Military Restructures Afghanistan Police Contract-Blackwater-Linked Army Office Stripped of Control

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Military Restructures Afghanistan Police Contract
Blackwater-Linked Army Office Stripped of Control
By Spencer Ackerman 3/25/10 6:00 AM


An obscure Army contracting office with ties to the private security firm Blackwater has formally lost control of a lucrative contract to train Afghan police, the Pentagon and U.S. military officials in Afghanistan confirmed to TWI.

The office, known as the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office or CNTPO, came under criticism from the Government Accountability Office earlier this month for having only a marginal relationship to the training of Afghan police. CNTPO has responsibility for the military’s counternarcotics efforts, not the training of foreign military forces, and only received control over the contract after the U.S. military last year moved to take it away from the State Department and sought to rapidly award the contract to one of the five companies with which it does business — one of which is Blackwater.

That bureaucratic shift prompted a protest from State’s contractor, DynCorp, which stood to lose millions from the switch and argued that a counternarcotics office was an improper choice to award a contract for police training services. On March 15, the Government Accountability Office agreed, formally saying that the military’s solicitations were “outside the scope of existing contracts” according to a top GAO procurement official, Ralph O. White. But GAO also did not formally say that CNTPO had to be stripped of its contract authority, creating confusion over the future of the contract.

According to several officials, the U.S./NATO military command in Afghanistan responsible for training Afghan security forces, known as NTM-A or CSTC-A, have decided keeping CNTPO involved would invite the same complaints that prompted GAO to scotch a contract worth up to $1 billion. “NTM-A/CSTC-A has seen the GAO ruling, is reviewing it and evaluating how to proceed in a manner that most effectively meets legal requirements and advances the key goal of helping to train an effective Afghan National Police Force,” said Lt. Col. Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman.

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http://washingtonindependent.com/80394/military-restructures-afghanistan-police-contract

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