Army contractor's use of a cover name for Blackwater angers Sen. McCaskill

"The American people have a right to be outraged that we're playing this kind of game with contracting. It's wrong. It's flat wrong."

With those words, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voiced her exasperation near the end of a three-hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about a contract to train Afghan National Army troops last year to use American weapons. One issue at the Feb. 24. hearing was that the $25 million contract, awarded in September 2008, was to a company called Paravant -- well known to those involved as a cover name for Blackwater (now Xe Services).

Another issue was that while the U.S. Army was paying for it, the contract was awarded to Paravant (Blackwater) by a Raytheon subsidiary called Raytheon Technical Services Co. RTSC holds a multibillion-dollar War Fighter Focus contract, primarily to train U.S. troops, but in this case the Army decided to use the company, through a separate task order under the War Fighter Focus contract, to hire Paravant.

Why didn't the Army contract directly with Paravant? That was not explored at the hearing. But the use of a cover name, Paravant, to bid on a contract when the attached qualifications were essentially those of Blackwater has been referred to the Justice Department by the committee's chairman, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

Another major issue examined at the hearing was the lack of oversight of the Paravant contract by Raytheon and the Army. The military unit responsible for overseeing this odd contracting was the Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, referred to as PEO-STRI.

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