State Dept. Inspector General impedes investigations into contractor abuse
Wed Sep 19, 2007 at 09:27:24 PM PDT
One thing I haven't seen covered here today (and I will delete if so) is Representative Henry Waxman's letter (pdf) to State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard yesterday.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has been following this in their story "What a Tangled Web We Weave"
What they are referring to are the allegations leveled by Waxman against State's IG for blocking and impeding investigations into cases concerning contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fraternal relation of the IG to former CIA Executive Director Buzzy Krongard who was instrumental in an early and important in-the-door contract for Blackwater.
Waxman's letter levels several allegations, the first four of which involve stymied investigations of contracting waste, fraud or abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan under State Department assignment:
The allegations made by these officials are not limited to a single unit or project within your offrce. Instead, they span all three major divisions of the Office of Inspector General -investigations, audits, and inspections. The allegations were made by employees of varied rank, ranging from line staff to upper management.
One consistent element in these allegations is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush Administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud, and abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers. According to the officials, your strong affinity with State Department leadership and your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports, and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies. The officials also report that you are dismissive of your statutory obligations to Congress.
Some of the specific allegations include the following:
• Although the State Department has expended over $3.6 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, you refused to send any investigators to those countries to pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud and have concluded no fraud investigations relating to the contracts.
• You prevented your investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq and followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.
• You prevented your investigators from seizing evidence that they believed would have implicated a large State Department contractor in procurement fraud in Afghanistan.
• You impeded efforts by your investigators to cooperate with a Justice Department probe into allegations that a large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into lraq.
MSNBC reported last night that #4 above right there was Blackwater (youtube) smuggling weapons in.
POGO shows the connections:
In an article on the revolving door between Blackwater and the revolving door, Harper's Ken Silverstein noted:
Robert Young Pelton, author of the new book, Licensed to Kill, says that an early Blackwater contract—a secret no-bid $5.4 million deal with the CIA—came in 2002 after Prince placed a call to Buzzy Krongard, who was then the CIA's executive director.
Buzzy Krongard worked alongside Cofer Black, now Blackwater's vice chairman, who was director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center until 2002. After his tenure at the CIA, Cofer Black worked at the State Department as its Ambassador-at-Large — a roving ambassador — for counterterrorism, before going to work at Blackwater in February 2005.
In addition to that, the parent company of Blackwater, the Prince Group, hired former Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz as its chief operating officer and general counsel in 2005 as he was coming under suspicion for also engaging in inappropriate acts that compromised the integrity and independence of the Pentagon Office of Inspector General. Schmitz was investigated by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency's Integrity Committee and exonerated, though questions remain about the PCIE investigation, one source tells POGO (more on this hopefully to come).
So, Blackwater's Joseph Schmitz, who knows the ins and outs of IG investigations, works with Blackwater's Cofer Black, who worked with the brother (Buzzy Krongard)--who may have helped Blackwater out early on himself--of the Inspector General (Howard Krongard) responsible for investigating Blackwater. It's a small world indeed.
It should be noted that Blackwater's main contracts are under the Worldwide Protective Services contract which includes DynCorp and Triple Canopy. This is a State Department contract and Blackwater is operating mainly in Iraq as an agent of the State Department.
The fact that the State Department is the diplomatic wing of the Executive Branch makes the allowances granted to Blackwater especially bizarre. On top of that, the position in the State Department to ensure operations and contracts are held to the highest level.... is staffed with a political adherent who has some interest in minimizing investigations of corruption of contractors contracted to represent the State Department abroad.
How this helps even the Bush Administration's concept of progress in Iraq is beyond me. It just makes no sense to not have strong oversight. Coupled with this recent shoot-out, where Blackwater was representing the State Department, there needs to be immediate hearings and discussions on just how this Administration is handling contracting on every level.
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