Opinion ID: 666055
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the existence of bias

Text: 135 We have previously discussed and found merit in each of Latecoere's three contentions that summary judgment against it was improper because there is strong evidence that the decision to award the contract to ETC instead of Latecoere was irrational and resulted from prejudicial violations of procurement regulations. There is another reason that the summary judgment against Latecoere must be reversed. As the following evidence demonstrates, bias against Latecoere infected the decision not to award it the contract: 136 (1) Michael McDonald, senior procurement analyst for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy attached a note to the G-TIP clearance memorandum that stated that an award to a French company could be a political hot potatoe [sic] and asked, [d]on't we have to apply Buy American factors? 137 (2) Assistant Director Frank Ford admitted that, while meeting with the Training Center's officials to discuss the G-TIP clearance memorandum, he stated that an award to a French company could present political problems. 138 (3) G-TIP procurement Contracting Officer Cheryl Hall testified that, during one of the meetings that included Selection Authority Robert Urban, she was asked whether either Latecoere or ETC was likely to protest if the other was selected for the award, and that she replied that Latecoere was not likely to protest an award to ETC, but ETC was likely to protest an award to Latecoere. 139 (4) Captain Kalapos, the Training Center's Director of Contracts, testified that he told Advisory Council members that in his opinion the Training Center could not make an award to an offeror who had a marginal rating in a critical chapter. He then stated: [E]ither fix the ___ ____ thing or I'm not going to make [an] award. Thereafter, without any re-evaluation of ETC's marginal-rated critical chapters, the Advisory Council simply increased ETC's marginal ratings in those chapters to acceptable. 140 (5) A Training Center official testified that during one of Selection Authority Urban's meetings with the Advisory Council, Urban stated that the American companies might apply political heat if the award went to a foreign company. 141 (6) Selection Authority Urban testified that, shortly before he made his selection, there were persistent rumors that Assistant Director Ford opposed an award to a French company. 142 (7) The selection process initially identified Latecoere's proposal as the one offering the best technical performance and best value, but after politics, the nationalities of the offerors, and Buy American factors were articulated, the same process moved inexorably and irrationally toward selection of an inferior-rated, but politically safer, domestic corporation (ETC). 143 The district court stated that this evidence did not demonstrate the existence of bias or other improper behavior. As its sole explanation for this conclusion, the district court quoted the following passage from its earlier order refusing to reconsider its denial of a preliminary injunction: 144 The defendants concede that [Selection Authority Urban] contacted [Assistant Director Ford] regarding a rumor that [Ford] did not want the contract to go to a foreign firm. However, the record shows that [Ford] emphatically informed [Urban] that no such bias existed and [that] the fact that Latecoere was French company should not enter into [Urban's] best value determination. 145 We cannot agree that, by the simple expedient of denying bias, a government official can wipe away all evidence of it. 146 Even were we to consider only Assistant Director Ford, his actions evidencing bias speak louder than his words denying it. When the matter came to him, the forty or so experts of the Evaluation Board, after carefully studying all of the proposals, had found that only Latecoere and another offeror were capable of satisfying the requirements for constructing the system; ETC was not. The Advisory Council, composed of the senior officials of the Training Center, had agreed with that finding and recommended that the contract be awarded to Latecoere. The original Selection Authority, Daniel Rowley, had chosen Latecoere, warning in a selection decision document that the proposals of ETC and two other domestic corporations were unacceptable and that awarding the project to an unacceptable offeror, such as ETC, would risk the loss of human lives. In the face of all of those uniform recommendations--and in spite of the warnings about human lives being at stake--Ford refused to sign off on the decision to award the contract to Latecoere. Instead, after his senior procurement analyst raised Buy American considerations and political ramifications, Ford demanded that negotiations be conducted with all the companies no matter how unacceptable their offers were. Furthermore, Ford did so only after expressing his own concern about the political problems of awarding the contract to a French company when American companies had been found to be outside the competitive range. Whatever Ford may have said later when pinned down and speaking on the record, the evidence strongly supports the inference that his actions manifested bias. Those actions sent a message that was heard--and responded to--during the remainder of the G-TIP procurement process.