By RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Writer
September 20, 2007
WASHINGTON - Federal investigators are examining allegations
of criminal misconduct related to $6 billion worth of contracts
for equipment and services needed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
a senior Pentagon official said Thursday.
The financial scope of the inquiries was provided during a
congressional hearing at which Defense Department representatives
were criticized for moving too slowly to deal with a growing
number of cases of contract fraud and abuse.
Following the testimony from Thomas Gimble, the Pentagon's
deputy inspector general, members of the House Armed Services
Committee questioned whether a "culture of corruption" had
consumed the military's system for buying the gear the troops
need to fight.
No, said the witnesses. In addition to Gimble, they included
Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson, a top Army acquisition official,
and Shay Assad, director of defense procurement.
They attributed the impropriety to a handful of "bad
apples," a lack of stringent accounting controls, too
few properly trained contracting personnel and the demands
of wartime operations.
"This sickens me, when there is even one case of an officer
or a noncommissioned officer who is involved in case of fraud
or accepting a bribe," Thompson said. But he said there
was no "widespread conspiracy."
Added Assad: "We did not properly train our officers
and enlisted (personnel) to work in the environment."
But Gimble's public remarks, which came after committee members
received a classified briefing on the investigations, did little
to assure the lawmakers that the problems are not deeper.
Gimble said his office has 225 people working on 90 investigations
and 29 audits stemming from the hundreds of billions dollars
spent on the wars thus far.
About half the investigations are for procurement fraud, a
category that includes undelivered or defective products, overcharges
and false claims, according to Gimble's testimony.
An additional 26 inquiries involve public corruption, which
covers bribery and conflicts of interest, Gimble said. There
are 16 linked to the theft of money or property and violations
of U.S. export rules.
Just over 50 investigations originated in Iraq and 22 started
in Kuwait, the site of an Army contracting office that service
officials had previously said was a source of many flawed contracts.
Targets of the investigations include military and civilian
government personnel, and contractors from the United States
and other countries, according to Gimble's testimony.
Agents from the inspector general's office, FBI, Army, Air
Force and Navy criminal investigative services, the Internal
Revenue Service and Scotland Yard are engaged in the investigations.
Democrats and Republicans on the committee, often divided
over the direction of the Iraq war, were united in their displeasure
over what Gimble told them.
"This is a sad day for the United States," said
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the committee's top Republican. "Dishonesty
is not a function of manning levels."
Assad pointed to the formation in early 2005 of a joint contracting
command for Iraq and Afghanistan as a positive step toward
more visibility over the huge amounts of money are spent. The
command has close to 200 contracting officers at locations
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a separate but related subject that also is under investigation,
an Iraq expert from the Defense Department acknowledged that
oversight of American weapons bound for Iraqi forces have been
so lax that no one knows for certain where all the guns and
ammunition wound up.
"There was an imperative to get this equipment out to
the fighting forces as quickly as possible," said Peter
Velz, a foreign affairs specialist for Iraq.
Velz said the U.S.-led command training Iraqi forces did not
have enough people in Iraq to properly catalog the thousands
of weapons flowing into the country. As a result, the Pentagon
does not know if the number of weapons that were destined for
the Iraqis "were in fact transferred," he said. The
issue first surfaced in May when Pentagon officials learned
that Turkish officials were concerned that American-issued
weapons were being used in violent crimes in their country.
In July, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent the Pentagon's
top lawyer, William Haynes, to Turkey to hear the concerns.
Pentagon Inspector General Claude Kicklighter was subsequently
directed to investigate the failures that led to the distribution
problems. Gimble said that inquiry is one of his office's "highest
priorities."
Although the subjects are serious ones, only about a dozen
of the committee's 61 members attended the hearing. By the
time it ended, the witnesses outnumbered the lawmakers. Just
the committee chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Rep. Carol
Shea-Porter, D-N.H., remained.
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