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Over the past decade, America's military and federal-civilian employees, as well as contractors, have performed vital and dangerous tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contractors' support however, has been unnecessarily costly, and has been plagued by high levels of waste and fraud. The United States will not be able to conduct large or sustained contingency operations without heavy contractor support. Avoiding a repetition of the waste, fraud, and abuse seen in Iraq and Afghanistan requires either a great increase in agencies' ability to perform core tasks and to manage contracts effectively, or a disciplined reconsideration of plans and commitments that would require intense use of contractors. Failure by Congress and the Executive Branch to heed a decade's lessons on contingency contracting from Iraq and Afghanistan will not avert new contingencies. It will only ensure that additional billions of dollars of waste will occur and that U.S. objectives and standing in the world will suffer. Worse still, lives will be lost because of waste and mismanagement.

Website of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan providing general information about the commission, lists of Commission briefings, texts of public hearings, press releases, Congressional testimony, news items, links to associated Congressional committee and agency websites, and a facility to provide comments.

In 2008 Congress established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan in response to increasing indications of widespread waste, fraud, and abuse in government contracting. The eight?member Commission is a bipartisan, independent entity charged with evaluating and reporting on America's wartime contracting for logistics, reconstruction, and security. The authorizing legislation directs the Commission to issue an Interim Report and a Final Report. This Interim Report to Congress describes the Commission's work to date, which includes hundreds of meetings and briefings, analysis of existing reports and audits, hearings on Capitol Hill, and fact?finding trips to the theaters of operation. This Report highlights some time?sensitive issues, especially given the challenges of the drawdown in Iraq and the buildup in Afghanistan. The Commission's Final Report to Congress will reflect the results of all of the Commission's work. It will include lessons learned and specific, actionable recommendations for permanent improvement in wartime contracting. More than 240,000 contractor employees currently provide critical support for U.S. contingency operations in the Southwest Asia area of responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the difficulty of operating in these environments, military personnel, federal civilian employees, and private contractors have executed countless support tasks faithfully and well. Many have paid a personal price. As of May 27, 2009, 4,973 men and women of America's military and at least 13 civilian employees of the Department of Defense have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Less publicized is the fact that more than 1,360 contractor employees - Americans, Iraqis, and third?country nationals - have also died in the two war zones. Tens of thousands more have been wounded. Criticisms of the contingency contract system and suggestions for reform in no way diminish their sacrifices. The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan is committed to help ensure that contract support for future contingency operations is well planned, efficiently executed, and rigorously overseen so that it best supports America's military, diplomatic, and reconstruction efforts, and provides good stewardship of American taxpayers' dollars.

Over the past decade, America's military and federal-civilian employees, as well as contractors, have performed vital and dangerous tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contractors' support however, has been unnecessarily costly, and has been plagued by high levels of waste and fraud. The United States will not be able to conduct large or sustained contingency operations without heavy contractor support. Avoiding a repetition of the waste, fraud, and abuse seen in Iraq and Afghanistan requires either a great increase in agencies' ability to perform core tasks and to manage contracts effectively, or a disciplined reconsideration of plans and commitments that would require intense use of contractors. Failure by Congress and the Executive Branch to heed a decade's lessons on contingency contracting from Iraq and Afghanistan will not avert new contingencies. It will only ensure that additional billions of dollars of waste will occur and that U.S. objectives and standing in the world will suffer. Worse still, lives will be lost because of waste and mismanagement.

Site includes transcript, list of witnesses, photographs, and videos of the hearings.

Federal reliance on contractors to support defense, diplomatic, and development missions during contingency operations stands at unprecedented levels. Over the course of the past nine years, contractors have at times exceeded the number of military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Total spending through contracts is correspondingly large. While there is no central federal source for definitive data on contracts and grants regarding contingency operations, the Commission's conservative estimate is that since October 2001, at least $177 billion has been obligated on contracts and grants to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the magnitude of mission and money at risk, losses from waste, fraud, and abuse represent a significant cost. While the impact on mission cannot be readily quantified, misspent dollars run into the tens of billions. Congress instructed the Commission to make recommendations to avoid such results in future contingencies. These recommendations must meet two primary criteria : they must address the underlying causes of the poor outcomes of contracting, and they must institutionalize changes so as to have lasting effects. In At what risk? Correcting over-reliance on contractors in contingency operations, our second interim report to Congress, we are making recommendations that we believe do both. Finally, these recommendations require an investment that the U.S. government must make as it continues to rely on contractors as part of the total force in contingency operations.