Amazon sued the Defense Department last year, alleging that the Pentagon made several mistakes in its evaluation of bids.
The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.
Department personnel who evaluated proposals and awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract were not pressured by any senior DoD leaders, the IG found. But investigators were unable to rule out whether the White House interfered with the contract award because DoD’s general counsel instructed senior DoD witnesses not to verbally answer questions about communications between the White House and Pentagon because of “the assertion of a ‘presidential communications privilege.’”
The report “confirms that the Department of Defense conducted the JEDI Cloud procurement process fairly and in accordance with the law,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Robert Carver said in a statement.
“The IG’s team found that there was no influence by the White House or DoD leadership on the career source selection boards who made the ultimate vendor selection,” he said. “This report should finally close the door on the media and corporate-driven attacks on the career procurement officials who have been working tirelessly to get the much needed JEDI cloud computing environment into the hands of our frontline warfighters while continuing to protect American taxpayers.”
………
The report says that after DoD witnesses were told not to answer questions regarding communications with the White House, the White House said witnesses could provide written answers to questions, subject to review by the administration.
“We carefully considered this response and concluded it would not be an appropriate and practical way to conduct our review, because there was no assurance as to which questions would be answered, it would unduly delay the report, it would not allow for an interview and inevitable follow up questions, and it would not assure that we would be receiving full information from the witnesses,” the IG report said. “We therefore declined to proceed in this manner.”
……..
- Discussion
-
Pentagon’s IG “could not definitively determine” whether the W.H. influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because Defense Department officials were not allowed to answer questions on the subject https://t.co/z1i4pfHhgu
— POLITICO (@politico) April 15, 2020
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.