Defense Secretary Mark Esper recuses himself from Pentagon cloud review, citing son's employment
Source: Washington Post
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recused himself from a high-profile review of the Pentagon’s controversial JEDI cloud computing infrastructure because his son is employed with one of the contract’s initial bidders, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
Moving forward the review is to be handled by deputy defense secretary David Norquist “out of an abundance of caution,” Defense spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in statement emailed to reporters.
“Although not legally required to, [Esper] has removed himself from participating in any decision making following the information meetings, due to his adult son's employment with one of the original contract applicants,” Hoffman wrote.The statement did not say which company Esper’s son works for, how that information came to the Secretary’s attention, or why he didn’t recuse himself earlier.
It is the latest conflict of interest allegation to present problems for the JEDI contract, which seeks to centralize the military’s computing infrastructure in the hands of a tech company, allowing U.S. military agencies to harness the most advanced innovations Silicon Valley has to offer. Amazon and Microsoft are the only two companies eligible to win the massive award, after Oracle and IBM were eliminated from the competition. Amazon is widely seen as a front-runner award due to its experience handling classified data for the CIA.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/22/defense-secretary-mark-esper-recuses-himself-pentagon-cloud-review-citing-sons-employment/
Why bother?
Everyone else in the administration flaunts ethics rules. The statement even claims "not legally required to", which IMHO is something that Congress needs to fix because they will fire and jail non-appointee civil service personal for similar violations.
= new reply since forum marked as read
