazard affair. The Pentagon began to rebuild the Iraqi police with a mere dozen advisors. Overmatched from the start, one was sent to train a 4,000-officer unit to guard power plants and other utilities, a second to advise 500 commanders in Baghdad, and another to organize a border patrol for the entire country.
Before the war, the Bush administration dismissed as unnecessary a plan backed by the Justice Department to rebuild the police force by deploying thousands of American civilian trainers. After Baghdad fell and a majority of Iraqi police officers abandoned their posts, a second Justice Department proposal calling for 6,600 police trainers was reduced to 1,500,and then never carried out. At that time DynCorp had already located 1,150 active and retired police officers who had expressed interest in serving in Iraq.
Field training of the Iraqi police, the most critical element of the effort, was left to DynCorp, which received $750 million in contracts. When it became clear in 2004 that the civilian effort by DynCorp was faltering, American military officials took over police training, relying on heavily armed commando units that had been established by the Iraqis. Within a year, members of the Sunni Muslim population said some units had been infiltrated by Shi’ite Muslim militias and were kidnapping, torturing, and executing scores of Sunni Muslims.
Flashing forward to the present, the contract to train the ANP is being administered by State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The audit identified internal control weaknesses for DOS and found it did not have the following internal controls for contract administration and oversight: