It’s been one of the biggest stories of the summer. The battle for a lucrative CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) cloud computing contract between IBM and Amazon has featured attack, counter-attack, and all manner of legalistic name-calling as the two giants battle out for federal cloud supremacy.

While most of the talk has been in the sanctity of legal offices, a lawsuit from Amazon against the Federal Government, made public this week, reveals the true extent of the imbroglio.

The story so far: the CIA initially awarded its $600m private cloud contract to AWS back in Febuary. IBM, not surprisingly, protested against this, as reported by FCW in May.

In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report examining both sides of the argument and, whilst admitting that Amazon’s offer was at the time “the best value” and a “superior technical solution”, made the can-of-worm-opening recommendation that the …