Two House Republicans are taking issue with a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found no problems with a pending deal to sell 12 U.S. drones to Kenya.
Reps. Duncan Hunter (Calif.) and Ted Budd (N.C.) in a letter to GAO Comptroller Gene Dodaro said they have “serious concerns regarding the integrity” of the agency’s report, and call into question the legitimacy of its findings and review process.
At issue is a Sept. 5 GAO report that scrutinizes a $418 million sole-source contract the Air Force unit Big Safari awarded to defense firm L-3 Technologies. The deal is for 12 weaponized drones to aid Kenya in its fight against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab.
The State Department announced the sale in January, but the Kenyan government has yet to formally sign it.
Under State Department rules, foreign military sales are not necessarily subject to an open competition between multiple companies.
But Budd and Rep. Walter Jones (R), a fellow North Carolina lawmaker, raised issue with the deal this year, claiming Big Safari — officially known as 645th Aeronautical Systems Group headquartered in Ohio at Wright Patterson Air Force Base — has a revolving door relationship with L-3.
“We believe there may be a serious, systematic problem within the unit,” they wrote in a June 30 letter to Defense Department acting inspector general Glenn Fine.
The lawmakers claim Big Safari had favored L-3 and awarded them a sole-source contract for the sale, ignoring a product from commercial firm IOMAX, due to an “alarming relationship.”
IOMAX is headquartered in Budd’s district.
The GAO concluded, however, that Kenya had specifically requested the L-3 drone, making it perfectly legal for Big Safari to award a sole-source contract.
Defense officials “did not have any reason to believe that Kenya improperly selected” the L-3 aircraft, and that “Kenya made a reasonable choice” in its selection, GAO wrote.
Hunter and Budd are now taking issue with the report’s “obvious failure to sufficiently examine relevant facts and occurrences surrounding the sale.”
“Most disturbing is the fact that the GAO conducted the entirety of its investigation … without even speaking with Kenyan government officials,” they wrote in Tuesday’s letter.
The GAO instead based its findings on “Air Force representations of interactions with the Kenyan government without corroborating those representations with the Kenyan officials themselves,” Hunter and Budd said.
“This is especially troubling given GAO’s obligation to serve as an independent and reliable auditor of the federal government,” they wrote.
Hunter and Budd also say the GAO “ignored shortcomings in the acquisition process” that allowed the Air Force to overlook commercial options in favor of “a platform that remains unproven in combat at significantly higher costs.”
Their letter is meant to bring public awareness “that the GAO report should not be taken seriously,” Hunter’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, told The Hill.
“The GAO study is incomplete and failed to consider very specific facts and occurrences that should have been well known to GAO,” Kasper said.
But the agency stands by its report and insists it “kept all of the requesters on this work informed of our scope and methodology during this effort and reviewed the documents the Kenyan government submitted,” according to GAO spokesman Charles Young.
“This report was an audit of how a U.S. agency, in this case [the Department of Defense], implemented the U.S. foreign military sales program and so it was not necessary to speak with Kenyan government officials. We believe our work is accurate,” Young told The Hill in a statement.
Despite the GAO findings, the Kenyan drone sale is still being closely watched. The Pentagon’s inspector general is also looking into the issue, Defense News reported.
Top Air Force acquisition official Lt. Gen Arnold Bunch told reporters Tuesday that the service is cooperating with the Pentagon watchdog.
“So we are very open kimono with everything to be very transparent with what we’re trying to do and to make sure that they get the information they need, because we need to make sure our business is clean and we’re doing things the right way,” Bunch said, according to Defense News.
Bunch also defended sole-source procurements in foreign military sales. If a contractor can meet a foreign nation’s request, “then we will side with the country, because they make those decisions,” he said.
A State Department spokesman told The Hill last month that it expects Kenya to accept the deal after its government works through the country’s tumultuous presidential election. Nairobi held the election in August, but it was later annulled.
In the meantime, Hunter plans to take steps to make sure the Kenyan sale is fair.
The California Republican is considering fencing off funding for the deal “until we can get some clarity on why Big Safari decided to award a sole-source contract despite the existence of a strong competitor,” his spokesman said, referring to IOMAX.
That effort would likely be next spring, as the Senate this week passed its version of the Fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act bills and will now create a compromise bill with the House.