NSA – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

President Donald Trump speaks on Jan.

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Microsoft has filed a protest against the National Security Agency at the Government Accountability Office and challenged the award of a cloud computing contract.

The protest filed on July 21 is intended to challenge the NSA’s decision to award the $ 10 billion contract to Amazon, the journals Nextgov and Washington Technology reported on Tuesday.

The NSA deal with Amazon follows the Pentagon’s decision to terminate its $ 10 billion cloud contract known as JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The JEDI deal, embroiled in a lengthy legal battle between tech giants Amazon and Microsoft, had become one of the most tangled contracts for the Pentagon.

The NSA contract, which is also up to 10 billion US dollars, is code-named “WildandStormy” and is intended to modernize the agency’s secret data storage, reported Nextgov.

In a statement to CNBC, a spokesman for the NSA said the agency “recently placed a contract for cloud computing services” and declined to elaborate on the matter.

“The unsuccessful provider has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The agency will respond to the protest in accordance with applicable federal regulations,” added the spokesman.

A Microsoft spokesman told CNBC in a statement: “Based on the decision, we are filing an administrative protest through the Government Accountability Office. We exercise our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly. “

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing unit, referred questions to the NSA.

The lucrative JEDI cloud contract was intended to modernize the IT operations of the Pentagon for services provided for up to 10 years. Microsoft received the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating the market leader AWS.

A month later, AWS filed a lawsuit in the US Federal Court to protest the JEDI decision.

The company argued that former President Donald Trump was biased against Amazon, and that its then CEO Jeff Bezos lobbied the Pentagon to give the contract to Microsoft.

Last year the Pentagon inspector general released a report that the award did not appear to have been influenced by the White House.

However, the Inspector General noted in the 313-page report released in April 2020 that he had limited cooperation with White House officials throughout his review and was therefore unable to complete his assessment of the ethical misconduct allegations.

A Pentagon official said on a call with reporters that the litigation itself is not necessarily the main reason for the change in approach. Given that the landscape had changed in the meantime, the agency found that their needs had changed too.

– CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Lauren Feiner contributed to this article.

WATCH: Department of Defense Chief Information Officer on the decision to terminate the JEDI program

At the Pentagon, Mr. Miller was upset that agency leadership had slowed Mr. Ellis’ installment payments for months despite having gone through the standard hiring process and been selected for the position, a senior US official said. So, Mr. Miller ordered the agency to swear in Mr. Ellis, a move the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

In a statement, the Pentagon defended Mr. Ellis’ hiring, saying he had been duly selected by the Department of Defense General Counsel. “To be clear, the interest of Congress or the media in any particular recruitment measure is not a justification under the merit system policies and procedures to delay the placement of a selected qualified individual in a position,” the statement said.

Mr. Ellis is seen as a shrewd lawyer. But the urge to get him into a permanent government job puzzled some. According to former officials, he will likely enter the General Counsel’s office under high suspicion and have an uphill battle to win General Nakasone’s trust.

Mr. Ellis will serve on the Senior Executive Service, a public service job that offers strong protection against layoffs. However, officers can easily be transferred to the Department of Defense so that he can get a legal position elsewhere in the sprawling department – for example, overseeing environmental compliance on a remote military base.

While on the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Ellis was a trusted advisor to Rep Devin Nunes, Republican of California. Mr. Ellis served in various roles in the Trump administration, including serving as an attorney for the National Security Council and then as White House executive director for intelligence.

At the White House, Mr. Ellis overturned a career official’s decision to put Mr. Bolton’s book open for publication despite having no formal training in the classification of national security information. The Justice Department, under pressure from President Trump, sued Mr Bolton to recover his profits from the book.

A judge overseeing the case issued a ruling Thursday making it very likely that Mr. Bolton’s attorney Charles J. Cooper could question White House officials like Mr. Ellis about whether the classification decisions were made in bad faith were. Should Mr. Ellis serve as General Counsel at least temporarily, he may be able to withhold this testimony.