If her bosses were upset over the contractor's foot-dragging, they didn't show it, according to an auditor who attended the meeting, which included Christopher Andrezze, director of the agency's Western region.
Five days later, the agency issued a report rating Bechtel's internal accounting procedures as "adequate," a passing grade that meant defense auditors could ease up on the company. The report made no mention of the records delays.
DCAA is the first line of defense for the public in policing billions of dollars in defense contracts awarded by the government's top-spending department. In theory, the audit agency has extensive powers, including withholding payments and issuing subpoenas, to force contractors to provide the necessary information.
The reality is quite different.
The Bechtel episode illustrates how tolerant the agency can be when defense contractors slow the government's access to paper records and databases. There is no way to know how often DCAA withholds payments because it does not keep track. And it has not used its subpoena power in 20 years.
"We have been basically on the trust system for years," said the auditor who attended the May meeting. "It did not work on Wall Street and it is not working for federal contracts," said the two-decade veteran of the agency who spoke on condition of anonymity because DCAA employees are not allowed to publicly discuss their work.
Negotiation, not confrontation, is the usual method for prying hard-to-get data loose from companies that make weapons or support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the numbers show that approach is too cozy when the need for tough oversight is greater than ever.
In 2007 alone, DCAA performed nearly 34,000 audits covering $391 billion in contractor costs. Of that total, auditors challenged $4.6 billion, or 1.2 percent, as lacking necessary documentation. The question is, how much more could they have caught?
"I start salivating thinking about how much money is involved and the savings that are potentially there," Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said at a congressional hearing in September.
