TCF,
I'm sorry but I will disagree with part of your post.
It does matter who is responsible for this mess. Whoever, they were getting paid to do a job. They failed to carry out that task. That is public money and the tax payers have every right to expect their money not to be wasted and those responsible held to account.
If it was the contractor, what were the CMT doing to ensure there was compliance with the contract?
It is now becoming more popular in today's environment that people of all professions think that they can absolve themselves of responsibility when it goes tits up.