Blackwater bodyguards promised immunity
State Department gave protection to all guards in deadly Iraq incident
Blackwater has said its Sept. 16 convoy was under attack before it opened fire, killing 17 Iraqis. An investigation by the Iraqi government concluded that guards, like the ones shown, were unprovoked.
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Marwan Naamani / AFP - Getty Images
Updated: 5:47 p.m. ET Oct 29, 2007
WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.
“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
A State Department spokesman did not have an immediate comment Monday. Both Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko declined comment.
FBI agents were returning to Washington late Monday from Baghdad, where they have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.
Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.
Strained relationship with Iraq
The investigative misstep comes in the wake of already-strained relations between the United States and Iraq, which is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.
Go Iraq: convict the murderers!
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined comment about the U.S. investigation. Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater USA is the largest private security firm protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
Security firm = mercenaries.
The company has said its Sept. 16 convoy was under attack before it opened fire in west Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, killing 17 Iraqis. A follow-up investigation by the Iraqi government, however, concluded that Blackwater’s men were unprovoked. No witnesses have been found to contradict that finding.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Republican Morality at its best.
Craig to claim sex sting arrest unconstitutional
ACLU agrees, says senator’s foot-tapping in stall was protected speech
Updated: 9:52 p.m. ET Oct 26, 2007
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will argue before an appeals court that Minnesota's disorderly conduct law is unconstitutional as it applies to his conviction in a bathroom sex sting, according to a new court filing.
This is the first time Craig's attorneys have raised that issue. However, an earlier friend-of-the-court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that Craig's foot-tapping and hand gesture under a stall divider at the Minneapolis airport are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech.
Craig has been trying to withdraw his August guilty plea to disorderly conduct. A judge turned him down earlier this month, and now Craig is taking his request to the state Court of Appeals. The conservative Republican at one point said he would resign from the U.S. Senate but now says he will finish his term, which ends in January 2009.
If this HYPOCRITE had any morality at all, he would resign. Good riddens to another BUSHwhacker.
ACLU agrees, says senator’s foot-tapping in stall was protected speech
Updated: 9:52 p.m. ET Oct 26, 2007
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will argue before an appeals court that Minnesota's disorderly conduct law is unconstitutional as it applies to his conviction in a bathroom sex sting, according to a new court filing.
This is the first time Craig's attorneys have raised that issue. However, an earlier friend-of-the-court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that Craig's foot-tapping and hand gesture under a stall divider at the Minneapolis airport are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech.
Craig has been trying to withdraw his August guilty plea to disorderly conduct. A judge turned him down earlier this month, and now Craig is taking his request to the state Court of Appeals. The conservative Republican at one point said he would resign from the U.S. Senate but now says he will finish his term, which ends in January 2009.
If this HYPOCRITE had any morality at all, he would resign. Good riddens to another BUSHwhacker.
Why are we putting up with the BUSHwhacker's Wicked Regime?
Army to examine Iraq contracts for fraud
Probe focuses on Army office in Kuwait that gave $2.8 billion in contracts
Interactive
Updated: 9:28 p.m. ET Oct 26, 2007
WASHINGTON - A team of specially trained investigators will hunker down in an Army office north of Detroit on Monday to begin poring over hundreds of Iraq war contracts in search of rigged awards.
This team of 10 auditors, criminal investigators and acquisition experts are starting with a sampling of the roughly 6,000 contracts worth $2.8 billion issued by an Army office in Kuwait that service officials have identified as a hub of corruption.
The office, located at Camp Arifjan, buys gear and supplies to support U.S. troops as they move in and out of Iraq. The pace of that operation has exploded since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
Based on what the team finds, the probe may expand and the number of Army military and civilian employees accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks could grow, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. Nearly two dozen have been charged so far.
Signs of trouble include contracts continually awarded to vendors without the usual competition and awards that were competed but went to the bidder with the highest price rather than the lowest. A mismatch between the original product to be purchased and what was actually delivered is another red flag.
“Is there anything in there that might indicate to us that there might be some potential fraudulent activity?” Jeffrey Parsons, director of contracting at Army Materiel Command, said in an AP interview. “If there are patterns that we start to identify, then we’re going to do further review.”
Contracts with significant problems will be forwarded to the Army Audit Agency and the Army Criminal Investigation Command. If there’s credible evidence of wrongdoing, the FBI and prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department are called in.
The U.S. Justice Dept called in. They don't know anything about justice. This is a joke right?
In Warren, Mich., home to a large Army acquisition center, the contracting review team will examine 314 of the Kuwait contracts, each worth more than $25,000 and issued between 2003 and 2006.
Another group also looks for corruption
In Kuwait, a separate team of 10 at Camp Arifjan is already going through 339 contracts of lesser value and awarded during the same time period, according to Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir, Va.
Both reviews are to be finished before the end of the year.
A probe of 2007 contracts out of Kuwait has been completed; investigators found numerous problems with the office, including inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping.
The same old BUSHwhacker story: inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping. Spells corruption to me.
In the midst of those shortcomings came billions of dollars in war funding, creating an environment ripe for misconduct and malfeasance.
The teams in Michigan and Kuwait will go through paper records and also use data-mining tools to electronically search data stored on computers.
“Do we have contractors with different names but the same address?” Parsons said. “That would cause some suspicion.”
Tips from individuals familiar with the contracts are another tool for finding flawed awards, he said.
Contractors or mercenaries What a quackmire. If these people are riping America off, they are worst than Al Queade and should be tried for TREASON.
Probe focuses on Army office in Kuwait that gave $2.8 billion in contracts
Interactive
Updated: 9:28 p.m. ET Oct 26, 2007
WASHINGTON - A team of specially trained investigators will hunker down in an Army office north of Detroit on Monday to begin poring over hundreds of Iraq war contracts in search of rigged awards.
This team of 10 auditors, criminal investigators and acquisition experts are starting with a sampling of the roughly 6,000 contracts worth $2.8 billion issued by an Army office in Kuwait that service officials have identified as a hub of corruption.
The office, located at Camp Arifjan, buys gear and supplies to support U.S. troops as they move in and out of Iraq. The pace of that operation has exploded since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
Based on what the team finds, the probe may expand and the number of Army military and civilian employees accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks could grow, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. Nearly two dozen have been charged so far.
Signs of trouble include contracts continually awarded to vendors without the usual competition and awards that were competed but went to the bidder with the highest price rather than the lowest. A mismatch between the original product to be purchased and what was actually delivered is another red flag.
“Is there anything in there that might indicate to us that there might be some potential fraudulent activity?” Jeffrey Parsons, director of contracting at Army Materiel Command, said in an AP interview. “If there are patterns that we start to identify, then we’re going to do further review.”
Contracts with significant problems will be forwarded to the Army Audit Agency and the Army Criminal Investigation Command. If there’s credible evidence of wrongdoing, the FBI and prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department are called in.
The U.S. Justice Dept called in. They don't know anything about justice. This is a joke right?
In Warren, Mich., home to a large Army acquisition center, the contracting review team will examine 314 of the Kuwait contracts, each worth more than $25,000 and issued between 2003 and 2006.
Another group also looks for corruption
In Kuwait, a separate team of 10 at Camp Arifjan is already going through 339 contracts of lesser value and awarded during the same time period, according to Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir, Va.
Both reviews are to be finished before the end of the year.
A probe of 2007 contracts out of Kuwait has been completed; investigators found numerous problems with the office, including inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping.
The same old BUSHwhacker story: inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping. Spells corruption to me.
In the midst of those shortcomings came billions of dollars in war funding, creating an environment ripe for misconduct and malfeasance.
The teams in Michigan and Kuwait will go through paper records and also use data-mining tools to electronically search data stored on computers.
“Do we have contractors with different names but the same address?” Parsons said. “That would cause some suspicion.”
Tips from individuals familiar with the contracts are another tool for finding flawed awards, he said.
Contractors or mercenaries What a quackmire. If these people are riping America off, they are worst than Al Queade and should be tried for TREASON.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Corrupt Mercenary Corp: DynCorp
Audit: ‘Disarray’ on $1.2 billion Iraq contract
U.S. can’t account for DynCorp performance in training police, report says
 | An International Police Liaison Officer hired by the U.S. security company DynCorp walks through the rubble of a police station in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on Oct. 20. |
| Patrick Baz / AFP - Getty Images FIL |
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By Aram Roston
Investigative producer
NBC News
Updated: 12:05 a.m. ET Oct 23, 2007
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The State Department "does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program," the audit says. The federal watchdogs, with the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR, said that they even had to suspend their audit because there wasn't enough data to check the books, which were in “disarray.”
DynCorp’s contract was part of the U.S. strategy to arm and train a new Iraqi police force in the wake of the 2003 invasion. Training the police was a key part of the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq. The training was considered crucial because police are often unable to withstand insurgent attacks, and are considered penetrated by various militias.
DynCorp’s contract, issued in February 2004, entailed broad responsibilities, including equipping, housing and security for police training. It was overseen by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL, which also assigned the company to handle police training in Afghanistan.
The program in Iraq has been riddled with problems. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general, said at first the State Department had only two officials to administer the massive contract. He said the department wasn’t equipped to handle it. “They bit off more than they could chew,” Bowen said in an interview. “This is far and away the largest contract they have ever assigned in the history of the organization.”
‘Ripe for waste and fraud’
Bowen’s auditors said the environment was “ripe for waste and fraud.” DynCorp's invoices had numerous problems, such as duplicate payments. Auditors also reported on the "the purchase of a $1.8 million X-ray scanner that was never used, and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorp officials in hotels in Iraq rather than in existing living facilities." (A State Department spokesperson disputes that, in part, and says the unused X-ray scanner and hotels were in Afghanistan rather than Iraq.) Bowen says the State Department says it will try to organize its books so that the auditors can come back at the end of the year and try again.
But with invoices paid without being checked, and with no one tracking what they were for, auditors say it's impossible to determine what money was spent on. The State Department admits that it was unable to reconcile the books for the entire period of February 2004 to October 2006 but says since then it has made tremendous improvements. A spokesperson disputes that “most” of the $1.2 billion was not accounted for and suggests it should be “some" rather than "most." The spokesperson said that "INL is committed to considerable improvement. We've already made considerable staffing and process changes to improve our contract oversight."
Some costs renegotiated
But in an indication of the scale of the problem, the State Department says it has renegotiated some old invoices with DynCorp, and the company has dropped its price by about $116 million.
In a letter responding to the audit, the Acting Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s INL wrote that it “will take three to five years” to “fully review and validate invoices” for pre-October 2006 work. The letter points out that there have been vast improvements. Bowen, the IG, agreed.
| Click for related content |
Meanwhile the State Department continues to try to sort out another DynCorp debacle identified in a separate audit earlier this year — the purchase of hundreds of residential trailers in Baghdad. Bowen says the trailers, years after their purchase, are all in storage in the Baghdad airport complex, unoccupied. On top of that, the company spent $4.2 million on "unauthorized work" — that is, on projects that were not approved by the State Department. That work included building a U.S. taxpayer-funded Olympic-sized swimming pool near the Adnan Palace in Iraq even though the State Department never approved it.
DynCorp did not respond to two calls for comment.
The new audit is sure to raise new concerns. DynCorp, in addition to the police training, is one of three security companies awarded the Worldwide Personal Protective Security contract, under which it works with Blackwater and a company named Triple Canopy providing bodyguard services for diplomats. Currently DynCorp has received only $38 million under the program, while Blackwater has received $470 million. If Blackwater is indeed banned from Iraq, security experts expect a lot of its business may go to DynCorp.
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