Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects
By JAMES GLANZ
Published: July 30, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.
The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress and the Pentagon...
...The hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency “was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,” the inspector general wrote in his report.
Lying to Congress is illegal.
This is what a culture of corruption will get you.
Things like this usually are released "late Friday." I've often thought that newspapers should have a little box on the front page of the Sunday paper, that lists all the news items pertaining to the federal government, that were released "late Friday."
Comments
But that would be admitting how easily their own processes could be manipulated and that the "news cycle" was partly a construct of staff wanting a normal Monday through Friday life.
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | July 29, 2006 9:53 PM
Sounds like something you should put on your blog...
Posted by: Mike the Mad Biologist | July 30, 2006 6:52 AM
But reactive you see. I've been reading you, too. Several comments had the plugged pulled mid-soak. Unable to take on anything new, then do something like Daily Transcript! A couple of your repostings severely tempted me. We see things very similarly, except for how to proceed. I demanded elsewhere -- my life.
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | July 31, 2006 4:29 AM