'Only one crooked contractor in Iraq has been brought to justice'

[bigtree]

Operation Iraqi Free Ride

Thanks to administration stonewalling, only one crooked contractor in Iraq has been brought to justice. And there's even more to that story.

By Dean Starkman
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.starkman.html

Last March, Custer Battles, a McLean, Virginia-based security contractor run by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger, and Mike Battles, an occasional FOX News commentator and one-time Republican candidate for Congress, was found by a federal jury to have defrauded the government of $3 million in contracting services in Iraq. Its crime was brought to light by whistleblowers within the company. Among many other tricks, the firm had issued fake invoices and created sham companies to fool its employer into paying for services not provided. Sometimes, Custer Battles was less devious: In one case, according to the trial testimony of retired Brigadier General Hugh Tant III, the company was hired to provide trucks to the military, but the vehicles it procured didn't run, and had to be towed from the site. When confronted, Mike Battles replied: "You asked for trucks...it is immaterial whether the trucks were operational." Tant, who oversaw the contract, called Custer Battles's work "probably the worst I've seen in my 30 years in the army."

Custer Battles is the only CPA-era whistleblower case to go to trial, but a slew of evidence has now emerged pointing to widespread waste, fraud, abuse, and negligence in the awarding and oversight of Iraq reconstruction contracts. Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, wrote in a report that the authority's "less than adequate" financial controls left "no assurance" that $8.8 billion in seized Iraqi funds was used properly. But the Bush administration and its allies have blocked most other high-profile efforts to gather more information about further instances of abuse. The administration has invoked an obscure part of the False Claims Act to prevent all but one of more than 50 whistleblower suits brought by employees of U.S. contractors in Iraq from moving forward to trial. And the Republican Congress has held only cursory hearings on the contracting process.

That essentially means that we'll get little new information on Iraq's reconstruction-contracting disaster unless Congress changes hands in November. But Custer Battles itself may not be so lucky. This summer will likely see the start of the second phase of the company's trial, which will focus on allegations that, on a contract to provide security for Baghdad International Airport (BIAP), Custer Battles short-changed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) by diverting airport guards to other jobs. Whatever the result of that trial, an investigation by The Washington Monthly into Custer Battles's handling of the airport job makes clear that the firm played by its own rules--quickly setting out to expand the size of the area under its control, and resisting, with striking success, attempts by CPA and military authorities to hold it accountable. It also suggests that the chronically disorganized environment in which Custer Battles was operating exacerbated the problems. In this sense, the story of Custer Battles and the Baghdad International Airport offers a window onto the broader shortcomings of a chaotic and failed occupation.

{snip}

. . . the company was operating as if Baghdad were the Wild West--and the chaotic CPA often encouraged this approach. With Iraq's banking system in shambles, contractors were frequently paid from a stash of cash in the basement of the Republican Palace, according to Frank Willis, a Ministry of Transportation (MOT) aide. One day, Willis was working in the MOT offices when someone entered pushing a wheelbarrow filled with $2 million in bricks of $100 bills. A short time later, a team of grim-faced men from Custer Battles strode in, carrying heavy weapons and duffel bags. The men stuffed the cash into bags, piled into a Chevy Suburban, and sped off. A few months later, an official acting as the airport's director emailed officials at the MOT complaining that Custer Battles was taking over big chunks of the airport for Filipino workers, Gurkhas, dogs, and more. "Needless to say, our Iraqi partners are absolutely livid over... Custer Battles's obvious disregard for any type of civilized process of acquiring space," the director wrote. "Nowhere in the civilized world would the airport owner or operator tolerate these actions."

full story: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.starkman.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. I thought shrub was going to be real hard on the evildoers....

I guess it depends on whom you are doing the evil for.... geeeeesh.

[JuniperLea]

2. Must have been the one non-Halliburton subsidiary they could find. n/t

[Rose Siding]

3. No one went to prison for Custer Battle's fraud

Triple damages beats 15 years, but then they didn't steal a few hundred dollars worth of booze after wading through their own filth for days.

[democracyindanger]

4. "Republican Palace"

What an absolutely appropriate name.