Tuesday, January 2, 2007

What is going on at the State Department?

The Dec. 26 news story "Old Iraq Strategy Lives On in Weekly Progress Reports," about the State Department's weekly Iraq status reports, described without shocked comment the unpublicized role of a private consulting firm, BearingPoint Inc., in the report's production. We learned that BearingPoint even gets to "manage the process of running Iraq policy in the administration."

From its offices at the State Department, BearingPoint earns its $2 million fee not only by drafting the reports but also in such activities as arranging meetings, setting agendas, taking notes and providing summaries of discussions (plus maintaining the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad).

To the eyes of this retired 30-year State Department veteran, these look like normal functions of responsible government agencies; they're not technical or advisory services that can be "privatized" without compromising the integrity and accountability of the process itself. Is the State Department bureaucracy (the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, for example) not competent to carry out these routine functions? Are contractors playing similar roles in other ostensibly internal policy and public relations operations in the State Department and other sensitive areas of government?

The public deserves to know more about such contractual arrangements at the heart of our government.

JOHN DEXTER

Alexandria