The New York Times and Pro Publica got an advanced look at a report on the American reconstruction of Iraq -- and it's not pretty.

The report concludes, in the words of the Times and Pro Publica, that even now, "the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale."

And it quotes Colin Powell saying that, in the months after the invasion, DOD "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"

But here's our favorite detail:

When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority's abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. "To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President," wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. "His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt." With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

There was no evidence in the story that the Times and Pro Publica had offered Korologos a chance to respond, so TPMmuckraker contacted him. He responded in an email:

They did NOT give me a chance to comment. That all came from a 3 page memo I wrote on strategy for passing that first Iraq supplemental in 2003. Some $60 (b) billion was for the military side and $20 (b) billion was for the civilian side. The next sentence said, "The quicker we succeed at CPA the quicker our 150,000 boys will come marching home again."

That response doesn't do much to change the clear impression created by the IG report that Korologos cited President Bush's need to get reelected as a reason to support spending $20 billion of taxpayer money. And that OMB ultimately went along with the request.

Here are some other eyebrow-raising nuggets from the report:

In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency's reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency's plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

And...

Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. "Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources," said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. " 'You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.'"

And here's a passage that won't exactly boost Donald Rumsfeld's already rock-bottom reputation for knowing what he was talking about:

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few American officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several alternative rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

"What do you think that'll cost?" Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

"I think it's going to cost billions of dollars," Mr. Garner said.

"My friend," Mr. Rumsfeld replied, "if you think we're going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken."

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

The report was compiled by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who serves as the special inspector general for postwar reconstruction in Iraq. The Times and Pro Publica obtained their copies from people outside Bowen's office. The report will be presented February 2nd at a Congressional hearing.

This week, we learned that the White House knew about last year's deal between Texas-based Hunt Oil and the Kurdish Regional Government.

Apparently the threat it posed to the fragile negotiations in Baghdad didn't concern the president as much as he suggested in public.

The Kurds have made a lot of friends in Washington during the past few years -- especially among Republicans.

It's a relationship that's bolstered by aggressive lobbying by the Kurds. The Kurdish Regional Government has 11 active contracts with U.S. lawyers and lobbyists, according to the State Department's database maintained under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Kurds have been shelling out far more money on K Street than any other group or government in Iraq.

A key ally for the Kurds is the firm Barbour Griffith Rogers, the lobbying shop founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, formerly head of the Republican National Committee. BGR receives $700,000 a year from the Kurdish Regional Government. Their agreement says the firm will "arrange meetings" with U.S. media and government officials.

The firm has a separate agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party for a $262,500 annual fee, according to the FARA database.

The Kurdish Regional Government also has a deal with the Republican-linked firm Russo, March and Rogers for running a "media campaign" and a "public relations campaign."

The Washington Post last year also noted the Kurds efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians.

In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush's war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration's ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.

As we reported earlier, Chairman Waxman of the House Oversight Committee claimed today that the Bush Administration knew about the Hunt Oil deal way before it happened-- something the administration has denied regularly.

According to Waxman, there were nearly a dozen contacts between various levels of the administration and Hunt Oil as the deal was taking place. Hunt regularly informed the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board of his intentions to seek a deal with the Kurdistan government. Management at Hunt also regularly met and communicated with the U.S. Regional Reconstruction Team (RRT), as well as State Department personnel.

So let's go through a little time line of the events and communication leading up to Sept. 8, 2007-- the day the Hunt Oil deal was finalized with the Kurdistan government.

June 12 and 15: Hunt Oil officials meet with officials from the RRT for the Kurdistan region, "to investigate investment prospects" in the Kurdish region. Hunt Oil General Manager Ken McDonald, asks RRT members if the deal between Hunt Oil and Kurdistan is in violation of U.S. policy:

I specifically asked if the USG had a policy toward companies entering into contracts with the KRG and [redacted] replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against.

July 12, 2007: Ray Hunt, president and CEO of Hunt Oil sends a letter to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, letting them know he is pursuing an oil deal in Kurdistan:

We were approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibílity of our becoming interested in that region. We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week but who they will actually meet with while they are there and what the relationships of those people might be with the Government of Kurdistan are both unclear at this time.

August 2007: Hunt Oil representatives exchange a series of emails with State Department personnel discussing their return to Kurdistan.

August 30, 2007: Ray Hunt sends another letter to the Advisory Board to let them know he will be in Kurdistan the week of September 3:

While my schedule is still fluid, there is a high likelihood that I will meet with President Masoud Barzani, the Prime Minister, the Oil Minister and various other individuals associated with the government of Kurdistan.

September 5, 2007: McDonald informs the RRT in Erbil that "Hunt is expecting to sign an exploration contract" with the Kurdistan Regional Government. That same day, the RRT leader sends an e-mail summary of the meeting to the Embassy in Baghdad and the State Department headquarters in Washington. A second synopsis of the meeting is sent to the Embassy in Baghdad in a situation report the following day.

September 8, 2007: The Hunt Oil contract is finalized with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

September 13, 2007: A State Department official contacts Hunt Oil to describe another "good opportunity for Hunt" in Iraq, prompting a Hunt Oil official to write Ray Hunt: "This is really good for us. . .I find it a huge compliment that he is 'tipping' us off about this . . .This is a lucky break."

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government has spent nearly $500 million on an Arabic language television and radio station.

Now an investigation finds that the project has not only been poorly run and hemorrhaged taxpayer money but is also airing bizarrely anti-American and anti-semitic coverage despite repeated complaints from the State Department and Congress.

ProPublica, in a joint investigation with 60 Minutes, finds that the al-Hurra network -- "the Free One" in Arabic -- has completely failed in its initial mission to counter the influence of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

For starters, there are problems with the staff, which often does not have any Arabic language skills or a background in broadcast journalism:

Alhurra's president, Brian Conniff, does not speak Arabic and is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage. Conniff has no journalism experience and worked previously as a government auditor. His news director, Daniel Nassif, grew up in Lebanon and has no background in television. Before coming to the network, he helped promote the political aspirations in Washington of a Lebanese Christian former general.

Then there is the accounting, which has failed to track millions in taxpayer dollars:

Financial accountability also appears to be lacking. In its four years, the network has been unable to provide full documentation to auditors to account for its spending, according to two people familiar with the records and a 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

(The GAO report is here.)

Meanwhile, the station may have been doing more harm that good for America's image in the Middle East. Along with the story, ProPublica also publishes a series of documents showing the complaints about al-Hurra filtering into the State Department and Congress in recent years.

Read more »

The Jack Abramoff investigation is a gift that keeps on giving.

Nearly three years after the feds flipped the corrupt Washington lobbyist, we've learned just today that former U.S. Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) may be the next lawmaker in the cross hairs of the feds' ongoing investigation.

Sweeney's ties to Abramoff over the years may have been overshadowed by Sweeney's more colorful scandals that repeatedly involved booze and women half his age.

In 2001, Sweeney was among a handful of lawmakers who took a trip to the Northern Marianas -- Abramoff's infamous client -- and failed to disclose that the trip was privately funded. While there he parroted Abramoff's favorite line -- that reports of sweatshops there were overblown.

In March 2006, DOJ investigators pulled some of Sweeney's financial records from the House clerk and reviewed them along with a handful of others linked to Abramoff.

Back then, when records showed Sweeney had taken $2,000 from Abramoff's firm, he gave that money away to a local hospital to publicly cleanse himself of ties to the convicted felon.

With the latest news that the feds have raided the firm of Sweeney's political mentor, Bill Powers, has the Abramoff investigation zeroed in on Sweeney? The New York Times suggested as much today, but it cited no source for that proposition. So it's not immediately clear what the connection is between Sweeney and Powers and Abramoff. Powers was a chairman of the state GOP throughout the 1990s, and Sweeney was one of his executive directors before being elected to Congress. The New York papers are reporting Sweeney may have steered big federal grants to Powers' clients while Sweeney was still in Congress.

By the way, Sweeney's then wife (now ex-wife) went to work for Powers' firm a few years after he was elected to Congress, and left the firm shortly after he lost his reelection bid. More on that shortly.

You'd think that an Iraqi anti-corruption crusader who testified before Congress about his travails would find no great difficulty in obtaining asylum in the United States. You'd think the U.S. would be grateful for the news that $18 billion worth of corruption had virtually "stopped" reconstruction in Iraq. But not so much.

Former State Department officials told Congress earlier this week that, though Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, was able to get access into the U.S., he is not allowed to work and is living hand to mouth. Why has he fallen through the cracks?

It's always a toss-up between negligence/incompetence and malfeasance with this administration. On the negligence side of things, you have the disastrously impenetrable immigration system, which has allowed so few Iraqis to come to the U.S. As The New York Times reports today, U.S. soldiers have actually set up organizations to help their interpreters gain asylum, since the Iraqis, even though they face certain threat of death for collaborating with American forces, cannot navigate the system on their own. As one Army captain tells it, interpreters are required to produce a letter from a general, which he said was "like a junior associate at a Fortune 500 company asking the chief executive for a letter of recommendation."

But then there's the malfeasance side of things. One of the former officials testified that "a senior State Department official had ordered agency employees not to give al Radhi references or contact him" for help with his asylum.

That might have a lot to do with the trouble that Radhi gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the administration. Like pointing out that corruption ran rampant under Maliki and that he'd jiggered the system so that corruption judges could not bring charges against any of his senior officials without his approval -- that was a decree on which Secretary of State Rice refused to pass judgment when she testified late last year. Rice also refused to comment on Radhi's many accusations.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) declared at the hearing early this week that he is "going to ask the State Department what in the hell are they thinking." Somehow I don't think Rice will be any more forthcoming this time around.

From the AP:

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

Brennan also alleges that the State Department prevented a congressional staffer visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, the staffers were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The Washington Post had an update this weekend on the criminal investigation of Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), whose reports of waste and fraud in Iraq have caused the administration regular headaches. The Post broke word last December that Bowen was the focus of a number of investigations, the most serious of which was a probe by the FBI. Congress Daily first broke word that Bowen was under investigation by the FBI.

Now the grand jury is mostly focused on whether Bowen and his deputy Ginger Cruz (a wiccan who has allegedly spooked staff with threats of hexes) illegally viewed staff emails, the Post reports. There seems to be no dispute that Bowen and Cruz actually viewed the staff emails. Where there's a difference of opinion is why:

"Bowen and Cruz were looking at e-mails to find out who was loyal and who was not," said a former SIGIR official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Berenson said senior officials reviewed employee e-mails "as part of an authorized internal investigation into possible press leaks. SIGIR policy permits such e-mail reviews and all employees are notified, regularly reminded and trained on these policies."

More goodies from our Blackwater FOIA: the security company employed such creative accounting methods that it charged the State Department from the profit it made off its 2004-edition Iraq contract.

A January 2005 audit performed for State's inspector general discovered several of Blackwater's accounting irregularities. But how the company accounted for its profit is perhaps the most impressive. Blackwater hid its profits within its "dedicated overhead" -- that is, the expenses it incurred in the cost of fulfilling its contractual obligations. Here's what happened:

This results not only in a duplication of profit, but also a pyramiding of profit because, in effect, Blackwater is applying profit to profit. As a result, we have questioned the proposed amount in total.

That might not be a traditional pyramid scheme per se, but conceivably, it could have yielded an infinite regression -- Blackwater makes money, charges State for it, makes more money, and so forth. So did it work like that?

I don't know! And why don't I know? Because, in its release of the 2005 report, State blacked out every section that detailed exactly how Blackwater's bookkeeping ripped off the taxpayer. For instance, here's what it says about the profit-pyramiding effort.

Note 6 -- Profit [redacted] Profit is a matter under the purview of the contracting officer.

It's worth remembering that classification procedures exist to protect national security. They don't exist to protect giant corporations that fleece the public. Someone should tell the State Department.

For two years, military officials, defense experts, lawyers and Iraqi officials tried to warn the U.S. against relying so heavily on unaccountable private security contractors in Iraq. Until Blackwater's fateful September shooting at Nisour Square, the U.S. answer was always the same: meh. One reason the Pentagon didn't care: one of its chief advisers on security contractors was on the contractors' payroll.

Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post -- who's dogged Blackwater ever since the shooting -- delivers a taxonomy of unheeded warnings. The pattern is fairly simple, and rather Blackwater-specific. (The Blackwater brand has become a generic signifier for security contractors in Iraq -- the Q-Tip or Kleenex of contract security.) Blackwater's guards shoot someone. People complain. They warn that impunity for security contractors jeopardizes the U.S. mission. U.S. officials do nothing. Nothing changes. More Iraqis get shot. Repeat. T.X. Hammes, a top-shelf counterinsurgency expert and ex-adviser to the Iraqi army training mission, told Fainaru, "I still think, from a pure counterinsurgency standpoint, armed contractors are an inherently bad idea, because you cannot control the quality, you cannot control the action on the ground, but you're held responsible for everything they do."

So why did it take widespread Iraqi outrage over the Nisour Square debacle for anything to change? One reason, Fainaru reports, is a man named Lawrence W. Peter. The Pentagon allowed the security contractors to regulate and police themselves. Peter, a Pentagon consultant, helped keep it that way. Only while he delivered that advice, he worked for a security contractors' lobby.

U.S. officials often turned to the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a trade group funded by the security companies. Lawrence T. Peter, a retired Navy intelligence officer, served as the association's director while also working as a consultant to the Pentagon's Defense Reconstruction Support Office, which administers contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, said Peter earned "a few thousand dollars a year" as a consultant.

The association operated out of an office inside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Logistics Directorate in the Green Zone. Jack Holly, a retired Marine colonel who heads corps logistics in Iraq, said that Peter and the association play "a critical role to help the private security community improve and regulate itself," adding, "They tried to fill a void that had been left by the U.S. government's failure to recognize the problem."

Read more »

Another interesting morsel from State's 2005 inspector-general audit of Blackwater. Apparently the company billed the State Department for five armored vehicles that the contracting officer said were unnecessary -- and then double-billed State for the cost of the drivers.

As part of its proposed equipment costs, Blackwater included costs equating to [redacted] to purchase five armored vehicles plus operating expenses to be used to transport personnel to and from Baghdad Airport in Iraq. ... We discussed this with the contracting officer, who indicated that the contractor was not required to purchase these vehicles as they are not called for in the statement of work. Our review of the statement of work also did not disclose a requirement for these vehicles. ...

Blackwater also included costs equating to [redacted] operate these vehicles. Our review disclosed that these "drivers" are the protective security specialists deployed in Iraq. The cost for these personnel is already being recovered in the daily rates being proposed. As a result, inclusion of additional costs for drivers in dedicated overhead is, in effect, a duplication of labor costs.

That's bureaucratese for "Dude! They're ripping you off! Are you just going to take that?" And the State Department, like an abused child, just shrugs and hands over its lunch money.

Unfortunately, the 2005 audit does not indicate whether Blackwater threw any D's on its new vehicles.

So State wasn't thrilled about issuing Blackwater a no-bid contract in 2004 to protect its diplomats in Iraq. It turns out, in State's telling, that the audit conducted of the contract in January 2005 helped with one thing, at least: it pushed the cost of the contract down. However, State still re-upped with Blackwater later in 2005.

State Department logistics official William Moser explained in a House oversight committee hearing in October that State requested the audit because it feared Blackwater took advantage of the hectic circumstances under which the contract was issued. (State was rushing to set up its embassy, and so it hired Blackwater on a no-bid basis, since the company was already in Baghdad.) And, sure, it found massive problems. But on the bright side, Moser told an incredulous Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in that hearing, the audit allowed State to knock off $25 million from the contract!

CUMMINGS: So the audit is done when?

MOSER: The audit was done, actually, in January of 2005. In other words, with the current contract award. And we actually negotiated down the cost of that contract by about $25 million.

The exchange isn't 100 percent clear, despite Cummings' repeated attempts at clarification. But according to Cummings, and confirmed by Moser, the 2004 contract was worth $300 million. (That's confusing to me: not only is the total redacted in the document released to me under FOIA, but a House oversight committee report found that Blackwater's contracts were worth only $48 million in 2004. Maybe it's wrong?) So figure that State saved a cool $25 million. But when? There are only two options: either the State Department renegotiated the 2004 contract, post-audit, and got a refund; or it scaled down Blackwater's subsequent bid -- on a competed contract issued in 2005 -- by $25 million.

Either way, if State got Blackwater to knock off $25 million, then Blackwater still pocketed 90 percent of what it sought from State. And all that came after an audit pointed out serious flaws in how Blackwater billed the government. Clearly it pays to be caught bilking the State Department.

According to an audit performed for the State Department inspector general of Blackwater's 2004 Iraq contract, it paid to be a guard for the private security firm. Page seven of the report -- excuse my handwritten notes in the margins -- shows that Blackwater charged the government for seven days' pay per week, even though the guards only had to work six. That method of accounting "is considered acceptable," the report says, if Blackwater properly accounted for its employees' actual work. And, wouldn't you know it: the company didn't.

The proposed "daily" labor rates are computed to recover the seven days pay over six "billing" days. This method is considered acceptable as long as these individuals only actually work six days and Blackwater bills for the six out of seven days actually worked. Our review of timekeeping procedures (Appendix 1), however, disclosed that, at present, Blackwater only accounts for the number of days these individuals are physically present while deployed at their duty station and not the days actually worked.

Let's look at that Appendix, shall we? It found that the company doesn't believe in such encumbrances as time sheets:

The contractor does not employ the use of individual employee "time sheets" for labor performed in Iraq. Rather, the contractor uses a system whereby a "muster" sheet is prepared by the agent in charge (AIC), (detail leader) simply indicating whether the individuals are physically present at their duty station or in travel or in other status on a daily basis. At the end of every pay period, the muster sheet is transmitted to the assistant program manager at Blackwater in Moyock, NC. ... The assistant program manager indicated that there have been instances where an individual was reported as being in-country at the duty station but was in fact in a travel status or otherwise not physically present at the duty station.

As a result, there is no individual employee certification of actual days worked or the hours actually worked. There is no approval of employees' time other than, as the contractor explained, the muster sheet is e-mailed to Blackwater by the AIC.

Hey Josh, can we switch TPM to that style of bookkeeping?

A report prepared for the State Department's inspector general in January 2005, and obtained by TPMmuckraker, shows Blackwater's accounting system for its no-bid, multimillion dollar Iraq contract was "not considered adequate for accumulating costs on government contracts."

The report is an audit of Blackwater's contract prepared by the accounting firm of Leonard H. Birnbaum. It has been referred to by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (pdf) and in a 2006 story in The Nation, but has not been made publicly available until now. It was obtained by TPMmuckraker after we filed a Freedom of Information Act request in October with the State Department for Blackwater-related documents. You can read the 2005 State Department report in our Documents Collection here.

Much of the document is redacted -- including any description of how Blackwater's accounting system in Iraq operated, as well as any numerical figure for the size of the contract. (In 2004, the year that the report covers, Blackwater held contracts from the federal government totaling $48 million, of which the State Department contract was a portion.) But the unredacted portion of the report finds problems with how Blackwater tallied its labor costs, its overhead-expense costs, and its indirect costs. It also found that Blackwater cited its profit from the contract as a cost it incurred, and billed the government for it -- resulting in what the report called "a pyramiding of profit."

The State Department was under a massive time-crunch in mid-2004 to stand up its new Baghdad embassy as the Coalition Provisional Authority went out of business that June. As a result, State Department logistics official William Moser explained to Congress, State opted to sign a no-bid contract for diplomatic security services with the company already on the ground: Blackwater. "We did not like doing a sole source award for Blackwater," Moser told the House oversight committee in October. No wonder: Blackwater, apparently, took advantage of the opportunity.

Yet despite its own internal watchdog's finding of fraudulence in Blackwater's Iraq contract, months later, the State Department re-signed a deal with the company to provide security for U.S. diplomats.

We'll bring you more from this report throughout the day. And in the coming days, we'll be bringing you more documents on Blackwater that we've acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. I know that's what I wanted for Christmas!

And here you thought Stuart Bowen was a paragon of integrity.

Bowen is the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). Despite being an old buddy of George W. Bush's back in the Texas days, Bowen has earned a reputation as a tireless investigator of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq contracting.

The quarterly reports issued by SIGIR have not hesitated to name names of both crooked contractors and crooked contracting officials. Bowen's appearances on Capitol Hill have been remarkably candid and free of euphemism. When I was in Baghdad in March, military public-affairs officers jumped at the chance to show me how they interface with SIGIR and boasted of the enormous respect they have for an office that's all up in their business.

But now, reports The Washington Post, the worm has turned. SIGIR faces four separate investigations -- including one by a federal grand jury -- looking into everything from its own profligacy to its alleged abundance of ego:

Current and former employees have complained about overtime policies that allowed 10 staff members to earn more than $250,000 each last year. They have questioned the oversight of a $3.5 million book project about Iraq's reconstruction modeled after the 9/11 Commission report. And they have alleged that Bowen and his deputy have improperly snooped into their staff's e-mail messages.

The employee allegations have prompted four government probes into the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), including an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors into the agency's financial practices and claims of e-mail monitoring, according to law enforcement sources and SIGIR staff members. Federal prosecutors have presented evidence of alleged wrongdoing to a grand jury in Virginia, which has subpoenaed SIGIR for thousands of pages of financial documents, contracts, personnel records and correspondence, several sources familiar with the probe said.

Bowen, with no evident irony, dismisses many of the charges as the result of "disgruntled" employees. Yet some of the overtime that certain SIGIR officials have racked up is downright gaudy (1400 hours?).

One SIGIR official spoke anonymously of a climate of fear that pervades the office. SIGIR's chiefs are "gripped by paranoia. It's almost a siege mentality." Such alleged paranoia, according to federal prosecutors, has led top officials to illegally snoop on their employees. One of them, Ginger Cruz, Bowen's deputy, allegedly used, um, witchcraft to intimidate subordinates:

Read more »

Make that two State Department officials overseeing Blackwater to resign. On November 30, Kevin Barry, a top official at the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security -- Blackwater's liaison office -- opted to spend more time with the family. Barry joins the Bureau's chief, who quit in October.

Barry's departure is surprising, as his star was so recently on the rise at Foggy Bottom. Shortly after an internal State review in October recommended a massive overhaul of the Bureau's process for overseeing State's security contractors, ABC News reported that Barry and a colleague, Justine Sincavage, nevertheless received promotions. And on December 4th, TPMmuckraker published State Department cables showing that despite Blackwater's Nisour Square shootings becoming State's biggest scandal this year, both Barry and Sincavage were slated to receive pay bonuses of between $10,000 and $15,000 for "outstanding performance," effective December 20.

But apparently, Barry couldn't wait that long to get out. A message sent to his work e-mail at State bounced back with instructions that he "will be in and out of the office during the week of November 26 and retiring on November 30." No word yet on whether he got his holiday cash early. Or whether his retirement is long-standing or Blackwater-related.

Here's the full text of the joint Bush-Maliki agreement on principles for a long-term U.S. security commitment to Iraq. There's some hilarious obfuscatorese on the question of bases and troop levels. ("Support will be provided consistent with mechanisms and arrangements to be established in the bilateral cooperation agreements mentioned herein" -- in context, I promise, that translates to "let's worry about defining the U.S. troop presence in the final agreement.") But take a look at this key economics "principle":

Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq.

In fairness, it's the job of the U.S. in bilateral negotiations to try to win the most favorable investment environment for American business. But that's not so difficult when your military is keeping your negotiating partners, you know, alive. Already $6 billion worth of Iraq contracts are under criminal review. How much more Iraqi business could flow to Americans? It's hard to say, but it looks like Stuart Bowen will have a long, long career ahead of him.

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Ah, Iraq. The land of milk and honey for a defense contractor. Not that all those contractors have such high profiles. In fact, due to a clever bit of disclosure chicanery, some of them are completely unknown, even to budget watchdogs.

The Center for Public Integrity's brand-new report on Iraq contracting, Windfalls of War II, identifies at least $20 billion in contract money that has gone to non-U.S. companies that it cannot identify:

When the 2003 study was published, federal agencies did not comprehensively distinguish war contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan from other government contracts; therefore, Center researchers had to flush out these contracts one by one. Since then, however, most such contracts list Iraq or Afghanistan as their "place of performance," making the contracting process more transparent and the search for data—available from the General Service Administration's Federal Procurement Data System—more methodical.

But not all contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan are reported in this federal data system, including awards originating at one contracting agency in Baghdad, which reports only some aggregate totals for inclusion in the central database. Because the agency has so far refused to furnish these missing contracts, the Center is now seeking copies via Freedom of Information Act requests.

What would happen to you, do you think, if you couldn't account for, oh, $2,000 of your boss's money? And then pleaded that there was a glitch in the database you maintain to keep track of the cash?

Howard "Cookie" Krongard, the State Department inspector general, has some explaining to do. Yesterday he told Congress that his brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, never told him that Buzzy joined the advisory board of State Department contractor Blackwater. Only Buzzy told me that he told Cookie precisely that in a phone conversation about two or three weeks ago. It's going to be a fun Thanksgiving for the Krongards.

Cookie Krongard pledged at yesterday's House oversight committee hearing to recuse himself from any Blackwater investigations. But here's the question: if Buzzy is telling the truth -- and he has much less motive to lie than his brother does -- why didn't Cookie recuse himself as soon as he learned of Buzzy's ties to Blackwater? Buzzy's timeline puts Cookie's knowledge of the family Blackwater ties near the time when Amb. Patrick Kennedy was reviewing the State Department's relationships to security contractors. Did the inspector general's office contribute to that review?

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said at the hearing yesterday -- but did not elaborate -- that Krongard concealed his brother's ties to Blackwater from his own deputy. How did the deputy learn of the concealment?

Furthermore, with Blackwater remaining a central focus of State Department internal inquiry, how can State function with an inspector general who can't take part in the probes?

We've got calls out to the State Department and to Krongard's office to learn the answers to these questions. Updates to come.

Howard "Cookie" Krongard might have just perjured himself before the House Oversight Committee.

Earlier today, the State Department inspector general repeatedly told the panel that he was unaware his brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, had joined the advisory board of State Department security contractor Blackwater. Krongard said he had a single phone conversation with his brother about the issue, in October, in which Buzzy didn't tell Cookie he was joining the board.

Only Buzzy says that's not true.

In an exclusive interview with TPMmuckraker, Buzzy Krongard says that in that phone conversation, he specifically told Cookie Krongard he had agreed to join Blackwater's advisory board. "I had told my brother I was going on the advisory board," Buzzy Krongard says. "My brother says that is not the case. I stand by what I told my brother."

Buzzy Krongard says the phone conversation was more recent than Cookie Krongard indicated to the committee. Cookie said it took place about five or six weeks ago. Buzzy says it was about two or three weeks ago. Both men say there was just one phone conversation. How to reconcile the two accounts?

"I told him I was going on this board. He claims I didn't tell him," Buzzy Krongard says. "So what can I tell you?"

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One of Krongard's chief defenders, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT), found the timeline of the Krongards' relationship with Blackwater troubling. "To have your brother tell you he was not involved in Blackwater" and to only find out at the hearing that he's connected to the company "is a pretty outrageous thing," Shays said. Buzzy has done Cookie "tremendous damage" and suggested that Cookie should have taken further steps to ensure that he knew whether his brother was on the advisory board of a State Department contractor. Here's video:

Howard "Cookie" Krongard said he's just learned that his brother is on Blackwater's advisory board and has formally recused himself from investigating the company.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) asked when Krongard learned his brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard was on Blackwater's board. Krongard said that he just learned about his brother's position, and had a single phone conversation with him in early October -- "about five, six weeks ago" -- in which Buzzy told Cookie that he didn't have "a significant financial interest" in Blackwater. Blackwater has multi-million contracts with the State Department.

Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told me the advisory board was formed in the summer. I'm still trying to learn the exact date Buzzy joined up, but that would be before Buzzy's phone conversation with his brother. Cookie Krongard told Rep. Lynch that his brother didn't mention taking a position on the advisory board, although Buzzy "may have said" that Blackwater approached him about one. "I am not my brother's keeper," Cookie Krongard said.

Here's video:

Update: Cookie has certainly changed his tune from the beginning of the hearing. There, he said that his brother had told him that he wasn't on Blackwater's advisory board. Here's what he said:

"I can tell you very frankly, I am not aware of any financial interest or position [my brother] has with respect to Blackwater. It couldn’t possibly have affected anything I’ve done, because I don’t believe it. And when these ugly rumors started recently, I specifically asked him. I do not believe it is true that he is a member of the advisory board, as you stated, and that is something I think I need to say."

Late Update: Rep. Lynch's first name is Stephen, not Patrick. I regret the error.

That's settled. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell confirmed in an e-mail today to TPMmuckraker that A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, brother of State Department Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard, is a member of Blackwater's advisory board.

Howard Krongard testified this morning that he doesn't know if his brother is on Blackwater's advisory board, but if Buzzy is, Howard would recuse himself from any Blackwater-related investigations.