Jon »
07 December 2007 »
In DOD, Inspectors General, Iraq, Transparency »
Laura Strickler of the CBS News Investigative Unit reports on CBSNews.com that the Pentagon’s Inspector General has found that a great deal of equipment in Iraq is unaccounted for:
Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.
The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.
The report comes on the same day that Army procurement officials will face tough questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding their procurement policies. One official, Claude Bolton, assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology has already announced his resignation on the heels of sharp criticism of army contracting. Bolton’s resignation is effective Jan. 2, 2008. The Army has significantly expanded its fraud investigations in recent months.
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Jon »
01 November 2007 »
In Food, Inspectors General, Iraq, Transparency, outsourcing, procurement »
The International Herald Tribune reports that a company being paid $1 billion per year to provide meals in Iraq is under investigation for price-gouging. The company, formerly Public Warehousing, now Agility Logistics, appears to be so well-connected that ConAgra, Tyson Foods and Sara Lee were excluded from at least some business. (Scratch the surface here, I’m afraid, and we’ll find firms complaining - nominally - that other peole are stealing - when what they’re
actually upset about is not the stealing - but the
other people who are doing it.
Federal agents are investigating whether several large food companies charged the government excessively high prices for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, according to administration officials.Widening their previously disclosed inquiries into contract fraud and corruption in Kuwait and Iraq, investigators from the Justice and Defense departments are examining deals that Sara Lee, ConAgra Foods and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, officials said.
The inquiry centers on whether the companies overcharged Agility Logistics, a Kuwait-based company formerly named Public Warehousing that is the U.S. Army’s principal food supplier for the war zones. Investigators are also reviewing whether Agility Logistics improperly took payments from the food companies.
Agility Logistics, which supplies enormous amounts of fruits, vegetables and meats for more than 160,000 troops in combat zones, said in a statement that it had done nothing wrong and was fully cooperating with the investigation.
But a Justice Department lawyer, Brian Mizoguchi, told a Federal Claims Court judge in Washington on June 12 that the company’s business arrangements were the target of “a very large and active investigation into criminal fraud involving amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
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Jon »
18 September 2007 »
In Inspectors General, Transparency »
According to an article on the website of The New York Times, Congressman Henry Waxman has Howard J. Krongard in his sights. David Stout and Brian Knowlton (for whom the Times doesn’t have an index page) report that Waxman
sent the inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, a 14-page letter spelling out accusations that he said came from several current and former employees of that office, who documented their charges with e-mails.
- snip -
Some of the accusers have sought “whistleblower” status, which protects government employees who report malfeasance from being punished for doing so, Mr. Waxman said. The accusations are serious and far-reaching, and included assertions that Mr. Krongard has effectively become a political defender of the administration rather than, as his job is meant to be, a studiedly neutral overseer of its spending and practices.
- snip -
Mr. Waxman invited Mr. Krongard to respond to the accusations at a committee hearing on Oct. 16.
- snip -
Since Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Mr. Waxman has made no secret of his relish in probing activities of the Bush administration. One of the more serious accusations against Mr. Krongard is that he interfered with an investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political adviser, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.
Mr. Waxman wrote that Mr. Krongard’s detractors have described “a dysfunctional office environment” in which he routinely bullies and berates employees and shows contempt for the work of career professionals. As a result, turnover has been so high that the inspector general’s office has been severely compromised, Mr. Waxman wrote.
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