The contract is for overseeing an out of court settlement the Justice Department reached with a knee and hip replacement company called Zimmer Holdings, Inc. from Warsaw, Indiana. Apparently Zimmer Holdings was accused of bribing giving kickbacks to doctors who used their knee and hip implants. Now the way these types of settlements work is that the monitoring company is paid directly by the offending business that it is supposed to be monitoring. Therefore, Ashcroft's consulting firm will be paid directly by Zimmer Holdings - the very entity he is supposed to be overseeing to make sure, if you can believe this, they don't make more illegal payments or bribes.

It's hard for me to even begin to describe the gut-wrenching, mind-boggling irony of this situation. First off, how can Mr. Ashcroft be expected to monitor a company in an independent manner that is paying him directly? Second, it's not like Zimmer Holdings was accused of union-busting or providing unsafe working conditions for its employees. They were accused of bribing doctors! Wouldn't it be reasonable to believe they could continue to attempt to offer illegal bribes? And how would the public know if they were doing that? Because the monitor company's bills are not subject to an independent review, are we just supposed to take Mr. Ashcroft's word for it?

While I certainly wouldn't accuse Mr. Ashcroft of being involved in covering up questionable activities or practices (cough), he isn't the only one involved in contracts like these. In fact, they are being relied on by the Justice Department more and more. A new study by two lawyers in Texas has found there has been a 600 percent increase in these types of settlements between the department and large companies in the last five years. Even more amazing, the same prosecutor who awarded the contract to Ashcroft (Mr. Christopher Christie of New Jersey) has directed similar contracts to other former colleagues at the Justice Department, and several other former government officials with ties to the Bush administration have been awarded similar contracts since 2001 according to the Washington Post. While we all know Mr. Ashcroft is above reproach, I have no way to know whether these other former government officials are.

Further obscuring whether the public interest is being upheld in these monitoring agreements, the identify of the monitoring company is not always made public; Ashcroft's case only came to light because payments from Zimmer Holdings to Ashcroft's consulting firm appeared on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So, the bottom line is the Justice Department is relying more and more on private companies (usually companies with close ties to the current administration) to monitor the actions of other private companies it has accused of breaking the law but decided against prosecuting. And just to make the situation even more insidious, the identity of the monitoring company and the payments they receive directly from the company they are supposed to be monitoring are often kept secret. Are they serious?

Good luck to the GAO in sorting all of this out. It appears as though it's yet another aspect of federal contracting that is just a huge mess.