Nonprofit paying McChrystal Group $600,000 to assist with Missouri COVID response
A St. Louis nonprofit will cover up to $600,000 in expenses for a Virginia-based consulting firm led by a retired four-star Army general to assist with Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s COVID-19 response.
The Missouri Foundation for Health confirmed Tuesday that it has agreed to pay the McChrystal Group, founded by retired general Stanley McChrystal, for its work in Missouri.
“While the McChrystal group is not being paid by the state, they are working with the state directly, the state is driving the overall work and management of the project,” said Bob Hughes, president and CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health.
The Star reported last week that McChrystal’s company would be providing project management support for numerous state agencies in the Parson administration as it continued efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19.
However, despite several weeks of inquiries, it was unclear exactly what the company’s role was and how much it was getting paid.
The state provided The Star with the memorandum of understanding between the nonprofit, the company and the state on Wednesday. The Missouri Foundation for Health will pay the McChrystal Group roughly $250,000 a month for work in April and May, along with $50,000 a month in expenses and travel costs.
Asked at his daily press briefing on Monday about the McChrystal Group, Parson said he brought the company to Missouri because the models of coronavirus spread he’d seen were inaccurate.
“A lot of the reporting that was done by a lot of these think tanks from all over the United States was about as poor as poor could be.,” he said. “We have to have Missouri data. I don’t want to rely on east coast. I don’t want to rely on institutions from outside the state. I want to know what’s happening in Missouri. So we brought them in as an advisory group to help with the department of health, to help with what we call a fusion cell.”
His answer drew concern from those who noted that the McChrystal Group does not provide epidemiological modeling to its mostly corporate clients. The company’s website boasts that it helps organizations “tap into human potential in service of stronger business outcomes” by “developing your leaders, implementing strategy and measuring your organization’s performance.”
Parson clarified on Tuesday that the McChystal Group did not help build the state’s coronavirus model.
“This group is a project management piece of the fusion cell,” he said. “Models are created by academics and medical professionals.”
The model developed for Missouri allows state officials to “see the date and magnitude of peaks across our state and gives us an estimate of the transmission rate across a given region,” said Todd Richardson, the state’s Medicaid director.
According to the Office of Administration, the agency that handled contracting and purchasing for state government, the McChrystal Group provides the “structure and management to allow decision makers to determine policies.”
“The McChrystal Group is not doing modeling,” the agency said in an email to The Star. “The group helps pull together information and data to share with analysts and policy-makers. Every state department participates in forums coordinated by the McChyrstal Group and led by state teams (teams include external stakeholders) three times a week to hear new information and discuss policy recommendations.”
McChrystal, 65, was the top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan until he resigned in 2010 following a Rolling Stone article featuring disparaging remarks by McChrystal and his staff about some of then-President Barack Obama’s senior civilian advisers — most notably his vice president, Joe Biden.
His company is also working with the City of Boston to oversee its response to the pandemic at a cost of $458,000 through the end of May, with the option of extending the contract at a rate of $230,000 a month.
More recently, McChrystal has garnered attention for his work advising a political action committee that hopes to combat online efforts to promote President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
It’s doing so by using technology that was originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda.
According to the Washington Post, the PAC will use artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president’s claims on social media and will intervene to boost counter-narratives. In some cases they will pay users with large followings to take sides against the president.
This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Nonprofit paying McChrystal Group $600,000 to assist with Missouri COVID response."
