Duke Letter: At DHS, Responsibility Flows Downhill

OK, to appreciate this, you have to be reminded of the context.

The Department of Homeland Security gave a multimillion dollar contract to a limousine company (Shirlington) owned by an ex-con with a rap sheet a mile long, even though his company had a spotty record of service and shouldn’t have qualifed for the HUBZone status necessary to bid on the contract. And the company seems to have had a definite inside line on winning the contract.

And as we reported Friday, DHS finally turned up the only Congressional letter of recommendation for the company — from a felon who reportedly indulged in prostitutes provided by the limo company’s ex-con owner. This after a DHS official showed up before a House hearing last week and swore they’d looked everywhere and simply could find no record of any such letter — no copy, no record, no one could even remember receiving such a thing.

And here’s their explanation for how that happened:

A department spokesman said the letter was discovered in a folder by an administrative assistant who had read news reports Friday morning about its disappearance.

“She says, ‘Oh, I get those kinds of letters all the time, I just throw them in a folder,” said DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie. “So she starts looking through the folders and finds this letter.”

Maybe the Admin Assistant was responsible for hiring Shirlington too?