Oversight in Afghanistan will only get harder with the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops at the end of the year. With a decreased troop presence, USAID will face shrinking “oversight access bubbles” in which monitors can safely travel around to check on U.S.-funded projects.

How is USAID planning to meet the challenge of diminished oversight access in Afghanistan? According to the GAO, by implementing a “remote monitoring program” that will rely on…contractors.

USAID is finalizing plans to award up to three contracts under which contractors will, in the words of the GAO, “verify activities that implementing partners have completed.” Since many of USAID’s implementing partners are contractors, this arrangement boils down to contractors overseeing contractors. It remains to be seen how USAID will structure the program to prevent conflicts of interest, such as contractors evaluating their own work or the work of competitors. In short, who will oversee the overseers?

The outsourcing of oversight by any federal department or agency is risky. However, when the agency is USAID, which has a long history of problems managing contractors, it becomes downright crazy. One need only look at the recent example of USIS to understand the consequences of letting contractors oversee or evaluate contractors. The Office of Personnel Management entrusted USIS with both conducting federal security clearance investigations and performing quality reviews of those investigations. USIS now stands accused of defrauding the government by falsifying 665,000 background checks.

“Alleged statements that costs were ‘reasonable,’ ‘actual,’ or based on adequate analysis constitute false claims under the FCA due to KBR’s alleged reckless failure to verify the truth of First Kuwaiti’s claims in light of information suggesting that First Kuwaiti’s claims were inflated, information of which KBR was or should have been aware at the time it made each claim for payment,” Darrow said.

In its motion to dismiss, KBR claimed that whether costs are reasonable is an “inherently subjective determination,” and that allowing the FCA claims to continue would grant the government license to “freely transform disputed issues in cost reimbursement contracts into fraud claims.”

The company also claimed that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over portions of the suit alleging it violated the Contract Disputes Act and breached its contract, which Darrow rejected.

KBR is the U.S. Army’s primary contractor for logistical support in Iraq under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, and the government says it has paid the company tens of billions of dollars for logistical support services since awarding the contract. KBR is paid a 1 percent base fee and a discretionary award fee of up to 2 percent on top of project costs, according to the government’s original complaint.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the $150 million set of claims against the company in 2012, claiming First Kuwaiti’s bid for the subcontract proposed a cost-per-trailer that nearly doubled what the manufacturer of the buildings suggested, which KBR explained to the government was intended to reflect First Kuwaiti’s commitment to assume the risk of increased cost related to war-zone delays. Despite its agreement to bear those costs, First Kuwaiti allegedly asked KBR twice to up the contract price because of government-caused problems that delayed the trailers.

But KBR and First Kuwaiti allegedly knew early on they would not meet a December 2003 deadline to install the trailers, in part because the supplier was not able to ship enough trailers, then blamed delays on the government, the complaint says. The suit says many of the delays KBR experienced in installing the trailers are attributable to weather or acts of God, and were not the government’s fault.

An attorney for KBR did not resond Tuesday to a request for comment. A DOJ representative could also not be reached.

KBR is represented by Jan Paul Miller of Thompson Coburn LLP.

The DOJ is represented by in-house attorneys Michael D. Granston, Russell B. Kinner, John A. Kolar and Judith Rabinowitz.

The case is United States of America v. Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. et al., case number 4:12-cv-04110, in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Rock Island Division.