$48M ‘No-Bid’ State Department Grant for ISIS Bomb Removal Faces Scrutiny Under Pompeo

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The Washington Free Beacon
BY: Susan Crabtree    
May 29, 2018 5:00 am

A $48 million State Department grant to a for-profit company for IED and other bomb removal in Syria was rushed in the final days of the Obama administration to lock it in before President Trump was inaugurated, according to two sources with detailed knowledge about the process, as well as State Department grant records.

The grant is receiving new internal State Department scrutiny just a few weeks into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's tenure, as U.S. government officials try to flag key areas of concern that the new secretary can address, the sources said.

The bombing and ordnance removal is extremely dangerous work but critically important for the safety of returning communities displaced by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which left IED booby traps intended to maim or kill returning families or government workers.

By the late summer of 2016, a joint effort by foreign non-governmental organizations, NGOs, from Western Europe, local Iraqi groups, and Janus Global Operations, worked under State Department funding to clear bombs in Iraq.

Janus, a for-profit company which claims to be the largest munitions management and demining company in the world, at the time was the only U.S. commercial company under State Department contract for this type of work.

In 2016, the company cleared thousands of IEDs and explosives planted by ISIS in Ramadi alone.

Optima, a British company that bills itself as "leaders in explosive threat mitigation," in mid-2016 was in the middle of surveying an area in Fallujah littered with IEDs and planning a major clearing operation, according to its website.

Despite the expertise and experience of these companies and others operating in the region, by the end of December 2016, as the Obama administration was coming to a close, State Department officials in the Office of Near East Asia, Office of Assistance Coordination facilitated funding for a non-competitive grant to Tetra Tech.

(more)
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/48m-no-bid-state-department-grant-isis-bomb-removal-faces-scrutiny-pompeo/

Look up Tetra Tech symbol TTEK since mid-2016. This looks like it was a stock manipulation scheme by Obama's administration. Any government employee who owns TTEK, or with family or acquaintances who bought TTEK should be investigated. That is likely what Pompeo is doing.

There is no practical reason to give this unqualified company a no-bid contract.

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I've got to admit, the Obama folks might not be honest, but they sure are clever, pushing it through as a "grant" rather than a "contract".