Shirlington Limo Loses Iraq WarWell, maybe not exactly. But they screwed up a field trip to Gettysburg for some of the Pentagon’s leaders-in-training last year.
Surely you recall Shirlington Limo — the company, run by an ex-con, who allegedly ferried former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) and prostitutes to parties and trysts at D.C.’s Watergate hotel and elsewhere.
In 2004, Cunningham wrote the company a letter of recommendation to the Homeland Security Department, and the company later won curious multi-million-dollar contracts to transport the agency’s top officials and staff in limos and shuttle buses.
Now, it turns out they had contracts with the Pentagon, too. At least, with a tendril of it: the National Defense University. (Thanks to TPMm Reader CP for the tip.)
Dave Thomas — not the deceased founder of Wendy’s, but a spokesman for NDU, which educates military leadership — confirmed that two colleges within the university hired Shirlington Limo. And boy, did they learn their lesson.
The schools had hired Shirlington last year to provide bus service for annual September field trips to Gettysburg. There, Thomas told me, the students would “walk the battlefield and discuss the types of decisions the commanders had to make.” Think about strategy, communications, that kind of thing. (Thomas assured me the schools put the bus contracts out for competitive bidding, and Shirlington won them fair and square.)
Except the buses never came. “The day they were supposed to pick up the students — they didn’t,” Thomas explained. “The buses didn’t show up.”
The schools cancelled both contracts and never paid Shirlington a penny, the spokesman told me. The students went on the trip — several weeks later, and using a different bus company, Thomas said.
