SIGIR case is back in the news

Staff Alleges Abuses by Top Iraq Auditor

Employees Tell Grand Jury, FBI of Mismanagement in Inspector General's Office

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page A04

Federal investigators called at least nine current and former employees of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction before a grand jury in Richmond on March 18, and the FBI has summoned others for questioning this week, marking a new phase in the probe of allegations against SIGIR chief Stuart W. Bowen Jr., according to witnesses and other sources familiar with the investigation.

The FBI and U.S. attorneys have been investigating whether Bowen and his top deputy, Ginger Cruz, improperly accessed staff e-mails in violation of federal law. Current and former SIGIR employees interviewed by the FBI and questioned before the grand jury have complained of mismanagement and abuse of authority, including retaliatory firing of staff members.

On the basis of the grand jury questioning and testimony, several witnesses said they believe that the government has strong evidence against Bowen, a former White House associate counsel who heads the lead U.S. agency in charge of tracking fraud, waste and abuse of more than $21 billion in funds for Iraq reconstruction. "Based on what I saw, they should have a good case," said one key witness who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

Bowen's attorney, Bradford A. Berenson, said that based on conversations with prosecutors and witnesses who testified before the grand jury, he does not believe that the government has a case. A previous grand jury did not indict, although more recent allegations are more detailed and involve several staff members who had tried to help SIGIR correct its problems, according to several staffers interviewed.

"Based upon my knowledge of the investigation so far, I have seen no evidence that leads me to believe a crime has been committed here," Berenson said in an e-mail. "I have confidence that the grand jury will take a fair and impartial view of the evidence and the law and will reach the same conclusion, as it already has with respect to other insubstantial allegations raised in the past by disgruntled former employees of SIGIR."

A focus of the investigation is whether Bowen and Cruz read staff e-mails even after the office of the Army general counsel advised them in writing that doing so would be improper, according to sources questioned by investigators and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The Army Information Center provides SIGIR's e-mail service.

A federal criminal statute prohibits knowingly accessing a government computer without authorization or exceeding the scope of one's authorized access. A separate federal law makes it a crime to access electronic communications, such as e-mails, without authorization. Both statutes provide for fines and prison time.

Four former SIGIR officials said they told investigators that Bowen and Cruz looked at e-mails of several employees. One official claimed to have witnessed Bowen going through e-mails of three employees in late 2005.

In March 2006, SIGIR made a formal request to the Army for regular access to staff e-mail, according to documents obtained by The Post. Army associate counsel Paul V. DeAgostino denied the request in a detailed letter, which has also been obtained by The Post.

"You stated that there was currently not any specific individual or group of individuals that were suspected of any wrongdoing, but that your agency was interested in instituting a monitoring program as a prophylactic measure to ensure employee compliance," the letter reads in part.

"Regarding real-time monitoring, only a properly authorized law enforcement agency, with concurrent coordination with legal counsel and review by a magistrate would be capable of performing this action. . . . In sum, Army regulations do not authorize the implementation of the type of monitoring program contemplated by your agency," DeAgostino wrote.

In 2007, after the Army ruling, Bowen and Cruz continued to monitor staff e-mails, according to SIGIR employees at the time. At one point, Cruz held a stack of papers in her hand and claimed they were e-mails of a senior employee, one official said. Staff members also said that Cruz bragged to senior staffers in early 2006 about reading workers' e-mails and in one case shared e-mails from one employee.

"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."

In an e-mailed statement Wednesday, Cruz blamed disgruntled employees for the complaints to federal authorities. "SIGIR has provided a remarkably effective service in identifying and pursuing fraud and waste in the United States' mission in Iraq over the past four years," she wrote. "Former employees who have been less committed to our mission and others who have been the subject of our work evidently want to distract our attention and derail our work."

SIGIR is an independent agency, with Bowen reporting to both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. In an e-mailed statement, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice is aware of the probes.

"It is our view that Inspector Generals must have independence in their work. In the case of allegations of wrongdoing against Inspectors General, the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency is the appropriate body for investigations," he said. "We have been aware that the PCIE and the U.S. Attorney have been reviewing the activities of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Stuart Bowen. As these are ongoing investigations, we will not offer further comment on the matter at this time."

SIGIR UPDATE; on the Arms profiteers ..

Revealed: Top officials in Iraq contract fraud

Released on 14/03/2008

Iraq investigator Stuart Bowen (left) has released his report into Robert Stein (right), the official who compromised reconstruction and defrauded the US taxpayer of millions. As John Allen reports, it makes for sober reading.

Successful pursuit of the Bloom-Stein conspiracy, the first major fraud prosecution in Iraq, has been reported to the US Senate by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen, Jr.

This was the outcome of collaboration among several US law enforcement agencies including the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service who together formed ‘Spitfire’ a nickname for the Special Investigative Task Force on Iraq Reconstruction.

Prosecution was initiated after a SIGIR audit revealed a criminal conspiracy in Hilla, Iraq, involving tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent contracts, bribes and kickbacks. This led to nine individuals, including US Army officers and high-ranking civil servants, being indicted. Four have been convicted and others are going to trial.

Presenting the facts to the US Senate Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Bowen’s report said that Robert Stein, the former Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) comptroller and funding officer in Hilla, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, possession of machine guns, and being ‘a felon in possession of a firearm’. The conspiracy is estimated to have defrauded the CPA of more than US$8.6 million.

Stein was sentenced in January 2007 to nine years in prison and three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay US$3.6 million in restitution and forfeit $3.6 million in assets.

In 2006 construction contractor Philip Bloom pleaded guilty to defrauding the CPA. Bloom admitted that along with Robert Stein and numerous public officials, including several high-ranking (Lieutenant Colonel) US Army officers, he had conspired to rig bids for federally-funded contracts awarded by CPA-South Central Region.

The effect of the conspiracy was that all of the contracts were awarded to Bloom, to a value exceeding US$8.6 million. He admitted paying Stein and other public officials over $2 million from proceeds of the fraudulently awarded contracts and stealing at least $2 million from the CPA.

Bloom was sentenced to 46 months in prison and two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $3.6 million in restitution and forfeit $3.6 million in assets.

Later that year, an employee of a government contractor in Iraq pleaded guilty to a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He offered a bribe ($60,000, according to Court filings) to an Iraqi police officer for his assistance in procuring approximately 1,000 armoured vests and other equipment for approximately $1 million.

The accused was sentenced to three years in prison, two years of supervised release and 250 hours of community service.

A Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with the Bloom-Stein scheme. This operation was used to launder over $300,000 through various bank accounts.

Last year the officer was sentenced to 21 months in prison followed by three years supervised release. He was ordered also to forfeit $144,500, equivalent to the cash payments he received from Bloom for his money laundering services.

A master sergeant in the US Air Force working for the Department of Defense received a 12 months and one day prison sentence for accepting illegal bribes from Bloom in exchange for furnishing him with sensitive contract information prior to awards.

Trials for three other men caught up in the Bloom-Stein conspiracy are understood to be in progress and pending for two more.

Commenting on the situation in Iraq, Mr. Bowen’s report said that corruption remains endemic. “Unless checked, it is doubtful that many US funded reconstruction efforts will be able to achieve their intended purpose.”

see also:

A summary of the Bloom/Stein Conspiracy

1. ^ Contractor Pleads Guilty In Case Involving Bribery, Fraud And Money Laundering Scheme In Al-Hillah, Iraq, United States Department of Justice, April 18, 2006
2. ^ FORMER COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY OFFICIAL AND CONTRACTOR ARRESTED IN CASE INVOLVING FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME IN IRAQ, United States Department of Justice, November 17, 2005
3. ^ Philip Bloom arrested in Iraq reconstruction deals scandal, Bucharest Daily News, December 16, 2005
4. ^ A Summary of the Bloom/ Stein Conspiracy, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, October 30, 2006

And on the one that has "got away" .. JAMES WOOLSEY ..

James Woolsey

Former CIA director James Woolsey was an outspoken proponent of regime change in Iraq, even before 9/11. And since the Iraq war began, he and his wife Suzanne have done pretty well. Woolsey is a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a contractor called “the shadow intelligence community” by one former CIA deputy director.

In addition to serving on the board of Fluor, one of the largest Iraq reconstruction contractors, Suzanne Woolsey also works as a trustee at the Institute for Defense Analysis, a nonprofit corporation paid to do analytical and strategic research for top Pentagon officials.

For Mr. Woolsey, the war was the ultimate pay-off for years of anti-Saddam advocacy. In addition to being a member of the neoconservative cabal known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), he was also appointed by Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld to the Bush administration’s Defense Policy Board, as well as advisory boards for the Navy and CIA.

Woolsey was also a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a private group founded to build support for the war in 2002 by former Lockheed Martin vice president Robert Jackson, another PNAC member who also wrote the Republican Party foreign policy platform in 2000.

Woolsey and the CLI lobbied members of Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which allocated nearly $100 million to Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraq National Congress (INC), for whom Woolsey was a paid adviser. Right after 9/11, Woolsey went off to Europe, returning with an unnamed source’s dubious claim that he had observed a meeting between Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 skyjacker, and an Iraqi agent in Prague.

As soon as the occupation began, Woolsey turned his attention to helping businesses get in on the action, becoming a featured speaker at related contractor and investor gatherings.

In addition to working for Booz Allen, he is a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a Carlyle-like investment strategies firm, and has connections to Global Options, a risk management consulting firm headed by Neil Livingstone, with whom Woolsey serves on the Defense Policy Board.

Besides Woolsey and Livingstone, seven other members of the 30-member Defense Policy Board selected by Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld have stood to benefit financially from the war, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

---

Multinational Monitor Contributing Editor Charlie Cray is Director of the Center for Corporate Policy.

Best of today's items - Iraq for sale

Hard day today.

I am GLUED to marketwatch, as I knew I would be. Reading the comments posted over there is the BEST.

But of course the world of electioneering continues on unabated in the US, and here in Canada, we are gearing up for a weekend of ACTION as our Parliament acts like spineless jellyfish in a world gone mad. So PLENTY of reading.

This the best item I ran across so far today. It is SO true. All of it.

Kerry Candaele

Iraq Still for Sale

Posted March 13, 2008 | 09:42 AM (EST)

---

When I first met Ben Carter by telephone in January of 2006, he was somewhat of a lone voice shouting into an empty stadium. He had been working for KBR -- a Halliburton subsidiary that had billions of dollars worth of government contracts in Iraq -- as a water contamination specialist. I was working with Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films on a documentary film (Iraq For Sale) about war profiteering companies who used the war as a way to line their pockets with gads of tax-payer cash for such things a bag of washed laundry at $100 a pop, or $45 for a six pack of Coke.

The war had been outsourced, privatized, and the likes of Kellog Brown and Root were not so privately robbing the country blind with cost-plus contracts. Based on this bright idea, the more a company spent, say, on that Hummer for the boss running the ice cream concession for the troops on leave in Kuwait, the more that company made. Or rather, and looked at from the publicus side of the ledger, the more the taxpayer paid.

Back in early 2006, Ben was talking to anyone who would listen about how he had discovered contaminated water on at least three Army bases in Iraq, water supplied by KBR, with the kind of stuff in it that you have to magnify to convince yourself it could kill you. But few people were listening, and certainly not the executives at Halliburton/KBR to whom he reported the problem. At the time, Halliburton said there is ``no evidence to substantiate allegations made by these former employees.''

But, as there is a fairly crisp logarithm about the Iraq War in all it's facets, namely, that every problem having "no evidence to substantiate it" eventually finds that the evidence does point to the problem having been real, Ben Carter, of course, has now been vindicated.

A just released Pentagon report by the Inspector General maintains that "soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry [remember that $100 bucks] at five U.S. military sites in Iraq." And that KBR's water quality "was not maintained in accordance with field water sanitary standards."

Ben Carter has been vindicated, but it took a hard slog. In Ben's case, the documents confirming his assertions were not shredded, but only hidden from sight, denied a hearing. And even as the evidence is laid out before them, KBR executives continued to claim that their hands, if not those of the soldiers they poisoned, are clean.

For Ben Carter, who lost a twenty-year old son just prior to joining the KBR water crew in Iraq, the emotional connection with the men and women he was supposed to be protecting--not from IEDs, but from one-celled animals--was instant and profound. "I hadn't anticipated seeing him in a lot of the marines' faces.These marines and army soldiers, they're just kids. 19, 18, 20 years old. And I could see in their eyes that they've got a lot to learn. And they trust, but sometimes that trust isn't what they expect. They trust that when people are there to do what they're getting paid much more than the young marine's getting paid, they trust that job is getting done. And they're not wise enough to the world, to the corporate world especially, to know that that trust doesn't matter when it comes to money."

There's that algorithm again. If the Bushies say trust us and KBR with your money and your lives, best to put your hands in your pockets and head in the opposite direction, and fast.

As we see with this Inspector General's report, often the evidence for malfeasance winds it way to the public ever so slowly. So it just might be that before your day of reckoning, before it is revealed that what you believe to be true is in fact true, you could be broke, have died waiting, or both.

Iraq was for sale, and it still is. The missing and ripped-off billions in this three-trillion dollar war, are now making their entrance into public consciousness, meandering toward their public hearing, as evidence to be weighed into the balance sheet of this awful and unnecessary act of imperial hubris.

URUK NET: Iraq: the country of two rivers without water

Note; until they solve "the problem" of du in the "region", there is little, if any hope, of a water pipeline, or any other pipeline being built in the region, guyz, let alone a DAM. the people be damned. Come helliburton or low watah.

If Turkey is a Good Little Boy, it will get nice, big, fat ca$h and con$truction contract$, eh? How charming.

And this is the shape of US EMPIRE things to come: the commoditization of WATER. It's in pipes, thus no longer free standing and THUS no law need apply.

Can you spell

G - E - N - O - C - I - D - E

and

D - I - C - K C - H - E - N - E - Y ?

and

U - S M - i - l - i - t - a - r - y b - a - s - e - s

and

H - a - l - l - i - b - u - r - t - o - n ????

Veeger

Iraq: the country of two rivers without water

Domenico Guglielmi

November 30, 2007 Since the American invasion, the hydration system in Iraq, the richest country in water in the Middle East, has been completely devastated. The lack of concrete reconstruction projects by the government and the difficulty of humanitarian organisations to intervene in an effective way have caused hydration and humanitarian emergencies which are scarcely manageable. To this situation are added the issues surrounding the risk of the eventual collapse of the country's largest dam. Domenico Guglielmi Equilibri.net (30 November 2007) The Mosul Dam: between real risk and unfounded alarmism Currently the dam at Mosul supplies drinking water and irrigation to the whole surrounding region and to the valley as far as Baghdad, generating 300MW of electrical energy to the region. According to American experts from the US Army Corps of Engineers, the dam could be on the verge of collapse, creating a disaster of huge proportions, be it in terms of human lives (a possible 500,000 victims are spoken of together with the total flooding of Mosul with its 1.7 million inhabitants) or be it in terms of the country's agriculture. The pressure that would be generated by the upstream waters could create a downstream wave of about 20 metres in height whose impact would hit Baghdad (400km to the South). Worries have been growing since May, when following the inspection by the US Special Inspector General for Iraqi Construction (SIGIR), a letter was sent to President Nuri al-Maliki from American Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus. According to experts the damage would be fundamentally due to the strong erosion of the chalky ground on which the very dam was built in 1984. Since the beginning of its construction, the Iraqi authorities have carried out maintenance works, injecting liquid mortar in order to eliminate the infiltration of the subsoil (more than 200 tonnes of mortar, yearly since 1990, have been used). In light of the American report has come the reaction of the Iraqi government and of the Special Inspector for the Reconstruction of Iraq, Stuart Bowen, who have declared that the danger of collapse isn't imminent. Even the spokesman for the Ministry of Hydration Resources, Ali al-Dabbagh has strongly confirmed that the American report is a fraud and that the installations are constantly monitored, underlining that the problems at the core have always been there and that they are under control, with a general structure which is in good order. The Minister of Hydration Resources, Latif Rashid has already declared that from 2008, they will carry out works to encase the core in a sack which won't allow for any possibility of infiltration. The Association of Iraqi Muslim Scholars (AMS) attributes the responsibility both to the Americans and the Government for the mal-management of the dam and to the insufficient funds designated for its maintenance ($27million). For some time already, before the declaration over the possibility of imminent collapse, many Iraqi and international associations denounced the mal-management of works to the dam on the part of American SIGIR, even raising the suspicion that the centre of the dam may have been voluntarily damaged. In recent months, it has emerged how a Turkish company who had taken a contract for $640,000 for the construction of bins intended for the cement with which to reinforce the dam, technically they badly constructed them, so that they were never used. The Government's underground goings-on and the interventions by humanitarian organisations The majority of the water in Iraq is distributed with tankers which depart in the morning from the potholes and distribute water for the remainder of the day. In Falluja for example, the tankers set out to re-fill the potholes of Abu Ghraib and Al Asrakhia, managing to answer to the demand of almost 75% of the city. Between August and September, UNICEF extended the water distribution operations, establishing new sources above all for Baghdad. It is estimated that 38.5 million litres of water are distributed to various parts of the capital, covering hospitals, schools and evacuee centres for a total of 120,000 people. Seventeen hydration and sewage installations have been repaired by the governing bodies of Wasit, Kirkuk, Basra and Kerbala, while in Thiqar, 30,000 people have benefited from the reparation of three sewage networks, all interventions, which due to scarce security, require many months to reach a stage of completion. Humanitarian organisations are in the process of training numerous engineering experts in the field of hydration infrastructure and they are involved in the reparation of electricity centres which, in many cases, allow access to drinking water (such as in the case of the area of Al-Shua'iba in the city of Basra). Among the projects is that being led by UNICEF and UNOPS, for the construction of an electricity centre necessary for the functioning of purification systems in Sharq Dijala, which would carry drinking water to 2.7 million inhabitants in the Western part of Baghdad. An investment of $5.6 million is predicted but funds are scarce. The same UNICEF has been unable to answer to the request of the government for the provision of chemicals necessary for the treatment of water, due to the same lack of funds. The Polish Humanitarian Organisation (PHO) launched a project to help improve the quality of water in the region of Babele. The water purification installations are the only sources of drinking water in the city. In 2006, seven purifiers were repaired and in July 2007, thanks to financing from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PHO began the construction of new water purification systems which will produce 50 cubed metres of clean water. The project sets out the construction of water pipes which will carry drinking water to the families in the village of Saied Esmail in the region of Ablu Garak. If on the one hand, the humanitarian organisations are very active, on the other the lack of intervention by the government authorities within the territory is evident. It is all in the hands of sporadic projects carried out by humanitarian organisations, which between lack of funding, scarce security in the intervention zones and the vastness of the crisis, fail to confront the problem effectively. The reality is that despite the assurances of the Ministry of hydration resources, the country's hydration system is a long way off being re-established. Canals, dams, purifiers, desalination installations, pumping stations and installations for the treatment of sewage are almost completely unusable. Water, between petroleum and gas The re-construction of the Iraqi hydration system depends on the geopolitical choices of the United States and its allies, above all as regards the northern Iraq (provinces of Ninive and Dahuk), an area from which gas and petroleum should flow towards Turkey and therefore, towards Europe, with the intention of emancipating itself from dependence on Russian hydrocarbon. This project should lead, in the long run to the substitution of Russian hydrocarbons with those from Iraq. This strategy is defined by many analysts as the "balkanization of Iraq", setting out the division of resources from the north between the large, Western multinationals. To this proposal, the authorities of the autonomous Kurdish region continue to sign new contracts for the exploitation of gas and petroleum with other countries. The last seven regard the areas of Akre-Bijil and Shaikan near the dam of Mosul (whose maintenance is entrusted to this same authority). Other blocks (about 24) were assigned to the province of Dahuk with unspecified localities (which could include the areas eventually flooded by the downstream wave and upstream to the artificial lake). The eventual breakage of the dam would force almost a million people to move away from these territories (currently set aside for agricultural use), generating a vast wave of refugees towards Syria. Once Iraq loses its hydration resources derived from the dam, Turkey will have total control over Iraqi water procurement through the construction of a new dam for $1.7 billion on the Tigris, where the river flows towards Iraq (the old "Ilisu" project, financed by the Societe Generale SA, German, Swiss and Austrian credit companies, which once completed, will produce 3800 Giga-watts of energy hourly, that is to say, 2.4% of current Turkish production). In this way, Iraq would lose a large part of its drinking water and it would see the definitive drying up of the wetlands of Shatt el-Arab. The results will be the eventual desertification of every type of agriculture: in the north due to the overflowing of the dam and in the south, due to the desertification of the wetlands. All of this is despite the United Nations Convention in 1997 over the "fair distribution of the water of the commercial rivers". However, despite this, in March 2007, Iraq, Syria and Turkey signed a protocol of agreement over the common management of the waters of the Tigris and of the Euphrates. The behaviour of the American authorities in these months would seem to confirm their global strategy. The United States have invested only $2.1bn into the reconstruction of the water system (both for drinking water and the sewage system), to answer to a need of $14bn. According to Iraqi sources, $530 million would have been spent on hydration infrastructure. They also propose as a solution the construction of a dam at Badush, which however wouldn't be sufficient to function as a valve in the case of the breakage of the dam at Mosul and it would cost $300million to construct, which the Iraqi Government doesn't want to undertake. This is without considering the fact that in order to avoid that the dam is constructed on unsuitable ground, as happened with the dam in Mosul, geological inspections which would take years of work would be required. Conclusion Beyond some sporadic intervention, the reconstruction of the Iraqi water system is closely connected with the geopolitical strategies of the big powers present in the region. The management of the works regarding the dam in Mosul, in a precarious area of the Middle East , will represent an important pawn for the future assets of the region. That which seems obvious is that Iraq is devastated, impoverished not only of energy resources but also of water resources. It is the battle for control over water that will guarantee power status in the Middle East and as in Israel, water is controlled between the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, Turkey could control this towards Syria and Iraq. Translation by Megan Ball

:: Article nr. 38774 sent on 30-nov-2007 20:15 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=38774

Link: uk.equilibri.net/article/8350/Iraq__the_country_of_two_rivers_without_water

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .

More crime and corruption; the "sainted OMB" oh, my!!

Inspector General for Iraq Under Investigation
FBI, Congress Among Those Probing Allegations of Overspending, Mismanagement

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 14, 2007; A01

Over the past four years, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen Jr. and his staff have probed allegations of waste and fraud in the $22 billion U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. Their work has led to arrests, indictments and millions of dollars in fines. And it has earned Bowen, who had been a legal adviser to President Bush, many admirers among both parties on Capitol Hill for his efforts to identify overspending and mismanagement.

But Bowen's office has also been roiled by allegations of its own overspending and mismanagement. 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.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Presidential Council on Integrity and Efficiency, and the Army's Equal Employment Opportunity Office are also engaged in separate investigations into complaints from SIGIR staff members, according to current and former SIGIR officials and others familiar with the individual probes. The allegations range from retaliatory firing of a whistle-blower to "sustained patterns of inappropriate behavior," according to employee complaints obtained by The Washington Post.

Bowen declined a request for an interview but addressed several questions by e-mail. He said that "no current SIGIR official has been notified that he or she is the subject or target of any such investigation." He also said the congressional investigation had ended, and he refused to comment on the complaint to the Army.

Spokesmen for the FBI, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia and the presidential council refused to comment, but law enforcement sources said all three investigations are continuing. David Marin, the minority staff director of the House oversight committee, said yesterday that the congressional investigation, which focuses on charges made by SIGIR whistle-blowers, "is ongoing."

There are now so many probes that a senior SIGIR official said the agency's Crystal City headquarters is "gripped by paranoia. It's almost a siege mentality."

That official, and more than two dozen other current and former SIGIR employees interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because FBI and presidential council officials have asked them to refrain from public comments while the investigations proceed. Others did not want to be quoted by name because of fear of retribution by top SIGIR officials.

SIGIR was created by Congress in 2004 to act as the chief watchdog over the effort to stabilize Iraq by building hospitals and schools, training security forces and increasing electricity production. The agency quickly earned a reputation as a tenacious, apolitical investigative body, identifying cases of corruption, wasteful spending and mismanagement that have led to 13 arrests and more than $17 million in fines.

Members of Congress have heaped praise on Bowen, who served as a legal adviser to Bush when he was governor of Texas. He has been asked to testify at dozens of congressional hearings. Democrats have expressed particular delight that a close ally of the president's was willing to speak out about problems with Iraq's reconstruction.

SIGIR claimed in an October 2006 report that its "financial impact" -- the cost savings resulting from its work, the funds it recovered and other benefits -- was as much as $1.87 billion. The report led to an extension of SIGIR's mandate last December. "SIGIR's oversight during this process has been essential to ensuring that the taxpayers' dollars are being used effectively and efficiently," Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said at the time.

But after other government agencies challenged that figure, arguing that proper accounting standards were not used in calculating the estimate and that SIGIR did not distinguish between U.S. funds and Iraqi funds, SIGIR revised the number in a report this summer. The new estimate was less than $95 million, only 5 percent of the previous claim.

Government investigators have requested copies of many SIGIR records on costs and savings, according to an investigative document and people familiar with the probe. SIGIR changed its calculations this year, Bowen said, to reflect actual savings and not potential savings.

As SIGIR grew in prominence, dissension was growing within the agency's offices. In 2006, several former SIGIR employees sent an eight-page complaint to the presidential council, an executive-branch oversight body, alleging that the agency's leaders had engaged in fraud, violated federal regulations, created a hostile workplace, abused their positions and "sustained patterns of inappropriate behavior." The council launched an investigation and eventually referred some of the matters to the FBI.

In an e-mail to SIGIR staff members, Bowen described the complaint filed with the presidential council as a result of "disgruntled former employees."

Since then, investigators have broadened their inquiry to include allegations that SIGIR management may have tried to influence staff members who were sought for questioning by investigators, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Among the issues that have sparked the most internal tension have been SIGIR's overtime practices. Last year, 30 agency employees earned more than the $165,200 salary of a senator or a congressman, according to internal SIGIR documents obtained by The Post. Seven earned $100,000 or more above their salaries, the documents show. More than two dozen earned more than the $174,900 in salary and benefits paid last year to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. One SIGIR inspector, who had a $142,000 base salary, earned $346,017 last year, in part by claiming more than 1,200 hours of overtime.

SIGIR staff members, like other federal civilian employees, receive hazard and hardship pay equal to 70 percent of their salaries when they are in Iraq.

At least 30 SIGIR employees charged between 800 and 1,400 hours of overtime and compensatory time in 2006 -- up to almost nine months of additional work stuffed into the year. Thirty-seven others charged between 200 and 725 hours of overtime and comp time.

"The number of hours didn't wash," said a senior SIGIR official. "It's physically and mentally impossible to work that many hours."

Bowen's deputy, Ginger Cruz, said SIGIR's overtime practices are "cost-effective" because one employee earning maximum overtime is cheaper than hiring two people. She said SIGIR this year reduced overtime allowances to 24 hours per two-week pay period. She also noted that other U.S. government agencies provide generous financial packages to employees serving in Iraq.

Federal employee salaries are subject to an annual cap, which is $215,000 for this year. But additional earnings can be paid out the following year or after workers leave the agency.

Government investigators are also probing SIGIR's other expenses, including the book project about Iraq's reconstruction, according to staff members questioned by investigators. The presidential council informed SIGIR last year that the agency was being investigated for "possible fraud, waste and abuse in connection with the printing of the SIGIR history book and possible false statements made to the Office of Management and Budget to justify SIGIR funding," according to a copy of a letter from the council to SIGIR obtained by The Post.

Bowen described the book as SIGIR's "potentially most important project" in a memo he sent last month to the secretaries of state and defense and eight congressional committees.

According to people questioned by investigators and documents obtained by The Post, one of the most serious allegations that the FBI and federal prosecutors are probing is whether top SIGIR officials broke federal laws by accessing employee e-mail messages stored on computers maintained by the Army without proper authorization.

At least four former senior SIGIR officials said they told investigators that Bowen and Cruz looked at employee e-mail. One of them claimed to be an eyewitness to Bowen going through the e-mail of three employees. Another said Bowen and Cruz read the messages "to find out who was loyal and who was not."

The former officials said the e-mail monitoring began in 2005, before the government investigations commenced. They said the monitoring continued into this year in an effort to identify employees suspected of speaking with investigators and other government agencies.

In an interview, Cruz said she participated in administrative investigations "some time ago" that involved a "limited review" of three people's e-mail. Bowen said that "SIGIR policy states that employees do not have an expectation of privacy in the use of their government computers. . . . E-mail reviews can, and have been, conducted by SIGIR management to investigate allegations of work-related misconduct."

The investigations are focusing largely on the actions of Bowen and Cruz, according to current and former senior staff members who have been questioned, as well as congressional sources and other U.S. officials familiar with the probes.

Cruz, a former spokeswoman for the governor of Guam, originally joined SIGIR as a contractor working for the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. Current and former SIGIR employees have told investigators that Cruz threatened to put hexes on employees and made inappropriate sexual remarks in the presence of staff members. Cruz is a self-described wiccan, a member of a polytheistic religion of modern witchcraft. "

We warned Ginger not to talk about witchcraft, that it would scare people,"

a former SIGIR employee said.

Cruz denied making comments of a "sexual nature" and noted that she was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal SIGIR investigation into the claim.

After the detailed but anonymous complaint was sent to the presidential council, Cruz sought special dispensation from Bowen for SIGIR to pay her legal fees -- an uncommon practice within government, according to U.S. officials. So far, the agency has paid for more than $32,000 of Cruz's legal fees, according to copies of the invoices provided by SIGIR under a Freedom of Information Act request. Bowen said the agency's general counsel advised him that the payment of Cruz's legal fees was permissible.

The Army's Equal Employment Opportunity Office probe is focusing on a complaint by a former employee who had raised allegations of SIGIR discrimination in the dismissal of her African American assistant, which she charges led to her own dismissal in retaliation. The employee, Denise Burgess, stated in her complaint that she was terminated on the same day she spoke to the presidential council, just two months after receiving an $8,500 bonus from Bowen for exemplary work. Current and former SIGIR employees said they have been asked by FBI investigators about Burgess's termination.

Several staffers interviewed at the suggestion of SIGIR expressed loyalty to Bowen. One senior staff member said he has not seen any firsthand evidence of illegal or inappropriate behavior.

Several current and former officials expressed concern that the practices of SIGIR's leaders are discrediting the work of the agency. "

SIGIR's purpose was to look at reconstruction and then go away," said a former senior official. "Are they contributing to the good anymore? No. Were they before? Yes. But they should have stuck to the plan and been willing to stand down in 2008."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

So far, some more stuff that appears on Google ..

Ledger Independent

Inspector General for Iraq Under Investigation Washington Post, United States - 4 hours ago The employee allegations have prompted four government probes into the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), including an ... FBI Probes Iraq IG on Misconduct Claims The Associated Press FBI investigates SIGIR misconduct PRESS TV Reuters Politics Summary Washington Post all 255 news articles »

FBI probes Iraq IG on misconduct claims Pierceland Herald, Canada - 5 hours ago However, no SIGIR official has received notice that they are the subject or target of a criminal investigation," SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said. ...

Reuters Top News Summary Washington Post, United States - 1 hour ago Employee allegations of overspending and mismanagement at the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) prompted an ...

House backs big increase in contractor oversight GovExec.com, DC - 9 hours ago Contractor employees will be able to report waste, fraud and abuse -- as well as mismanagement and hazards to public safety -- to the SIGIR and to Congress. ...

FLASHBACK: 109th Congress Tried To Defund Iraq Watchdog, Transfer ... Think Progress, DC - 17 Nov 2007 Congress created the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) “to provide oversight of the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) and ...

Iraq: the country of two rivers without water uruknet.info, Italy - 30 Nov 2007 Worries have been growing since May, when following the inspection by the US Special Inspector General for Iraqi Construction (SIGIR), a letter was sent to ...

Laguna Pueblo-owned contractor is 15th largest in Iraq Albuquerque Tribune, NM - 30 Nov 2007 "During SIGIR's site visit, the facility appeared to operate as a fully functional office building, with a capacity of more than 3000 personnel," the audit ...

US Aid to Pakistan Center For American Progress, DC - 7 Dec 2007 The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction (SIGIR) has been a critical tool in determining the impact and efficacy of billions of dollars in ...