Defense Department Awards Stimulus Contracts to Companies Under Investigation

[1]Uncovering what seems to be a serious lack of judgment, ProPublica this past weekend published an article [2] detailing how the Department of Defense awarded "$30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation on suspicion of defrauding the government."

The Defense Department, in its defense, said that the six companies were not yet on the suspension list, and that they didn't even know that the Small Business Administration had suspended one of the companies almost a year earlier. To make matters worse, the DoD then proceeded to award two more contracts to that company the day after they got around to suspending it. Oops. Sadly, this is just the most recent epic blunder in military contracting history [3], but its a very convincing reason for why we need contracting reform.

Oh, and if one could search Recovery.gov by recipient, instead of just by ZIP code, then I could show you information about the contracts in question. Just sayin'.

Image by Flickr user eschipul [4] used under a Creative Commons license.