by Nick Fishman

An embarrassing article was just published today in the Washington Post revealing that the US Military subcontracted security to private companies that didn’t conduct background checks on their employees.  Even worse, 89 of the subcontractors employees who were assigned to protection details at 46 different military installations had criminal convictions on their records including assaults and other felonies. 

While it should have been the responsibility of the subcontractors to make sure that their employees were thoroughly vetted, it is unconscionable that the military wouldn’t do the same to the subcontractor.  Especially when these contracts were awarded without formal bids. 

In this day and age, it is no longer acceptable to hire individuals without performing some kind of background check.  US businesses don’t need to be convinced.  They’ve caught on and have been utilizing background checks in some format for quite some time.  So how does the military, who is responsible for protecting all of us, overlook such an issue?  I’m sure that there will be answers to come and and plenty of finger pointing to go around.  The bottom line is that this practice must change.   

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.