WASHINGTON — The State Department suddenly canceled a contract for eight private investigators to assist U.S. officials in Iraq in “extremely complex and sensitive investigations,” after a senator raised questions about whether the department had outsourced oversight of security contractors.
The eight were in Baghdad as part of a new Force Investigation Unit created after 17 Iraqi civilians allegedly were killed by private security guards protecting State Department officials. When the agency announced the Baghdad unit last October, it said no contractors would be part of the investigative teams.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 19, advising her that he had just learned the private investigators were working in Iraq. A member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he wrote: “It is highly troubling that the department is apparently outsourcing oversight of its security contractors.”
ABC News subsequently reported that the department signed a one-year contract, worth $4.4 million, with the privately owned U.S. Investigations Service, effective March 1.
In a letter to Feingold dated Friday, a department official wrote that the use of the contractors had been “terminated.” The Washington Post
