5 Charged In Iraq Fraud

Alleged Scheme Duped Provisional Authority Out Of $8M for Reconstruction

(AP)  Three U.S. Army Reserve officers were indicted Wednesday, accused of taking part in a bid-rigging scam that steered millions of dollars for Iraq reconstruction projects to a contractor in exchange for cash, luxury cars and jewelry.

An American businessman in Romania was charged as the go-between for the military officers and the contractor. The husband of one of the reservists was accused of helping smuggle tens of thousands of dollars into the United States that the couple used to pay for a deck and a hot tub at their New Jersey house.

Together, the five used the $26 billion Iraqi rebuilding fund "as their own personal ATM machines," Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said in announcing the charges.

"These defendants actually took bricks of stolen cash ... and smuggled them out of Iraq and back to the United States for their own personal use," McNulty said.

The 25-count indictment, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, marks the latest development in an investigation of $8.6 million in Iraq contracts awarded to construction mogul Philip H. Bloom.

Bloom, an American citizen who ran construction and services companies under Global Business Group, has admitted to laundering at least $2 million that was stolen from reconstruction funds managed by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He awaits sentencing.

McNulty said the five people indicted Wednesday stole or otherwise misused $3.6 million from the CPA fund.

The three reservists — Col. Curtis G. Whiteford of Utah, Lt. Col. Debra M. Harrison of New Jersey and Lt. Col. Michael B. Wheeler of Wisconsin — were responsible for helping supervise the funding and progress of the CPA contracts in al-Hillah, Iraq, southwest of Baghdad.

In return for steering contracts to Bloom between 2003 and 2005, prosecutors said, the military reservists and their accomplices shared an estimated $1 million in cash, and were showered with Porsche and Nissan sports cars, a Cadillac SUV, real estate, a Breitling watch, business-class plane tickets, computers and other items.

Harrison's husband, William Driver, was charged with helping smuggle over $300,000 into the U.S., part of which was used for home improvements, prosecutors said.

One of Bloom's friends, businessman Seymour Morris Jr., allegedly acted as a go-between for the military officers and the construction company by illegally wiring money and securing the goods. Morris is a U.S. citizen who lives in Romania, and owns a Cyprus-based financial services business.

Charges against the five include bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and transporting stolen property.

The indictment was unsealed the day after authorities arrested Morris in Romania. It also followed tough questioning Tuesday by House Democrats of the former U.S. occupation chief in Iraq over how he doled out up to $12 billion in Iraqi money without accounting for it.

At that hearing, in front of the a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, L. Paul Bremer III repeatedly said he had spent Iraqi — not U.S. — money. Bremer ran the country for 14 months.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents helped unravel the scheme by examining money trails and other data gleaned from computers, cell phones, global positioning systems and other devices, said Kumar Kibble, the agency's deputy assistant director for national security.

Stuart Bowen, the government's special inspector general in Iraq, said his team of 10 investigators are pursuing 80 cases of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars in reconstruction contracts.

Last week, former CPA comptroller and funding officer Robert Stein, 52, of Fayetteville, N.C., was sentenced to nine years in prison for receiving kickbacks from Bloom in exchange for contracts.

Bribery and fraud "has not been a significant component of the American reconstruction experience over there, but where we found it, it has been egregious," Bowen said. "And this is an egregious example of it."

[crater7]

YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE. WE CAN ONLY HOPE THAT THIS INVESTIGATIN LEADS ALL THE WAY TO THE REAL CROOKS, THE BUSH ADMINISTRATIION.

[bigwhtpony]

That's right, Crater7...you tell 'um. Bush, Chaney, and that Halliburtin...they're all going to hell! They're all crooks - especially that Karl Rove! We all know it!!! It's just too bad nobody has ever been able to produce any evidence to support that theory......God, I hate it when facts get in the way of my liberal rhetoric.

[crater7]

bigwhtpony:WOW, SOUNDS LIKE WE HIT A GOP NERVE? THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT. WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY SHOULD START? FIND A FEW GRUNTS, THROW THEM TO THE WOLVES, AND CALL IT CASE SOLVED. STAY THE COURSE.

[gangesdak]

We are talking about pennies here. Where did the Big bucks go? Twelve Billion Dollars! Get the big cats. Go all the way to the top.

[reel-crazy]

It's was very easy for them to rationalize their behaviors when they saw their senior ranking commanders getting by with it at a different level. Be it for corporate or personal greed, which I believe are one in the same in this instance, they are equally accountable but the difference is the POWER to be able to cover it thoroughly. Monkey see, monkey do.

[dremn1]

It must be tough living your lives with so much anger. You should do yourselves a favor and get over it. We have had a republican President 20 of the last 28 years and the next eight years after Bush will be republican as well.

[skyk-2009]

That's right, Crater7...you tell 'um. Bush, Chaney, and that Halliburtin...they're all going to hell! They're all crooks - especially that Karl Rove! We all know it!!! It's just too bad nobody has ever been able to produce any evidence to support that theory......God, I hate it when facts get in the way of my liberal rhetoric.
Posted by bigwhtpony at 03:13 PM : Feb 07, 2007

LOL You poor fascist are as predictable as rain. LOL We had the HEAD of the Bush Reconstruction testifing before Congress YESTERDAY and we have Scooter being testified against, yet you losers just keep blaming "Liberal's"! LOL You may not have much for brains but you sure train well! LOL

[bigwhtpony]

Let's see....Utah, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Who wants to lay a friendly wager that these 'alleged' offenders are democrats?

A side bet: You'll only hear about it if they are republicans.....otherwise, silence on the subject.

[frankly6]

This is chump change compared to the fraud and corruption that will soon come out. Tip of the iceburg.

[bigwhtpony]

I suppose the VP cooks his tax returns too? A republican gets 100x more scruteny than a lib does....all things being equal.

Do you really believe that if they were doing something wrong that CBS (for one) wouldn't be all over them like white on rice?

If you do, then you're dumber than I thought.

[lars008-2009]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

i guess clinto should not have given halliburton those no bid contracts then.... hahahahahahahaha

[frankly6]

lars008

Which no bid contracts are you talking about. If you have to lie to make your point, do you really have a point?

[frankly6]

bigwhtpony

Reality check:

The GOP have been in control of the purse strings on every level for the last 6 years. They've also been in charge of oversight which is why there has been no oversight. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[lars008-2009]

The Clinton administration made the same calculation in its own dealings with Halliburton. The company had won the LOGCAP in 1992, then lost it in 1997. The Clinton administration nonetheless awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton to continue its work in the Balkans supporting the US peacekeeping mission there because it made little sense to change midstream. According to Byron York, Al Gore's reinventing-government panel even singled out Halliburton for praise for its military logistics work.

[lars008-2009]

Halliburton was a favorite contractor of the Clinton Pentagon.

The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992, as the first Bush administration (including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney) was leaving office. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root, as it was known at the time (Halliburton changed the name to Kellogg Brown & Root after an acquisition in 1998). The multi-year contract was in effect during much of the Clinton administration. During those years, Brown & Root did extensive work for the Army under the LOGCAP contract in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; contract workers built base camps and provided troops with electrical power, food, and other necessities.

[lars008-2009]

In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, Halliburton/Brown & Root lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to Halliburton/Brown & Root to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company "had demonstrated the ability to support the operation"; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army's sole-source Bosnia contract with Brown & Root lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . Halliburton/Brown & Root. The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.

[lars008-2009]

That work received favorable notices throughout the Clinton administration. For example, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton's performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled "Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics," Gore's reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and Brown & Root, which the report said provided "basic life support services %u2014 food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services %u2014 transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance."

[tejasdemo]

Now that some sanity has been restored to Congress we are going to see just how unbelievably corrupt congressional Republicans and the Bush administration have been.

From the top right on down.

[lars008-2009]

and who the hello was president.....

CLINTOON

Maybe this will light a fire under Waxmans butt and start some got dam investigations into the PNAC criminals in the whitehouse...

[agnim]

Where have we seen a similar kind of robbery of the national treasury?

Oh yes, it was during the other spendthrift days of the Debt-creating Reagan administration and the hundreds of billions stolen and the national debt ballooned, while the senile Reagan was fast asleep. LOL

[dremn1]

Jeb Bush for president!!!

[j-whitman]

80 MORE FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS TO GO -- GET BUSH & CHENEY - SEND THEN TO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

[candojj1]

Paul Bremmer said that $8.8 billion in U.S. funds are unaccounted for in 2003 from the brick money scam. And these people only stole $8 million. BFD. We are the put*zes for giving a nickel to anyone in Iraq or for any line item in the 2008 budget run by any buffoon in Washington.

[drinuk]

Iraq corruption will pale into insignificance when Congress start digging deep into the Pharmaceutical lobby and the incestuous relationship with the FDA. A lot of palms have been greased, wallets filled and luxury lifestyles built by either looking the other way or supporting downright theft from the American people...more to the point, The Sick and Helpless. The approval of Aspartame being the most glaring example of criminal disregard for the health of the population....Guess who forced through that approval ?????

[lars008-2009]

here's your enemy skippy..... try to remember that..... there will be a test later....

UK TV AIRS SHOCK 'UNDERCOVER' LOOK INTO MAINSTREAM BRIT MOSQUES...

Dispatches: Undercover Mosque
This is part one of the much-anticipated UK Channel 4 documentary Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, exposing evidence of Islamic supremacism, shocking misogyny, and support for violence at a number of Britain%u2019s leading mosques and Muslim institutions. (Thanks again to LGF operative kasper.)
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24018_Dispatches-_Undercover_Mosque&only

'Obsession'
Documentary gives insight into radical Islam%u2019s global threat
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/launchPage.html?110506/110506_fnl_obsession&%27Obsession%27&FNL&Documentary%20gives%20insight%20into%20radical%20Islam%92s%20global%20threat&Foxlife&-1&%27Obsession%27&Video%20Launch%20Page&News
http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/12min.htm
http://myspace.com/waragainstthewest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BL4-mxE87w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUpcpEQtgp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BUqXSeCDJc

this is the real threat to humanity.....
http://stopislam.cjb.net/

[drinuk]

lars008 is back online. coming to you from the GOP office of mis-information, spouting his usual C R A P

[lars008-2009]

Terrorism Awareness Project to wake up Americans and the World
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/islamic-mein-kampf

[lars008-2009]

fascist nazi islamic muslims
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nazi+muslim

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=nazi muslim&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

[dogband]

No bid contracts given to companies before the war started that we all knew was coming. I'm a lowly government employee and if I gave out no bid contracs in violation of policy, I would be fired. I guess its different if you are King George.

The bible thumping majority of American people spoke at the polls, they wanted a cowboy, so all of us got a war from which we cannot escape, thousand of Americans killed and wounded, $Billions wasted in fraud, a national debt that will never be paid off in my lifetime, and our image forever tarnished in the world community. At least we don't have legal gay marriage. I can sleep so much better, thanks W. [W=worst ever]