State Department pays private contractors $4 billion a year

October 24, 2007
State Department pays private contractors $4 billion a year

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department
pays to private security and law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year
from $1 billion, administration officials said Tuesday, but they said that the department had
added few new officials to oversee the contracts.

It was the first time that the administration had outlined the ballooning scope of the
contracts, and it provided a new indication of how the State Department's efforts to monitor
private companies had not kept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vast
cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence that has so far gone
unpunished.