The Pentagon contracts with a private company to handle much of the criminal investigation and trials of accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay who're facing charges of plotting the 9/11 attacks,
BuzzFeed News reports.
And the firm, SRA International, is working with both the prosecution and defense teams, raising concerns about a conflict of interest that could jeopardize the cases, BuzzFeed reports.
"It does surprise me," Laura Dickinson, a professor of national security law at George Washington University, tells BuzzFeed about the outsourcing of the massive terror probe.
"It raises questions about who is running the investigation. The fact that there is so little transparency raises a red flag because we can’t evaluate if there are adequate accountability measures in place."
The role of SRA, a Virginia-based security logistics contracting firm, was contained in a contracting document, Buzz Feed reports.
According to BuzzFeed, the Defense Department has paid SRA almost $39 million over the last five years for the cases of seven accused terrorists — those charged in the 9/11 attacks and two others charged in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen.
SRA has supplied about 45 investigators, intelligence analysts, and others to both the prosecution and defense teams at the military commissions, which are trying the cases at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, BuzzFeed reports.
SRA's "proprietary software" processes evidence in the case, BuzzFeed reports.
"All contractors work for [Office of Military Commission] personnel who oversee their day-to-day work," Lt. Cmdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman for the OMC, tells BuzzFeed.
"They are held to the highest standards of conduct and held accountable to the requirements outlined in the contracts."
According to BuzzFeed, the SRA contract played a role after an SRA security officer assigned to the defense team of a Guantanamo inmate told his employer in 2014 that federal agents had asked him to spy on the very team he was supposed to be helping, BuzzFeed reports.