No bid contract

palantir? trump kid drones? reflecting pool

an 7 26

Trump's no-bid contract spree is worse than anyone thought —and it's just the beginning

FRIDAY,SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

U.S. Wasting Billions While Tripling No-Bid Contracts After Decade of War in Iraq, Afghanistan

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, a pair of new reports reveal how the Pentagon has squandered tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts.The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that between $31 billion and $60 billion spent on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been lost to waste and fraud.In Afghanistan, the commission found the United States is indirectly funding the Taliban as money diverted from U.S.-backed projects is paid out to militants to ensure safety. Meanwhile,the Pentagon’s use of no-bid contracts has tripled since the United States was attacked on 9/11, in spite of promises to reform the controversial practice. A new investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity says no-bid spending has ballooned from $50 billion in 2003 to $140 billion in 2011. We speak with Charles Tiefer, a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School, and with Sharon Weinberger of the Center for Public Integrity, author of the investigative series "Windfalls of War." "There are as many contractors in the war zone as there are soldiers. But we haven’t adjusted our thinking for it. We haven’t adjusted our structure for it," Tiefer says. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZALEZ: As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, a pair of new reports have just come out revealing how the Pentagon has squandered tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts. The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting has concluded that between $31 billion to $60 billion spent on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years have been lost to waste and fraud. In Afghanistan, the commission found the U.S. is indirectly funding the Taliban as money diverted from U.S.-backed projects is paid out to militants to ensure safety.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s use of no-bid contracts has tripled since the United States was attacked on 9/11, in spite of promises to reform the controversial practice. According to a new investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity, no-bid spending has ballooned from $50 billion in 2003 to $140 billion in 2011.

We’re joined by two guests in Washington, D.C. Charles Tiefer is a member of the Wartime Contracting Commission, a professor of government contracting at University of Baltimore Law School. And Sharon Weinberger, journalist and author of aninvestigative series for the Center for Public Integrity on the no-bid contracts called "Windfalls of War."

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Charles Tiefer of the Wartime Contracting Commission. What were your major findings?

CHARLES TIEFER: Well, Amy, as you mentioned, we found that there had been between $31 billion and up to $60 billion of waste, that there was a lack of—shocking lack of competition, that we are—besides that waste, we are also building billions of dollars of unsustainable contracts that, after we withdraw, either we’ll have to continue funding or will collapse, and that we have moved in the military and in State and AID to depending on contractors. There are as many contractors in the war zone as there are soldiers. But we haven’t adjusted our thinking for it. We haven’t adjusted our structure for it. We need to change a lot to deal with the new way war is conducted with contractors.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Charles Tiefer, apparently, much of the expenditures, not so much in terms of weapons or hard materials of war, but the services that many of these contractors provide, what kind—what’s the difference in the kind of oversight that the Pentagon has over weapon systems as opposed to the services?

CHARLES TIEFER: Well, that’s exactly right, Juan. In World War II, what we bought from contractors were munitions. And when we buy munitions today from contractors, by and large, we buy them in the United States. They can be inspected here. Even the factories that make them can be inspected here. So, we have oversight. In contrast, what we buy in Iraq and in Afghanistan are services like dining facilities, like private security for convoys and for static places like forts and camps, like translation services for the—we hire through contractors the thousands of translators we need. And we don’t have a good system for overseeing these. Basically, we hire the contractor, and to some extent, we don’t find out if the contractor is providing the quality that we need of these services.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharon Weinberger, can you name names? Can you talk about exactly what contractors are getting what?

SHARON WEINBERGER:Well, you know, it’s—there are some of the more well known contracts that are not necessarily what are called sole-source contracts, but are considered noncompetitive. I think the most famous one is the 2001 contract that went toKBR for basically—for base services, the LOGCAP contract, which over 10 years has grown to $37 billion.And it’s basically $37 billion in 10 years of work that hasn’t been competed. But, you know, it’s less about the companies than about how the government—and in this case, the Pentagon—actually conducts its business.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, KBR was owned by Halliburton, which was headed by Cheney before he was vice president.

SHARON WEINBERGER: Right. And the questions that were raised about that contract and similar sort of, you know, long-term umbrella contracts is, you know, how do you know that you’re getting anything at the price you should? I mean, there were, I think, upwards of 37 referrals for possible fraud in the contract. It was almost unprecedented in the number of billing irregularities, in fraud referrals, and in just basically waste, fraud and abuse. And the company, KBR, comes back and says, "Well, why are you demonizing us?" And they may have a point there, that it’s less about which company has the contract than basically the contract—the way the contract is set up that sort of sets itself up to fail and to waste money.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I also noted, Sharon, that there was a—one of the contracts or several contracts had to do with about a billion dollars spent on Russian helicopters for Afghanistan and Iraq. Why Russian helicopters? And why was this a noncompetitive bid?

SHARON WEINBERGER: This is one of the sort of more, you know, mysterious contracts. The reason for buying Russian helicopters for countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, there is a justification for that, which is, you know, we need to quickly equip the militaries there so that they can defend themselves, so that they can have a functioning military and eventually the U.S. can withdraw. And so, the argument that’s gone back some, you know, seven, eight, nine years is, well, these are countries that operated Russian and, before that, Soviet equipment. You know, they know how to fly Russian helicopters.

But no one actually ever really examined the logic. No one had an open competition. And between U.S. helicopters or Russian helicopters, somebody just made that decision and went forward. And in the meantime, even if you want to buy Russian helicopters, there are a number of companies that sell them. But instead, this year, the Pentagon basically gave a contract for $375 million to a Russian entity that was on a sanctions list for two years for selling to Iran and Syria. And it’s not necessarily that there’s evil intentions. There’s just absolutely no—there’s no oversight of it. And nobody really questions why people are doing the things they’re doing.

AMY GOODMAN: As a presidential candidate and also as president, Obama was a vocal critic of no-bid war contracts. This is what he said in March of 2009, less than two months after taking office.

PRESIDENTOBAMA:Last year, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, looked into 95 major defense projects and found cost overruns that totaled $295 billion. Let me repeat. That’s $295 billion in wasteful spending.And this wasteful spending has many sources. It comes from investments in unproven technologies. It comes from a lack of oversight. It comes from influence peddling and indefensible no-bid contracts that have cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.

We will stop outsourcing services that should be performed by the government and open up the contracting process to small businesses. We will end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contractsthat run up a bill that is paid by the American people. And we will strengthen oversight to maximize transparency and accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Professor Tiefer, who’s on the Wartime Contracting Commission, the contract competition history has ballooned from $50 billion in 2003 to $140 billion in 2011. And as the massive debate goes on around the deficit and how to pay for it, this is rarely mentioned. This has ballooned to $140 billion in 2011.

CHARLES TIEFER:There’s no question that while President Obama came in—and you quoted his—you had the recording of his statement when he came in—enthusiastic for more competition, there has not been follow-through. During the budget debates, you do not see enough real reform. The commission looked and found that the current system for providing services, logistic services, like dining facilities, depends on what we called mini-monopolies. There is one company,Fluor, that gets all the logistics work in northern Afghanistan, the new work. There is one company, DynCorp, that gets all the logistics work in southern Afghanistan. And so, there’s no competition over the billions of dollars in new work. None at all.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But, Charles Tiefer, why is that? I mean, were you able to determine whether this was a policy decision from the top, or was this—because you could understand in the first year or two of a war, but now these two conflicts are the longest conflicts in U.S. history, and by now, the argument that you could only do sole-source or noncompetitive bidding should have gone by the wayside. How is this continuing?

CHARLES TIEFER: Well, that’s—we—the commission held two dozen hearings, several of which were on this subject. We had the top officials in the Pentagon came in. And when we asked them, "Why haven’t you made changes?" — let me give you another example, although—which is—could fit with the previous ones: a $2 billion contract for bringing in bulk food commodities in Afghanistan to Supreme Foodservice. Its time was up. It was supposed to be competed. They weren’t ready to compete it. It was extended another $2 billion. And when we asked why, the answer came back, "Well, we weren’t ready. We didn’t have the people. We didn’t have the preparations ready to conduct a competition of that." The Under Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary Carter, I asked this, and he said, "Well, you just sometimes have to extend these contracts. It’s the wrong thing to stop the incumbent at the end of them."

AMY GOODMAN: So, as particularly the Republican lawmakers say, "If we’re going to aid these states that are ravaged by Hurricane Irene, first we have to see how we’re going to cut the deficit," it looks like the Pentagon, in this situation, is absolutely a key area of focus. Sharon Weinberger, can you talk about these no-bid contracts, the companies that use—that get them, and the amount of money they spend on lobbying to get them?

SHARON WEINBERGER:You know, the problem, I’m not so sure, is necessarily the lobbying to get them. I think I agree more with sort of what Charles Tiefer is saying, that there’s sort of a lack of ability or willingness to address the core problems in the Pentagon. You know, when I asked the Pentagon, for example, "OK, you have this memo out. You know, you have Obama’s memo. You have a Pentagon memo about decreasing sole-source contacting, decreasing no-bid contacting. What are your actual goals?" and they said, "Well, our goal is to increase competitive contracting by two percent," well, thePentagon only competes right now 60 percent of its contract dollars, which is lower than any other major federal agency. And so, if your goal is two percent improvement, and you haven’t achieved that—I mean, over the two years since these—since Obama first said that he wants to sort of get rid of, to decrease no-bid contacting, there has been zero improvement, at least for the Pentagon. So I really think that that is the core of the problem. Companies certainly do lobby to get and keep contracts, but I think that the reform has to come from the Pentagon itself.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, Sharon, I wanted to ask you about another concrete example: the situation where the Pentagon apparently gave a contract to a firm that was actually a separate creation of Blackwater, but Pentagon officials didn’t even know that—Blackwater, the notorious firm that had all of the problems with the abuses of some of its employees overseas. How is it that the Pentagon didn’t even know that this was a Blackwater effective subsidiary?

SHARON WEINBERGER:Well, this, again, is the structure of the contract. So what happened was, is Blackwater, which has now renamed itself Xe Services, when it really started having problems and getting publicity for a lot of the things that were going on, it started using sort of different names under subsidiaries. And the accusation was that they were sort of hiding their identity. In this case, there was a subsidiary calledParavant, a subsidiary of Blackwater, that had a training contract in Afghanistan. And it came out during a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation that this was indeed Blackwater.

And the Pentagon probably didn’t know, because this is, again—the contract to the Blackwater entity was awarded under a large sort of umbrella contract, meaning a company above them. In this case, I believe it wasRaytheon had the main contract, and then, below them, there were subcontractors.So, you have all these levels of pass through, where you have one company that has an umbrella, that money then goes down to other subprimes working for the main company. And the Pentagon has a real problem with overseeing where is the money going, who is doing it, who is performing on it. And it took, you know, a Senate investigation to bring that out.

AMY GOODMAN: So, these wartime no-bid contracts, Charles Tiefer, have tripled. What are your recommendations right now?

CHARLES TIEFER: Well, the commission recommended that the Pentagon—and also the problem even goes further, State Department, Agency for International Development, but the Pentagon is the big one—should set goals to make real percentage increases in competition and meet them. And this would—it would take legislation to do—to make sure that this is done. But we also stated the specific methods that the Pentagon could use to do this. A lot of these no-bid arrangements have been done by a thing called "task orders." What Sharon was talking about with KBR’s $36—$37 billion were task orders to provide increments, annual increments, for KBR of their services. And what we explain is that there should be requirements the task orders not be given out in a effectively noncompetitive way, but that if there’s a situation where you’re not seeing competition on some billion-dollar or $2 billion task order, that you require that competition occur, that you—that instead of just having it in a closed set of companies that one company or one or two that can make bids, that you open it up, and you get full and open competition on those.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, is there anything you wish were included in the report that did not get included, from the Wartime Contracting Commission?

CHARLES TIEFER: Well, this was a bipartisan commission, and with all the trouble you sometimes see between the two parties, the four Republicans and the four Democrats worked together. I am quite satisfied with what’s in there. In a perfect world, changes continue to occur in Afghanistan, including problems, and I wish we could stay with it, but our time was up. And our report speaks for itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Tiefer, thanks for being with us, on the Wartime Contracting Commission. Sharon Weinberger, author of the investigative series for the Center for Public Integrity on no-bid contracts called "Windfalls of War." She’s also a professor of government—he is a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School.end

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opinion/03iht-edblack.1.7733227.html

oct 2007 op ed nyt

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration would take any opportunity to reward its political friends with lavish no-bid contracts. Still, there is something particularly unseemly about the munificent payments to Blackwater, the State Department's principal private security contractor in Iraq.

With many Iraqis still seething after Blackwater guards killed at least eight Iraqis two weeks ago, it is evident that Blackwater and other security contractors are undermining the military's efforts to win over Iraqis.

Now an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has underscored the lavish extent of Blackwater's payments and its relationship to the Bush administration. The committee, which held hearings on the use of security contractors in Iraq on Tuesday, should investigate these links further.

Former Bush administration officials are peppered throughout Blackwater's highest executive positions.Erik Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded the company, was a White House intern under President George H. W. Bush and has been a Republican financier since, with more than $225,000 in political contributions.

Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and a "pioneer" who raised $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. Her husband, the former Amway chief executive Richard DeVos Jr., was the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan in 2006.

Prince denied Tuesday that his connections had anything to do with it, but he certainly has done well under the Bush administration.Federal contracts account for about 90 percent of the revenue of Prince Group holdings, of which Blackwater is a subsidiary. Since 2001, when it made less than $1 million in federal contracts, Blackwater has received more than $1 billion in such contracts - including at least one with the State Department for hundreds of millions of dollars that was awarded without open, competitive bidding.

The congressional investigation found that Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day for each private military operative - more than six times the wage of an equivalent soldier. And still it uncovered instances of overcharging. It reported that an audit in 2005 by the State Department's inspector general found Blackwater was charging separately for "drivers" and "security specialists" who were, in fact, the same people.

The fallout from Blackwater's heavy-handed tactics is a reminder of the folly of using a private force to perform military missions in a war zone. These jobs need to be brought back into government hands as soon as practicable, and remaining private contractors placed under the jurisdiction of military law.

Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the oversight committee,said Tuesday that if private contractors are meant to provide security on the cheap, it's not working. "It's costing us more money," he said, "and I believe it's causing us problems." Blackwater's contracts should spur Congress to further investigate the Bush administration's practice of using Iraq to slip rich deals to its friends.

3/10 nyt earmark rules change

WASHINGTON — Jolted by a sudden tightening of the rules, lobbyists and military contractors who have long relied on lucrative earmarks from Congress were scrambling Thursday to find new ways to keep the federal money flowing.

“The playing field has changed dramatically,” said Michael H. Herson, a lobbyist in Washington whose firm, American Defense International, represents numerous defense industry contractors who have already put in their requests this year for earmark money.

Those clients, who along with hundreds of other businesses got $1.7 billion last year through the controversial practice of awarding earmarks, will now be barred from receiving money under a new policy adopted Wednesday by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.

House Republicans, seeking to outdo the Democrats in ethics reform, went even further Thursday by agreeing to swear off all earmarks, for both nonprofit and commercial organizations, for the next year.

Continue reading the main story

RELATED COVERAGE

• http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/earmarks/index.html:{Times Topic: Earmarks:(style="padding-right:0.75em"):}:

“This is the best day we’ve had in a while,” said Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has been a fierce opponent of earmarks — no-bid contracts directed by lawmakers — but had found little support among Republican colleagues before this week. “In terms of us getting this moratorium, the stars were aligned. What the Democrats did certainly motivated the Republicans.”

snopes

Claim:HealthCare.gov was developed on a no-bid contract at a cost overrun of $634 million by a Canadian company selected because they donated $47 million to the Obama campaign and employ Michelle Obama's classmate as a top executive.

mostly false (but on wash exam, daily caller etc

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/whitley.asp#z8wvtBC46tsFyeaE.99

==

bs ryuns:

In 2003, Halliburton Company received a great deal of scrutiny from the establishment press over certain no-bid contracts obtained in connection with the Iraq War. Examples, two of which are from the Associated Press, are here, here, and here. A Google News Archive Search on "Halliburton no-bid" not in quotes allegedly returns 1,760 items (Google's counter is suspect, but the list extends to at least 19 pages, or well over 190 items, including multiple items in some listings).

In 2010, the Washington Times was virtually alone among media outlets in reporting that the Obama administration, despite presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign promise never to entertain such deals, had entered into a no-bid contract with KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, "worth as much as $568 million." It turns out that CGI, the Canadian company which is the lead firm in the design and rollout of HealtCare.gov, also has a no-bid contract with the federal government. But an AP search on "CGI no-bid" (not in quotes) comes up empty. A Google News search on the same string (not in quotes) returns only four times, none of which are establishment press outlets (as would be expected, the Washington Times is one of the four).

The AP has mentioned CGI — barely, in a story on upcoming House hearings by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Alan Fram:

On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will line up contractors, including CGI Federal, the lead developer of the website, and QSSI, which designed a back-room operation known as the federal data services hub. The hub is integral to verifying applicants' personal information and income details, and the administration says it is working as designed.

... CGI vice president Cheryl Campbell said the administration was the "quarterback" of the entire effort.

Richard Pollock at the Washington Examiner, on the other hand, had meaningful details over a week ago, incudling (no story about the Obama administration is without it) a tieback to the Bush 43 administration (bolds are mine):

- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/10/23/unlike-halliburton-bush-43-era-no-bid-nature-cgi-contract-media-kept-sec#sthash.nsrANV3p.dpuf

==

When President Bush announced “Mission Accomplished,” and the end of the war in May 2003, he also said we would help the citizens of Iraq rebuild their country. “Now that the dictator’s gone,” he stated, “we and our coalition partners are helping Iraqis to lay the foundations of a free economy.”

Apparently he was referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority that took up residence in Saddam’s luxurious palace in May 2003, with the newly appointed King, Paul Bremer. The CPA was granted the authority to award reconstruction contracts in Iraq and it used that authority to implement what will go down in the history books as the most blatant war profiteering scheme of all time.

In large part, the masterminds of the reconstruction disaster that would occur after the CPA took over Iraq were Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas Feith.

But to ensure control of the contracting process on the ground in Iraq, Bush filled the top slots of the CPA with the administration cronies. For instance,a friend of Cheney’s, Peter McPherson, took a leave of absence as president of Michigan State University to serve as Bremer’s economic deputy.

The leader of the CPA’s private development sector was Thomas Foley, an old college classmate of Bush, who served as finance chairman for his Presidential campaign in Connecticut and also raised more than $100,000 for Bush.

Relatives of the administration were also given jobs, such as Ari Fleischer’s brother Michael, and Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Michael Ledeen. Cheney’s daughter Liz, also did a short stint. However, it should be noted that none of them lounged around for too long in what soon became a hellhole in Iraq.

On May 16, 2003, the CPA issued its first regulation and described its authority in no uncertain terms stating:

“The CPA is vested with all executive, legislative, and judicial authority necessary to achieve its objectives, to be exercised under relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, including resolution 1483 (2003), and the laws and usages of war. This authority shall be exercised by the CPA Administrator.”

With one swipe of the pen, Bremer granted himself the authority to run the government ministries, appoint Iraqi officials and award contracts for reconstruction. Next he fired 500,000 Iraqis, most of them soldiers, but pink slips also went out to many doctors, nurses, teachers and other public employees as well.

For the most part, the CPA financed its activities with billions of dollars that belonged to the Iraqis. On May 22, 2003, a UN Security Council passed a resolution that directed the proceeds from Iraqi oil to be placed in a Development Fund for Iraq, and the CPA was granted authority to control the fund and decide which profiteers would get contracts.

During the year that Bremer controlled the purse strings, the Iraqi Development Fund received $20.2 billion, including $8.1 billion from the UN’s oil-for-food program, $10.8 billion from Iraqi oil, and the rest from repatriated funds, vested assets and donations.

The CPA accounting system was cash and carry and a steady stream of cash was flown into Bagdad from theUS. Inspector General, Stuart Bowen later said that he knew of one $2 billion flight.

A report released by the House Government Reform Committee in February 2007, shows that in the 13 months that Bremer ruled, from May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York shipped nearly $12 billion in a cash to Iraq.

One can only imagine the Bank service charges associated with these shipments because to accomplish this feat, according to theDemocratic chairman of the Reform Committee, Henry Waxman, the cash weighed 363 tons and the Bank had to count and pack 281 million individual bills, including more than 107 million $100 bills, and then load them onto wooden pallets to be shipped to Bagdad on C-130 cargo planes.

Inspector Bowen later said that he determined that some of this cash went to pay salaries for thousands of “ghost employees” and Iraqi civil servants who did not exist.

Within a few months of the CPA’s arrival in Iraq reports of corruption in the contracting process began appearing in the media. A British adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council told the BBC that officials in the CPA were demanding bribes of up to $300,000 in return for contracts.

Reports of flat out-fraud remained steady throughout Bremer’s reign in Iraq. One audit showed that the CPA Ministry of Finance could not provide documentation for about $17 million spent on employee salaries in February 2004, and a CPA Advisor to the Ministry of the Interior said the Ministry was paid for 8,602 guards but only 602 could be verified.

A CPA advisor to the Ministry of Finance was so concerned about payroll corruption that he submitted a formal complaint that stated in part: “Of the 1.6 million government employees currently on payroll, credible estimates put the number of ghost workers at somewhere between 250,000-300,000 employees.”

An October 2004, audit performed for the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, created by the UN to monitor the spending of Iraqi money, found one case where a payment of $2.6 million was authorized by a CPA senior adviser to the Ministry of Oil, and auditors were unable to obtain an underlying contract or any evidence that the services had been rendered.

The auditors in this group found 37 cases where files could not be located for contracts worth $185 million all total. In another 52 cases, there was no record that goods had been received for a total of $87.9 million.

People on the ground in Iraq said that doing business with the CPA was reminiscent of the Wild West. Former CPA employees told a congressional committee that sackfuls of cash were tossed around like footballs. Franklin Willis, showed pictures of himself and others holding up bundles of $100 notes totaling $2 million, which he said was used to pay the contractor Custer Battles. “We told them to come in and bring a bag,” Willis said.

He also testified that millions of dollars in $100 bills were stored in the basement of the CPA offices and distributed to favored contractors with little accounting discipline. For instance, in the year that the CPA ruled, Custer was awarded contracts worth more than $100 million.

Two former Custer employees ended up filing a lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act, saying Custer had swindled $50 million from the CPA with scams like double-billing for salaries and repainting the forklifts found at the Baghdad airport and then leasing them back to the US government.

The employees said the CPA paid the Custer $15 million to provide security for Iraq’s civilian airline, when no services were needed because the airline was grounded during the time covered by the contract.

These employees said they kept informing the CPA about Custer’s fraudulent conduct for more than a year and when they asked why the firm continued to get contracts, they were told: “Battles is very active in the Republican party, and speaks to individuals he knows in the Whitehouse almost daily.”

In June 2004, the Government Accounting Office estimated that more than $1 billion in had been wasted due to illegal overcharges by contractors since the war began. A later audit by the Iraqi government found that as much as $1.27 billion was lost to accounting irregularities between June 2004 and February 2005.

Inspector Bowen cited two examples of poor oversight in a November 3, 2005 interview on National Public Radio where $28 million was paid to build 5 power plants and $1.8 million was paid to rebuild a library, but the work was never performed and the money

“simply disappeared,” he said.

A recent report by Bowen says DynCorp was paid $43.8 million for a residential camp for police training personnel and has been empty for months and that the company may also have billed $18 million in other unjustified costs.

About $4.2 million, he says, was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool and an additional $36.4 million in spending for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that cannot be accounted for.

Not surprisingly, Cheney’s Halliburton remained the top profiteer under Bremer’s rule. A July 23, 2004, audit conducted by Bowen, showed the company had received 60% of all contracts paid for with Iraq money, including 5 no-bid contracts worth $222 million, $325 million, $180 million, and the last 2 together totaled $194 million for the last two. In comparison, the audit showed that the CPA awarded only 2% of the reconstruction contracts to Iraqi companies.

In one example of blatant fraud, an audit found that Halliburton was charging for more than 41,000 meals a day for soldiers when only about 14,000 were served.

By the fall of 2003, the country was realizing that the rational for war was based on lies and that the only ones drawing any benefits were the profiteers. So when Bush asked Congress for another $20 billion for the CPA, Bremer was summoned to Washington to explain where all the money was going and of course he testified in full stonewall mode.

Before the Appropriations Committee on September 22, 2003, Bremer said the CPA had detailed records of all its receipts and outlays that could be audited by Congress. But when he testified before the Armed Services Committee 3 days later he said the Office of Management and Budget was responsible for maintaining the CPA records and that Congress would have to go to the White House to access the records.

That arrogant assertion went over like a lead balloon with many members of Congress. Senator Robert Byrd said he was outraged over the inability to monitor CPA spending. “There is no reason why any arm of the executive branch charged with making such significant spending decisions,” he said, “should not be working directly with Congress.”

“When we’re talking about handing over another $20 billion to the CPA,” he said, “there is a real need for Congress to confirm that the CPA has its finances in order and that it is managing the taxpayer’s money responsibly.”

“We don’t even know how much of the $20 billion,” Byrd said, “will flow to government contractors in Iraq.”

“Whatever the amount is,” he noted, “we know that the size and scope of the profits being made will be enormous.”

“Former Bush Administration officials,” he warned fellow Senators, “are even setting up consulting firms to act as middlemen for contractors hoping to take part in the bonanza.”

“Are we turning the U.S. Treasury into a grab bag for favorite campaign contributors to be financed at taxpayer expense?” he asked.

The answer was yes, and what a grab bag it was. Media reports revealed that Bush’s ex-campaign manager and Feith’s former law partner had set up consulting firms to profit off the war by lining up contracts for clients through their partners in crime within the CPA.

Other reports revealed that contracts worth $407 were awarded to a firm called Nour that was formed less than 2 months after the war began. The names linked to the profits from Nour, among many others, included former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen,Ahmad Chalabivia a $2 million kickback, his nephew Salam Chalabi as the attorney handling the deal, and themoney trail even led to the First Brothers, Marvin and Jeb Bush.

But come to find out, Doug Feith the ringleader on the ground in Washington, had awarded a batch of no-bid contracts to a favored company the month before the war began for the purpose ofcontrolling the mediain post-war Iraq.

In October 2003, the Center for Public Integrity obtained copies of 7 contracts awarded to the San Diego-based Science Applications.The total value of the contracts was redacted but the Center was able to determine that they were all awarded in February 2003, and called for the work to be directed by Feith.

However, the Center’s most stunning discovery was that when the contracts were awarded,Feith’s top deputy at the time, Christopher “Ryan” Henry, had been a senior vice president at SAIC until October 2002.

In addition, one of SAIC’s board members was Army General, Wayne Downing, who ran counterterrorism in the Bush administration for almost a year after 9/11, and had even went to the CIA with Cheney to discuss intelligence on Iraq. Downing had also served as an advisor to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, and was well-known advocate for a war against Saddam.

Some of the SAIC contracts required that specific persons referred to as “executive management consultants” be hired and the pay range listed went as high as $209 and $273 per hour. The Center said congressional sources estimated the value of the media contract as $38 million for the first year and as high $90 million in 2004.

The SAIC had no special expertise to justify the award of these contracts. One company executive, quoted in the media, said the firm’s only credential for setting up an independent media, supposedly modeled after the BBC, was military work in “informational warfare”-signal jamming, “perception management,” and the like.

Under these contracts, the Iraq Media Network (IMN) was established and journalist, Mark North, who covered the Iraq invasion for National Public Radio, was hired to train Iraqi journalists to report for the IMN.

In one of the many Congressional hearings, North testified about the control of the IMN by the CPA and said CPA officials regularly directed and censored the activities of the news station and provided “a laundry list of CPA activities” to cover in the news reports instead of stories about security or the lack of electricity and jobs

While testifying, he also described the CPA’s shabby treatment of Iraqi employees and its refusal to pay their wages. “For the first two months,” North said, “the local staff of about 200 journalists and technicians were not paid their salaries.”

When the staffers went on strike in attempt to get paid, he said, the CPA told the Iraqis to get back to work or the US Army would remove them from the studios.

All total, the CPA had control of Iraqi money for one year between June 2003 and June 2004, but unfortunately no auditors arrived to take a look at the agency’s spending until April 2004, two months before the CPA’s rule was scheduled to end.

And as so often happens when it comes to giving solid advice or warnings, the senior Senator from Virginia was absolutely right. It was far too late for audits, because the CPA and its gang of profiteers had already robbed the Iraqis blind.

The favored companies enjoyed a fraud-free-all. For instance, Halliburton said it had lost over $60 million worth of government property including trucks, office furniture and computers. Inspector Bowen reported that 6,975 items valued at $61.1 million were lost, and in June 2005, the Defense Contract Audit Agency reported that the Halliburton had overcharged or presented questionable bills for close to $1.5 billion.

In the end, Bowen’s audit concluded that “the CPA’s internal controls for approximately $8.8 billion in DFI funds disbursed to Iraqi ministries through the national budget process failed to provide sufficient accountability for the use of those funds.”

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