|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
July 28th,
2007 - S.A. Major’s Arrest is Linked to Iraq Reconstruction |
|
S.A. Major’s Arrest
is Linked to Iraq Reconstruction By Gary Contreras San Antonio Express-News July 28, 2007 The $15 million bribery case
linked to an Army major stationed at Fort Sam Houston is the largest of the
Iraq reconstruction effort, according to the head of a federal agency
Congress established to keep tabs on the taxpayer money used in the
rebuilding. "This is the largest
bribery case that's come out of the Iraq reconstruction experience,"
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told
the San Antonio Express-News in an interview Wednesday. Bowen told the Senate
Judiciary Committee in March that, at that time, the largest case his agency
had investigated involved a U.S. businessman who paid $4 million to
high-ranking Army officers and other public officials to get $8.6 million in
military contracts. A Pentagon spokesman
declined to confirm reports that the case unfolding here is the biggest
bribery scandal in U.S. military history. The investigation that this
week snared Maj. John L. Cockerham, 41, and his wife, Melissa Cockerham, 40,
grew Wednesday as authorities with the Justice and Defense departments took
John Cockerham's sister, Carolyn Blake, a former schoolteacher, into custody
in Dallas. She is charged with conspiring with the Cockerhams to accept $3.1
million in bribes from contractors and laundering money. After a brief hearing in
federal court in Dallas Wednesday afternoon, Blake, 44, pleaded not guilty
and was ordered held pending a bail hearing scheduled for Monday. Court records obtained
Wednesday show agents are also looking into a property in downtown San
Antonio they suspect was bought by the Cockerhams using an intermediary. The
address of the property and other details of the purchase and transfer were
not disclosed. The Cockerhams were arrested
Monday on federal charges alleging John Cockerham brokered deals with
handpicked contractors in Kuwait in exchange for kickbacks that the women
helped pick up and launder. Melissa Cockerham, for instance, is accused of
accepting bags or briefcases stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in
payoffs for her husband from contractors in Kuwait. During their own bail
hearing, the Cockerhams were faced with four Justice Department prosecutors
and learned they'll spend almost a week in jail. Confusion arose about who
would represent the Cockerhams: lawyers paid for by taxpayers or those hired
by the defendants. The hearing was postponed until Tuesday. Cockerham, a contracting and
procurement officer now assigned to the Army's 410th Contracting Support
Brigade at Fort Sam Houston, is accused of taking $9.6 million in bribes and
was to receive another $5.4 million for steering lucrative deals to
contractors in Kuwait and Iraq. Ledgers and codes Court records said the
bribes were documented in a hand-written ledger agents seized in December
2006 at a home the Cockerhams occupied on Fort Sam Houston before they moved
two houses next door. During the same search, another ledger, written in
code, was discovered documenting $3.1 million in suspected bribes for John
Cockerham. The bribes eclipse the
previous high that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction had
identified: $4million. The agency, SIGIR for short,
was established by Congress in 2004 to oversee the taxpayer money spent on
the reconstruction of Iraq, which began in 2003. Congress has appropriated
$44 billion for the reconstruction efforts and 70 percent has been spent,
Bowen said. The Cockerham case was among
65 active fraud investigations by Bowen's agency into military contracts in
the Middle East. His agency has referred about 30 of those cases to the
Justice Department for prosecution. Bowen said he is barred from estimating
the total value of the contracts involved in the Cockerham case alone because
the investigation is ongoing. Several sources have told
the Express-News that Cockerham is only a piece of a massive military contract
scandal in the Middle East, and allege other military officials with higher
rank than Cockerham are involved. Bowen said he could not
comment regarding those allegations. "That's where I can't
talk. ... This is an ongoing investigation," Bowen said. "The rest
of the story will be told over time as the investigation unfolds." He assured taxpayers that
his agency is keeping tabs on how its money is being spent and said the next
quarterly report to Congress is to be issued next week. It was unclear how the
government learned about the bribes to Cockerham, but various sources told
the Express-News that the case is one in a pattern of contract-rigging and
bribery cases at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, involving multiple members of the
military, including some who died under mysterious circumstances as
investigators closed in. A review by the Express-News of Army newsletters,
news clips and other materials document a series of bribery scandals at the
camp that have never been fully explained by the military. After their hearing, the
Cockerhams - cuffed and shackled - were loaded by federal marshals into a van
to be delivered back to jail. Turning to television and newspaper reporters,
John Cockerham appeared to claim a government conspiracy was behind the prosecution
and asked that the American Civil Liberties Union be notified. "We're suffering
injustice in the name of justice," Cockerham shouted. "I guess we
can thank the Department of Justice for this." Later, attorney Brent K. De
La Paz, who is representing Melissa Cockerham, said the public should not
forget that the allegations are merely that: allegations. "There's a lot of
things I would love to know where the government is getting their information
from," De La Paz said. "Short of having something with a signature,
I don't think there's anything there beyond an allegation. I'd hate to see a
rush to judgment and then later to see that it was not exactly the way it was
presented." Christine Tallie, another of
John Cockerham's sisters, told reporters outside court that her brother is
upstanding and that she was shocked and "in denial" regarding the
allegations. "All I know is he's a
man of integrity," Tallie said. "He's an honest person. ... He's a
true man of God." Checks and balances The fraud in the Cockerham
case, according to court records, was well disguised because the Cockerhams
allegedly kept a low profile. A retired high-level Army
official in San Antonio familiar with the military contracting process said
there is a system of checks and balances. Layers of lawyers provide legal and
ethical checks, but fraud and graft may not be caught until down the line, he
said. "When you start dealing
in contracts of this magnitude, our audits and our quality controls are such
that eventually somebody is going to catch you," said the official, who
requested anonymity because he still deals with the military. "This guy
was low-level, but apparently was doing some big-time stuff."John
Cockerham, a native of Shreveport, La., enlisted with the U.S. Army in 1989
and had been a commissioned officer since 1993, the same year he graduated
from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He has held a number of
contracting and procurement positions that included stints at Camp Arifjan,
headquarters for the Army's Area Support Group. Shari Lawrence, a
spokeswoman for the Army's Human Resources Command in Washington, D.C., said
the military's records show Cockerham was assigned to the Area Support Group
in 2004, and he was first stationed at Camp Arifjan. Court records state that
Cockerham spent 10 months at Camp Arifjan, working with a contracting
division, and he moved with that division to Camp Doha, Kuwait, in June 2005.
The division later was moved back to Camp Arifjan, and Cockerham also moved
with it, the court documents state. Both camps are near Kuwait City. Lawrence said Cockerham was
transferred in January 2006 to the Army Contracting Agency's Missions
Division at Fort Sam Houston, initially as a contract officer for Southwest
Asia and then handling contracts for the Americas, an area covered by U.S.
Army South. Lawrence said Cockerham's current assignment is the 410th
Contracting Support Brigade. The contract-rigging he is
accused of occurred during 2004 and 2005 in the Middle East, and court
records say some of the deals were cut in Camp Arifjan's parking lot.
Cockerham steered contracts aimed at support, like bottled water and laundry
services, for U.S. troops helping with the Iraq reconstruction effort. One payoff Melissa Cockerham
told agents about involved a bag containing $800,000, and the briber took her
to a Kuwaiti bank to put the money in a safe deposit box, according to court
records. Another exchange involved a female briber and the payoff was
$500,000 in another bag, the records show. "M. Cockerham explained
that J. Cockerham made the arrangements for her meetings with these
individuals and stated that she did not want to ask her husband 'too many
questions,'" according to a partially unsealed search warrant affidavit
obtained by the Express-News. Two companies The contracts involved at
least eight contractors, not named by investigators. Federal court records in
Detroit, however, identified two of the companies as TransOrient and Green
Valley. The military debarred Green Valley in May for two years, meaning federal
agencies are prohibited from doing business with the company because of
allegations that it was involved in getting contracts through bribery or
fraud. TransOrient does not appear on the military's list of excluded
companies. The Express-News was unable to reach officials for either company. "Corruption within the
U.S. program in Iraq, while egregious where we have found it, has been a
relatively minor component of the overall effort, as measured against the
total U.S. investment in Iraq," Bowen's statement to Congress said.
"Waste, on the other hand, has been a significantly more serious issue.
SIGIR's audits have documented examples of this waste, and we are currently
planning a forensic audit of the entire Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which
will provide more detailed answers down the road." But while Bowen's agency
aims to root out waste, fraud and corruption, it has faced criticism of its
own. For more than a year, a
multi-agency investigation has been focusing on allegations that Bowen's office
is wasting funds on a project to produce a book on lessons learned during the
reconstruction, USA Today reported this year. On Wednesday, Bowen
attributed the allegations to ex-employees of his agency. The numbers behind the case An investigation targeting
an Army major at Fort Sam Houston is the biggest bribery scandal to come out
of the reconstruction of Iraq. Here are some highlights of the case: - Defendants: Army Maj. John
L. Cockerham, 41; his wife, Melissa Cockerham, 40; and John Cockerham's
sister, Carolyn Blake, 44. - Cockerham is alleged to
have gotten $9.6 million in bribes and expected $5.4 million more, most of it
while he was stationed in Kuwait in 2004 and 2005. Blake, who lives in
suburban Dallas, worked for a company in Kuwait and is accused of accepting
$3.1 million in bribes on behalf of John Cockerham, and keeping $313,512 as a
fee. Melissa Cockerham is accused of accepting millions in bribes for her
husband. - Cockerham home at 550
Graham Road on Fort Sam Houston searched Dec. 21, 2006. Agents searched
Cockerham's current home at 554 Graham Road, Fort Sam Houston, on Saturday.
Blake's home in Sunnyvale, near Dallas, searched by the feds on Wednesday. - At least eight contractors
involved in graft, including TransOrient and Green Valley Co., both based in
Kuwait. - Cockerham case is one of
65 investigations into contracting fraud by the special inspector general for
Iraq reconstruction; nearly 30 cases referred to the Justice Department for
prosecution. - John L. Cockerham and
Melissa J. Jordan (now Cockerham) married in 1986 in Kentucky. He entered the
Army in 1989, and was commissioned in 1993. He has held various positions as
a contract and procurement officer for the Army. Now stationed with 410th
Contracting Support Brigade at Fort Sam Houston. Sources: Court documents,
interviews with defense lawyers and federal authorities. External link: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA072607.1A.major.arrest.folo.3422b9d.html |