KBR’s umbrella contract with the government raises questions

As U.S. troops moved into Afghanistan in the months following 9/11, there were few facilities in place that would offer them support. As Sharon Weinberger of The Center for Public Integrity reports, “the military needed someone to do everything from housing troops to rebuilding airfields. The solution was a contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, a type of umbrella contract the Army had been using to support is military bases overseas.”

In 2001 the Army awarded the “LOGCAP III” to the firm KBR, which was “once a subsidiary of Halliburton.” For the next decade, KBR did not have to “compete for any of the subsequent work, which totaled over $37 billion by the end of July.” As “Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense” explains in: ” … You become the government’s concierge, and it’s like a gigantic monopoly.”