E-mails: Navy dogs in 'deplorable' conditions with contractor

The task probably seemed innocuous enough when a small team of U.S. Navy personnel accepted it last fall. They would trek out to a private security contractor in Chicago to pick up 49 dogs, then transport them to a nearby military base.

But what they found when they arrived was shocking, according to internal Navy e-mails: dirty, weak animals so thin that their ribs and hip bones jutted out.

The dogs were supposed to have begun working months earlier to sniff out explosives at Navy installations across the country, including several in Hampton Roads. At least that was the plan when, for the first time, the Navy decided to hire an outside contractor to supply K-9s and handlers to help protect dozens of its bases and ships.

But when the dog-handler teams showed up for work last spring, they couldn't find planted explosives during military certification tests, according to the Navy. So the bases sent them back to the contractor, Securitas Security Services USA.

The Navy decided to cut its losses and ended the contract in July, eventually agreeing to buy the 49 Securitas dogs and train and handle them on its own. It sent its team to get the K-9s on Oct. 5.

The Navy declined to discuss what its personnel discovered that day, but according to e-mails obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, the animals appeared starved, neglected and dramatically different from three months earlier, when they failed the military's certification tests.

The e-mails say the Navy picked the dogs up at a warehouse. In one message, a civilian official described their condition as "deplorable." In another, he wrote that he feared the dogs would have died if the military hadn't come to get them.

In fact, the Navy said later, at least two of the dogs did not survive. Several others were deemed too sick to ever be of use. Nearly a year after they were supposed to have begun working, the remaining K-9s still are not patrolling Navy installations as intended.

Securitas disputes that the dogs were poorly trained and neglected. The company says it is owed more than $6 million for its services and for the animals. The Navy appears to have gained little from the deal besides the dogs, which Securitas bought for roughly $465,000, according to the owner of the kennel that sold them.

The Navy wouldn't disclose what it has actually paid out under the botched contract; officials would say only that they're still working to determine exactly how much the Navy owes Lockheed Martin, the defense giant that subcontracted the K-9 work to Securitas.

The story of the contract and its outcomes - wasted resources, the long delay in getting the dogs to work and the severe neglect they allegedly suffered - highlight the risk that accompanies the growing use of private companies to fill jobs that the military used to do itself.

In line with standard practices, Navy officials had little involvement in Lockheed's decision to hire Securitas, whose qualifications to provide explosives-detection dogs have been called into question in the past.

"Unfortunately, when the government isn't doing the work itself, it gives up control over who's doing it and how it's being done, and problems like this are often the result," said Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert in military contracting. "Our military has gotten very good at outsourcing but not very good at oversight."

The state of Illinois has launched an investigation into the dogs' treatment; so far, no criminal charges have been filed. The Virginian-Pilot learned about the matter after the Navy e-mails were leaked to the newspaper.

For decades the military has employed dogs trained to sniff out explosives. Besides protecting domestic bases, detection dogs are now routinely deployed to overseas combat zones to help troops uncover bombs. Properly trained K-9s typically undergo months of preparation and form close bonds with their handlers before going to work. Generally, the military teaches its handlers to see their dogs as partners to whom they should be able to entrust their lives.

"Working dogs - especially explosives dogs - they can be put at great risk in the line of duty," said Harold Bennett, who spent more than a decade training K-9s for the Norfolk Police Department and now serves as president of the North American Police Work Dog Association. "They should be treated accordingly, like a member of the handler's family."

Across all its branches, the military keeps roughly 2,000 working dogs.

The Navy's shift to private explosives-detection K-9s came as part of a decision in 2008 to outsource a number of base security services. In January 2009, Lockheed announced it had signed a $350 million, five-year contract with the military under which it would provide services including surveillance and management of armories at 79 Navy sites across the United States and in Guam.

Part of the contract called for Lockheed to provide explosives-detection dogs to supplement the Navy's own K-9 forces and free up more Navy dogs to deploy overseas. The contractor dogs would be used to screen cars, search barracks and respond to bomb scares at 32 domestic installations, including Norfolk Naval Station, Oceana Naval Air Station, Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, Yorktown Naval Weapons Station and Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

Soon after it signed the agreement, Lockheed subcontracted the K-9 portion to Securitas. The global security firm is best known for its uniformed security guards, who patrol locations ranging from malls and grocery stores to subway systems and overseas military bases. Securitas began offering K-9 services about seven years ago.

Securitas bought the 49 dogs it planned to use for the Navy job from Vohne Liche Kennels, an Indiana-based business that offers work-ready police dogs as well as training courses for handlers.

Between last February and April, Vohne Liche put 50 Securitas employees through three-week handling classes. Most of them came with no experience, said Ken Licklider, a retired Air Force K-9 handler who owns Vohne Liche. He said he charged Securitas roughly $465,000 for both the dogs and the handler training.

Like Securitas, Licklider disputed that the dogs and handlers weren't properly trained when they began reporting for work at Navy bases last spring. He acknowledged that many of them couldn't find planted explosives during military exercises but said they failed only because the tests weren't carried out fairly.

In a written response to questions from The Pilot, the Navy said that as of April 1 - the date all of the dogs were to begin working at the bases to which they'd been assigned - none of the dog-handler teams was able to pass the Navy's certification test. By early July, only 16 of the teams had passed, the Navy said.

By mid-July, the Navy had informed Lockheed that it was canceling the K-9 portion of the contract. By early August, the Securitas handlers had been dismissed and the dogs returned to the company's headquarters in Chicago.

Sometime during the following two months, the Navy decided to buy the Securitas dogs to try to train and handle them with its own personnel. According to Securitas, the Navy agreed to a price of $800,000 - nearly twice what Securitas paid for the dogs.

The Navy's team arrived in Illinois on Oct. 5 to pick up the animals and transport them to the nearby Great Lakes Naval Station. A military working-dog expert based at Norfolk Naval Station, a senior chief petty officer named Victor Solenberger, was promptly called in to evaluate them.

On Oct. 17, Solenberger sent an e-mail to an official at the command overseeing the Lockheed contract. He attached photographs documenting the dogs' appearance. One shows a small shepherd standing at attention, its ribs, hips and shoulder bones protruding sharply.

"After knowing these dogs were lean and (in) working fit condition in Aug, it was astonishing to see the condition we picked these dogs up in," Michael Reid, a Navy civilian official, replied Oct. 18.

He told Solenberger to maintain a "close hold" on the photographs, for fear that news of what happened would reflect poorly on the military.

"I wouldn't want one to pop out into the media unless we were in control of the story line," Reid wrote in the group e-mail.

The Navy reported the condition of the dogs to authorities soon after it picked them up, said Jeff Squibb, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the agency that is now investigating the matter. But Squibb said the Navy waited until mid-December to file a formal abuse complaint, then took weeks longer to respond to the state's follow-up questions.

"My understanding is that our staff was stalled for quite a while because they weren't able to get specifics from the Navy," Squibb said. "So our investigation only recently got under way."

Jim McNulty, an executive vice president with Securitas, said in an interview that the dogs were healthy and well-fed when the company handed them off in October, and he disputed that they were kept in a warehouse.

"They were in excellent shape," he said, adding that Securitas officials have not seen the photographs of the dogs.

McNulty suggested that the alleged neglect might have taken place while the K-9s were in the military's custody. The internal Navy e-mails and photograph appear to discount that; they were sent within days of the date that Securitas confirmed it turned over the animals.

While Securitas also disputes that its dog-handler teams weren't adequately trained, the Navy's experience did not mark the first time that the abilities of Securitas' K-9s have been called into question. In 2006 the Chicago Sun-Times conducted an investigation in which it hired an undercover tester to repeatedly carry explosives past a Securitas bomb-sniffing dog and handler assigned to protect the Chicago area's Metra commuter rail system. The dog and handler failed to react or discover the explosives, even when they were set down in front of the dog, the Sun-Times reported.

Securitas and Metra countered that the newspaper's test was unfair because the dog hadn't been commanded to actively sniff for explosives. The Sun-Times investigation also documented Securitas handlers sitting around and talking for hours at a time instead of patrolling, the newspaper said.

Squibb said the state of Illinois has received only one other report of abuse against Securitas besides the Navy's since the company first obtained its animal license in 2003. That complaint involved allegations that a Securitas handler was seen treating his dog roughly; it was dropped after the handler quit.

McNulty said Securitas is "working every day" to try to collect the $6 million it says it's owed from the Navy deal. He said the company hasn't received any money for its work under the contract or for the dogs; Lockheed said in a written statement that Securitas has been paid in part but didn't disclose how much.

Through e-mail, a Lockheed spokesman answered basic questions about the Navy contract, but the company declined to respond to further inquires about the dogs' performance and about their treatment before the Navy bought them.

Navy officials wouldn't answer any questions about their abuse claim against Securitas, citing the ongoing state investigation. The Navy also would not make available for interviews any personnel with direct knowledge of the contract and how it played out.

In a written statement, the Navy said it expects 39 of the original 49 dogs to eventually patrol installations as intended. Several are now being cared for and trained at bases in the Hampton Roads area. The military is in the process of hiring and prepping its own civilian handlers to pair with the dogs.

Navy officials contended that the delay in getting the animals to work has not diminished security at the places where they were to be assigned. Bases are simply making do with fewer bomb-sniffing dogs, they said.

Singer, of the Brookings Institution, said failures such as those resulting from the Navy K-9 contract will probably become more widespread as the military service contracting industry continues to boom - mostly because measures to ensure proper government oversight have lagged sorely behind.

He added that the growing use of subcontractors has increased instances of wasteful spending and poor contractor performance.

"It's raised a lot of questions about what's appropriate to outsource, whether it's being done in a business-smart manner, and whether the work is being done ethically," Singer said. "Unless we enact policy solutions to keep it in check, the problems will only get worse."

Securitas continues to handle working dogs.

Officials with the company couldn't say how many it now owns, but its Web site states that it keeps at least 60 ready for immediate deployment.

Corinne Reilly, (757) 446-2949, corinne.reilly@pilotonline.com