|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
March 15th,
2008 - Kickbacks, Weapons and Suicide: The US Army’s Battle with Corruption |
|
Kickbacks, Weapons and
Suicide: The US Army’s Battle with Corruption The disappearance of 200,000 US-supplied weapons in Iraq exposes a
massive web of corruption among military personnel and contractors. By Ed Blanche kippreport March 15, 2008 Major Gloria D. Davis of the
US Army was buried in Washington's Arlington Cemetery, the last resting place
of many of America's military heroes, on December 23, 2006. But the
47-year-old Davis, of Missouri, an 18-year army veteran, did not perish
fighting her country's enemies. Instead, the US Army said, she died in
"a non-combat-related incident" in Iraq. In fact, Gloria Davis put
a bullet in her brain on December 12 in her quarters in the sprawling US
military base at Baghdad International Airport. The previous day she had
confessed to military investigators that she had taken $225,000 in bribes in
2004-05 from a US defense contractor that operated warehouses across Iraq
where the US military stored automatic weapons and other equipment. US authorities believe that
the company that Major Davis identified, Lee Dynamics International, is part
of a massive web of corruption involving military personnel and contractors
across Iraq. She told army investigators she received the bribes through a
Thai bank account and then deposited the money in US and Swiss accounts. At the heart of an
ever-widening investigation by a posse of US agencies is a mushrooming
scandal in Iraq that has seriously eroded US credibility in the Middle East -
the disappearance in 2004-05 of some 190,000 US-supplied weapons intended for
Iraqi security forces and which the US Army cannot account for. There is
evidence that some of the missing 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80,000
pistols, including Austrian-made 9mm Glock automatic pistols, ended up in the
hands of anti-US insurgents and sectarian death squads that have killed
thousands of Iraqis. The scandal over the weapons, and swelling evidence of
massive corruption by US officials in the war zone, has reached into the
upper echelons of the State Department, greatly embarrassing the Bush
administration and underlining the chaotic and often inept US management of
the conflict. The missing weapons were
provided by the US government and the supply line to the Iraqi forces was
operated by US defense contractors. They ran a network of warehouses across
Iraq where the weapons and other equipment were stored. Some of the missing
guns - estimates range from dozens to hundreds - have been found in Turkey,
Iraq's northern neighbor and a key US ally. NATO-member Turkey has complained
that some of these weapons, traced by their serial numbers, have been
captured from militant separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
which has bases in northern Iraq and has links to Iraq's Kurds, who are also
important US allies. Turkish police officers say
the Ankara government believes that as many as 20,000 Glock pistols have been
smuggled into Turkey from Iraq over the last three years. Until 2006, few of
the high-quality handguns had been found in Turkey. But since then, police
officers say, Glocks have been used in several high-profile assassinations
and that as many as 1,000 have been seized by the army and police from
terrorists, separatists and criminals. Iran, which the Bush administration
accuses of training, arming and funding Shi'ite and Sunni groups in Iraq,
complains that US-supplied weapons from Iraq are making their way to
anti-government rebels in oil-rich Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran
and other border regions. In December 2007, the US
military in Iraq admitted that it had also lost track of a further 12,000
weapons, including more than 800 machine guns, as well as other equipment.
Most of the missing weapons originated in Eastern Europe, particularly from
the former Yugoslavia. Amnesty International reported that in 2004-05 more
than 350,000 AK-47s and other arms were taken from Bosnia and Serbia by
private contractors working for the US Defense Department and shipped to
Iraq. The Pentagon said that an audit conducted in Iraq between March and May
2007 was able to trace only $41 million worth of armored vehicles and other
equipment in a package valued at more than $500 million intended for the
Iraqi police force and army. The missing items included 2,300 rocket-propelled
grenade launchers, 7,000 pistols and 18 heavy recovery vehicles worth $5
million. Petraeus’ watch Adding to the embarrassment
of the US government is that much of this fraud occurred when General David
Petraeus, currently the US military commander in Iraq and the mastermind of
the surge strategy that is buying time for the Bush administration, was in
charge of the program to train and equip Iraqi security forces to join the
battle against insurgents and the jihadists led by Al-Qaeda. Petraeus, now a
four-star general and seen in some quarters as a possible presidential
candidate in 2012, has not come under suspicion himself, although he has said
he needed to arm the Iraqi forces are quickly as possible before tracking
systems - and the personnel to monitor them - had been put in place. Officers
who served under him in the training program said that because of the
pressing need to put Iraqi forces in the field they often cut administrative
corners in drawing large numbers of weapons from depots. John Tisdale, a former US
Air Force master sergeant who ran one of the arms warehouses, told *The New
York Times, that an Iraqi businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, managed a
neighboring armory in Baghdad that he turned into his own arms bazaar,
selling AK-47s and Glocks to anyone willing to pay cash, even US contractors,
without US approval or maintaining the required records. "This was the craziest
thing in the world," Tisdale recalled. "They were taking weapons
away by the truckload." Saffar denies any wrongdoing, but Tisdale said
he saw briefcases stuffed full of US banknotes in Saffar's office. It was
events such as this that led to the Pentagon and the Justice Department
initiating criminal investigations into the disappearance of such large
numbers of US weapons in a war zone. An October 2006 audit
conducted by the US government's special inspector general for Iraq
reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, who has uncovered massive contract fraud in
Iraq since the 2003 invasion, cited "questionable accuracy" and "incomplete
accountability" by the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq
in its management of weapons destined for Iraqi forces. Petraeus, who had led
an airborne division during the 2003 invasion, headed that command -
universally known as "minsticky" after its military acronym MNSTC-I
- from June 2004 until September 2005. The US Government
Accountability Office noted in a July 2007 report that until December 2005
the training command had no centralized records on weapons provided to Iraqi
forces. It said that 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 sets of
body armor and 140,000 steel helmets had been issued up to September 2005.
But because of poor record-keeping, it was not clear what happened to 110,000
of the AKs, 80,000 of the pistols and more than half of the body armor and
helmets. ‘Ring of kickbacks’ In August 2007, the posse of
US investigating agencies announced they had uncovered a web of corruption
within the US military establishment in Iraq that was far larger than anything
previously known. It involved the "purchase and delivery of weapons,
supplies and other material to Iraqi and American forces." Amid reports
that federal investigators suspected the loss of the weapons was the result
of widespread corruption within the military contracting system, the agencies
concluded that the network was "the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks
uncovered in the conflict there." Pentagon officials disclosed
at that time there were at least 76 criminal investigations linked to fraud
in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan involving contracts worth more than $6
billion and - as of August 23 - more than $15 million in bribes. So far, 29
US military personnel and civilians suspected of involvement have been
charged in US federal courts. Eight have pleaded guilty so far. More arrests
are expected as the scale of the corruption is exposed. The Pentagon, which has
spent $19.2 billion building up Iraq's postwar forces, has suspended 22
companies and individuals from all dealings with the US military because of
the fraud investigations. One company was Lee Dynamics International, which
allegedly lies at the center of the massive network of fraud that has been
linked to the disappearance of the US-supplied weapons. The US Army suspended
Lee Dynamics from contracting on July 9, 2007. The company, whose
headquarters are on the 15th floor of the Laila Tower building in Kuwait
City's commercial district, is also being investigated by the Justice
Department. Lee Dynamics was set up in Kuwait in 2005 by George H. Lee, a
former US Army pay clerk, to cash in on the lucrative outsourcing contracts
that accompanied the US invasion. The company denies the
bribery accusations and is appealing the suspension. In response, the US
government disclosed details of the charges in court documents, including a
seven-page statement by an army investigator who questioned Gloria Davis the
day before she shot herself. Gunrunning charges Federal court papers show
that the Defense Department took action against Lee Dynamics over allegations
the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to numerous US officers in
Iraq and Kuwait, including Major Davis, to secure contracts worth $12 million
for warehouses in Iraq to store weapons and other equipment in 2004-05.
During the period the weapons vanished Lee Dynamics operated warehouses in
Taji, Umm Qasr, Ramadi, Mosul and Tikrit, although no direct link between the
company and the missing weapons has been produced at this point. However, Blackwater USA, the
largest US private security firm operating in Iraq, is being investigated for
allegations of smuggling weapons into Iraq. Blackwater, which is contracted
to US diplomats in Iraq, is at the center of a wide-ranging scandal over the
lack of accountability of US defense contractors operating in Iraq.
Blackwater is currently under scrutiny in the US by a federal grand jury for
the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians on September 16, 2007, allegedly by its
employees. Little is known about that weapons investigation, although there
has been speculation that the weapons found their way to the PKK, which the
US has designated a "foreign terrorist organization." Blackwater denies the
gunrunning charges, but two former employees were sentenced to three years'
probation by a North Carolina court on January 10 for smuggling weapons into
Iraq. Details of the case have been kept secret by the court, which delivered
lenient sentences because the men were cooperating with federal
investigators. The case took a bizarre
twist on December 7, when the State Department's inspector-general, Howard
Krongard, accused of impeding federal investigations of contract fraud in
Iraq and Afghanistan that included Blackwater, resigned after it was revealed
during a stormy November 14 Congressional hearing that his brother, former
CIA executive director Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, served on
Blackwater's advisory board. "Buzzy" Krongard, who left the CIA in
2004, has been associated with Blackwater's founder, former Navy Seal Erik
Prince, since 2002 when the company's fortunes took off with a $5.4 million
"black contract" from the CIA for covert services in Afghanistan. Offshore accounts A central node in the web of
military corruption was Camp Arifjan, a sprawling $200 million US logistics
center in the Kuwait desert south of Iraq that played a central role in the
US military supply chain. According to investigators, the biggest bribery
case of the entire Iraq war occurred there. It centered on US Army Major John
Cockerham, who headed the contracting program at Camp Arifjan. The
41-year-old officer has been in military custody since July 2007. He, along
with his wife and sister, have been indicted on charges of taking $9.6
million in bribes from at least eight companies for defense contracts in Iraq
and Kuwait. In December 2006,
investigators found handwritten ledgers at his Louisiana home with coded
entries for an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts containing the
bribe money. Gloria Davis worked on several contracts with Cockerham, who has
been in military custody since July 2007 and has pleaded not guilty to all
charges. Thirteen of the 29 people so far charged with corruption in federal
courts were associated with the army's contracting operation in Kuwait. External link: http://www.kippreport.com/article.php?articleid=1056&day=1 |