The National Nuclear Security Administration is considering reducing already-earned fee of several weapons complex contractors after the Department of Energy Inspector General revealed former Congresswoman Heather Wilson was paid more than $450,000 for undocumented work as a consultant from 2009 to 2011 while she was out of Congress. Wilson, a five-term Republican and former Pete Domenici protégé who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate last year, worked as a consultant for Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Nevada National Security Site, but an investigation by the IG suggested “serious concerns” with the management of Wilson’s agreements, revealing that Wilson did not provide details about the nature and scope of her work before being paid, which is required by federal regulations. The agreements with Wilson were terminated before Wilson announced her candidacy for Senate in 2011. She is scheduled to take over as the head of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology next week, and was named by House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to the Congressionally mandated NNSA governance panel earlier this year. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a nuclear watchdog group based in Albuquerque, called on Wilson to resign from the panel yesterday.
Weapons Complex Monitor Vol. 29 No. 10
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Morning Briefing
Article of 11
March 17, 2014
LAB CONSULTING PAYMENTS TO HEATHER WILSON QUESTIONED BY DOE IG
Calling the circumstances surrounding the agreements with Wilson “unusual and, in some instances, highly irregular,” the IG said there were no deliverables associated with ORNL and NNSS payments to Wilson. Los Alamos and Sandia provided some information to the IG that supported her work, but the IG said the information did not meet “even minimum standards” for federal acquisition requirements. Wilson was paid $226,378 by Sandia, $195,718 by Los Alamos, and a total of $30,000 from ORNL and NNSS. “The Department’s facility contractors failed to include, or did not enforce, terms in the consulting agreements that would have required HWC [Heather Wilson and Company, LLC] to provide details regarding the nature and scope of work performed prior to payment,” the IG said. “Instead, we discovered that the contractors made payments to HWC based on invoices that lacked the detail necessary to support that the agreed-to services had been provided.” The NNSA said it has recovered $442,887 from the contractors, and DOE is in the process of recovering the remainder from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. DOE is also examining whether to go after award fee previously paid to the contractors. “The Department will look into whether the contractors engaged in any conduct that would support a decision to revoke the completed award fee determinations and authorize revising the fee retroactively,” DOE said in a May 17 response to the IG report.
The IG also suggested that some of the work done by Wilson for Los Alamos and Sandia included business development, which was prohibited under the agreements with the labs. “Despite these prohibitions, our examination of relevant documentation at both Sandia and Los Alamos tend to indicate such activities did occur,” the IG said. In separate statements, Los Alamos and Sandia admitted to not adequately documenting Wilson’s work, but defended her value as a consultant. “We believe it was reasonable and appropriate to seek the services of Ms. Wilson,” Los Alamos spokesman Fred deSousa said. “She is uniquely qualified to advise the Lab on a variety of issues related to our national security missions. … Nevertheless, we acknowledge we did not document her services consistent with our own expectations for subcontract management. We are taking internal steps to avoid similar concerns with future consulting agreements and take very seriously our obligations to be good stewards of taxpayer funds.” Sandia spokeswoman Heather Clark said Wilson’s “independent advice was valuable and helped Sandia meet its obligation to the nation to better understand and anticipate rapidly shifting national security challenges.” She added: “Although specific invoices did not detail all the work performed by Wilson, Sandia has received commensurate value in support of Sandia’s and NNSA’s missions. However, Sandia acknowledges that elements of our oversight on Wilson’s contracts did not meet our own high standards for documenting such agreements.”
Wilson declined an interview request, but said in a statement that the IG report “confirms that the labs were satisfied with my work. The work was done in full compliance with the contracts we signed and under the direct supervision of lab sponsors. The labs should be commended for addressing problems like intelligence and cyber that are beyond DOE’s nuclear weapons mission and I was happy to advise them in that effort. I have always supported the good work of our national labs and I will continue to do so.”