Fat Contracts Drift Toward Former Obama Official's Company

A nonprofit whose vice president is a former Obama administration official has secured a nearly $100 million government contract in Afghanistan, raising concerns with at least one former U.S. State Department insider.

The executive team at International Relief & Development, or IRD, an Arlington, Va.-based organization, includes Alonzo L. Fulgham, whom President Obama in January 2009 had appointed as acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The ex-State Department source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, lamented the revolving door process of officials moving between the public and private sectors, asserting that the potential for waste and abuse is immense.

Specific to Fulgham's role as IRD VP in the context of the Afghanistan contract, the source said "there is nothing inherently illegal or unethical about it," but still decried the arrangement as "questionable."

"Typically only vendors with those sorts of connections get USAID's big-budget contracts, and they get them to the exclusion of other capable providers," the source claimed.

USAID on April 20 awarded the $98.8 million contract to IRD in support of the agency's Engineering, Quality Assurance and Logistical Support, or EQUALS, program in Afghanistan, according to contracting documents that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

IRD will provide architectural and other engineering services to bolster infrastructure design, construction and maintenance projects via the EQUALS initiative, which focuses on transportation, vertical structures, energy and water, and sanitation.

The support contract emerged as an indirect consequence of ongoing scrutiny, both internally as well as from the media, of reconstruction aid programs, according to the Request for Proposals, #RFP-306-09-0535.

"The quality, cost-effectiveness and sustainability of USAID supported infrastructure projects in Afghanistan is a topic of intense scrutiny from the American media, Inspector General (IG), Government Accountability Office (GAO), and other stakeholders," the RFP says.

"Proper oversight and quality assurance of engineering projects requires the ability to travel to remote sites and requires specialized testing equipment and skills which go beyond USAID's in-house engineering capacity."

In an unrelated USAID program in Iraq, IRD was the prime contractor for a program ultimately put on hold due to allegations – most of which the agency says are unsubstantiated – of waste and mismanagement.

USAID back in 2006 awarded a $644 million contract to IRD for that program.

The agency had a mixed response to Office of Inspector General accusations, agreeing to certain modifications to the USAID/Iraq Community Stabilization Program, yet defending the initiative – and its contractor – as meritorious and successful.

IRD says on its website that there is a clear reason why it hired Fulgham to execute the group's "strategic business initiatives": his proven record of relevant experience and success at USAID.

As the agency's acting administrator, "Mr. Fulgham managed a diverse global enterprise of over $15 billion annually in more than 88 countries, with a professional staff of more than 7,000 worldwide."

Among other reasons for hiring him, IRD points out that in 2005-2006, Fulgham "served as USAID Mission Director to Afghanistan, where he implemented cutting edge stabilization and development programs with a budget of $1.4 billion."

Fulgham, it should be noted, was not the only USAID official to have come aboard IRD in recent years.

Jeffrey Grieco, IRD's chief of communications, until 2009 had been USAID assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs.

In that capacity Grieco "was responsible for all congressional contacts and communications, managed all agency communications to both foreign and domestic audiences, and supervised USAID media and public affairs programming worldwide."

He also worked as the agency's senior representative on interagency panels, including USAID's Muslim Outreach Coordinating Committee and the Obama Administration's Iraq Stabilization Group.

In a statement from IRD, the company said:

Since he left the U.S. government in 2010, Alonzo Fulgham has had no official contact with USAID or any of its employees as he maintains an ethics restriction for 12 months following the end of his employment. Therefore, he has had no substantive role in any USAID/Afghanistan or any USAID contracts in general that have been awarded to IRD. IRD had established itself as a leading international non-governmental organization long prior to Mr. Fulgham's arrival, implementing more than $1.75 billion in humanitarian assistance worldwide since 1998. Moreover, IRD is awarded grants and contracts by a host of funders, including the World Bank, the United Nations, DFID (the British Development Agency), the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. State Department, and USAID, and we strongly believe these awards are based on the quality of our work and our more than 5,000 dedicated staff members around the world. Everyday our people are working in some of the most helpless and unstable parts of the developing world, fulfilling IRD's mission to reduce the suffering of the world's most vulnerable groups and provide them the tools and resources necessary to increase their own self-sufficiency. It is this hard work and commitment that has earned IRD its success as an international non-governmental organization for more than a decade.