Department of State “indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption” in Iraq

In the Democratic Policy Committee hearing “Have Bush Administration Reconstruction and Anti-Corruption Failures Undermined the U.S. Mission in Iraq?” Chairman Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said the U.S. government had contributed to the culture of corruption in Iraq, and that corruption involved both Iraqi and American money. This was the fourteenth in a series of oversight hearings to examine contracting fraud, waste, and abuse in Iraq.

Dorgan described the testimony provided in March to the Senate Appropriations Committee by Judge Radhi al Radhi, who had been the head of the Commission of Public Integrity (CPI), which Dorgan said is an anti-corruption committee established after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He said Radhi estimated that corruption resulted in the loss of $18 billion in government funds, most of which had been U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Judge Arthur Brennan, former State Department Official who had served in Iraq in 2007 as the Director of the Office of Accountability and Transparency (OAT) at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said that the OAT team discovered that the Department of State “indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi Government.” He also said that “In a sense, the Department of State has contributed to the killing and maiming of U.S. soldiers; the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians; the bolstering of illegal militias, insurgents and al-Qaida, and the enrichment and empowerment of the thieves controlling some of the Iraqi ministries.”

Brennan said the State Department never responded to an OAT report on the level of corruption in the 31 Iraqi ministries, and that to his knowledge, the State Department has never seen an audit of any Iraqi agency or ministry. He said “many of the ministries are controlled by criminals and guarded by armed thugs,” creating a dangerous situation for investigators.

James Mattil, who had been Chief of Staff for the Office of Accountability and Transparency, said OAT was under-staffed and had no operating budget, and that “there was no transparency even with the office of transparency.” He said “corruption and its consequences are the fuel that sustains the insurgency, providing the money, the people and the motivation to fight Americans in Iraq.” He respectfully disagreed with Ambassador Crocker’s conclusion that “Iraq’s leaders have the will to tackle the country’s pressing problems.” He said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is fighting Iraq’s anti-corruption agencies, not corruption, and provided an example where a new CPI commissioner was appointed who three weeks earlier had been arrested and jailed on corruption charges.