Accountability of contractors in Iraq (spread it around!)

[The Straight Story]

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/hearings/hearing37/transcript.pdf

9/18/06

HEADLINE: SENATE DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE MEETING
SUBJECT: ACCOUNTABILITY OF CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR BYRON DORGAN (D-ND)

Excerpts:

I want to just talk about some of the patterns that we've seen. A hearing of June 27th of last year -- we released a
report showing that there was $1.4 billion in charges to the U.S. government by the Halliburton Corporation that it had
not been able to substantiate. One of the top civilian contracting officials in this country, Bunnatine Greenhouse, who
rose to become the highest civilian contracting official in the Corps of Engineers, testified, quote, "I can unequivocally
state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton, represents the most blatant and
improper contract abuse I have witnesses during the course of my professional career."

...................

The former director of the Defense Energy Support Center, who spent 30 years in the Pentagon supplying fuel for our
troops in battlefield conditions, says that we were charged twice what we should have been charged for fuel delivered
by Halliburton in Iraq.

We had a soldier -- a former soldier -- describe to us that he saw $85,000 new trucks abandoned or torched beside the
road in Iraq if they experienced minor problems, including not having the proper tools with which to fix a flat tire. So
an $85,000 new truck is left beside the road to be torched because, after all, the taxpayers are paying for that and a
contractor can buy a new one and charge it again. Forty-five dollars paid for a case of Coca-Cola; $7,500 a month to
lease an SUV -- that's a month; ordering 50,000 pounds, 25 tons, of nails -- they're the wrong size so they're dumped
some place in the sands of Iraq -- doesn't matter, the taxpayer pays for all that. Food ordered for the troops, served to
the troops despite the fact that the date stamp says this food is expired. It is pretty unbelievable. Contaminated water --
water that is more contaminated than the water directly from the Euphrates River being served to troops at virtually
every Army installation, every military installation in Iraq. And we have the reports by the person in charge of that
water delivery for Halliburton in Iraq. It's all denied by Halliburton and the Defense Department. And we have the
reports by the person that wrote the report in Iraq -- still working for Halliburton -- says it was a near- miss, could have
caused mass sickness or death -- water more contaminated than raw water from the Euphrates River.

...............................

One day in February 2005, for example, 179 towels were
added to the MWR head count. One day in January 2005, they added 240 bottles of water used by the troops that day in
the MWR head count. Sometimes they used a sum total for the head count that was higher than the boots in the door,
hourly room counts, activity count, equipment count and towel counts combined. After adding together all of the
numbers to arrive at a sum total, coordinators were instructed to throw away the original boots in the door sign-in
sheets. The larger sum total was then designated as the MWR head count for that day. This figure was then e-mailed to
Halliburton administrators who compiled the numbers for all MWR facilities. There are many other Halliburton MWR
coordinators who can verify this procedure.

This fraudulent head count can then equate to millions of dollars in unnecessary funding. By inflating the number of
users, Halliburton can rationalize a greater need for facilities, equipment, staffing and administrators than actually
exists. The additional staffing does not benefit the troops, but it does benefit Halliburton. Under its contract, the more
facilities, equipment, staff and administrators Halliburton can show a need for, the more profit Halliburton makes. As
the mantra at Halliburton camps goes, "It's cost plus, baby."

..........................................

Out of all the cases filed by whistleblowers regarding fraud in Iraq, only two of them have been litigated. The Bush
administration refused to participate in either one of those. In the first case, a suit that I helped whistleblowers to bring
against Custer Battles, the company's own internal audit report found the company guilty of criminal fraud. The U.S.
military suspended the defendants, finding adequate evidence of that fraud. Yet the Bush administration did literally
nothing to recover the millions of dollars that the defendants stole. We brought that case to trial without the help of the
Bush administration, and won a jury verdict worth over $10 million for the taxpayers. But the judge then ruled that the
Bush administration had messed up the contract paperwork, and now the issue is on appeal.

The second case is Ms. McBride's complaint against Halliburton. Her case was filed over a year ago. The Bush
administration sat on it for that period, investigated only one of the five allegations of fraud in her complaint, and then,
without explanation, refused to participate in that case as well. In both the Custer Battles case and the Halliburton case,
the defendants' intimate connections with the Bush administration are well known.

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So much more at the link:
http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/hearings/hearing37/transcript.pdf