Scandal Watch - How Exactly Did the Company Hired to Do the Obamacare Website Get the Gig?

The Washington Examiner has this interesting tidbit that ought to blow up quickly into a major scandal as the Obamacare website fiasco continues to unravel:

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.

The multiple awards were in the form of “task orders” for projects of widely varying size. Over the life of the CGI contract — which expires in 2017 — the IT firm can receive awards worth anywhere from the “$1,000 to $4 billion,” according to a contracting document provided by CGI to the Washington Examiner.

Hmmmm.... let's look up the names of the officers of CGI Federal online.   You have to dig two levels deep to get from the CGI officers, to the CGI "US leadership team," to the CGI Federal leadership team.   Here they are:

Donna Ryan
President, CGI Federal
Cheryl Campbell
Senior Vice-President, Health & Compliance Programs and Defense Agency Programs
Barbara Fast
Senior Vice-President, Army & Defense Intelligence Programs
Tim Hurlebaus
Vice-President, National Security Programs
Tom KirkVice-President, Government Secure Solutions CGI Inc.
Toni Townes-Whitley
Senior Vice-President, Civilian Agency Programs

Now, if you parse the descriptions of their duties, I think it's fair to surmise that the two individuals with the most responsibility for the contract with HHS would be Cheryl Campbell and Toni Townes-Whitley.   I could be wrong, but I think it's fair to say that Hurlebaus and Kirk, the two men, based on the descriptions of their positions, weren't involved as much or at all, nor was Fast, while Ryan as the President would have oversight responsibilities.  

So what do we know about Campbell and Townes-Whitley?   Well, they're obviously both women.   And, if you go to their bios and look at their pictures, you also see that they are both African-American women.

Now, I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way.   Both of these women, based on their bios, seem to be highly successful and capable people, with exceptional backgrounds.   Townes-Whitley, for instance, is a graduate of Princeton, my alma mater.   I do note, however, that neither appears to have a technical background.   Townes-Whitley appears to have been a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School for International Affairs.

But I think it's worth asking the question... what are their prior connections to Michelle Obama and/or Valerie Jarrett?  

Well, one place to start would be to note that Ms. Townes-Whitley was at Princeton at the same time as Michelle Obama... both are members of the Class of 1985.   Are they friends?   Did they know each other?   Have they networked through Princeton alumni activities?

Well, they are both listed in the directory of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.   

Hmmmm... that's about 20 minutes of Googling... let's see if the mainstream media can come up with anything more by, say, ASKING THE QUESTION!