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LIVE FROM BAGHDAD. TAP senior correspondent Spencer Ackerman is currently embedded in Iraq and will be filing periodic reports for Tapped in the coming weeks. His first dispatch is below. --The Editors
GANGSTER'S PARADISE. Welcome to the Green Zone, Tapped readers. I'm here for another hour and a half before I join the unit I'm supposed to embed with elsewhere in Baghdad, but I wanted to give you something of a corruption update.
Earlier today, a U.S. Embassy official named Boots Poliquin briefed reporters on his brand-new Office of Accountability and Transparency, an anti-corruption effort meant to "train, promote and develop" the Iraqi government's institutional bulwarks against the rampant cronyism and corruption that NGOs like Transparency International have identified. Poliquin told us that he's working with Iraq's multiple layers of watchdogs -- the ministerial inspectors-general, the Commission on Public Integrity and the Board of Supreme Audit -- to identify better practices for ensuring that public money gets spent the way it's intended.
Some of us -- well, I'll speak for myself -- had a hard time understanding exactly what the trouble is. It wasn't political will among the Iraqis, he assured us. Security was a problem, sure, but he added that the IGs especially needed to know how to "identify waste, fraud and abuse, and to develop standards" for determining corruption -- but such remedial instruction makes it sound like the IGs don't know how to be IGs. Then, almost as an afterthought, Poliquin said that a significant impediment to the successful adjudication of corruption investigations is that a law known as Article 136B allows the ministers under investigation to "essentially stop a case. That's the law." The biggest corruption targets? Just the crucial ministries of oil, defense and interior.
Whoa. In Iraq, the target of a corruption investigation can quash the investigation, "completely as the prerogative of the minister." I asked Poliquin if Article 136B amounts to institutional corruption. "It could be seen as you describe it," he replied. Or, another way of putting it, he said, was that "it's in place because it could stop otherwise frivolous allegations." He declined to say how the anti-corruption agencies his office works with see the law.
One indicator of how to view it: the law is a remnant of Iraq's Saddam-era criminal code. I asked another official if the Coalition Provisional Authority hadn't abolished that code. The official replied that it had, but his understanding is that ex-Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari resurrected the provision. Given that the Jaafari government wasn't exactly renowned for its cleanliness, it's unlikely frivolous accusations were such a pressing issue for the administration.
As long as Article 136B remains in place, Stuart Bowen, the U.S. special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction spending, is going to have no shortage of muck to rake. (Luckily, Congress last year basically forced Bowen out of business for his diligence, so don't expect the U.S. to lead the Iraqi government by example.) Bowen recently testified that Iraq is increasingly taking over reconstruction disbursement, so if you're a corrupt contractor, now is as good as ever to exploit U.S. taxpayers and Iraqi citizens.
--Spencer Ackerman
COMMENTS (7)
Interesting stuff, but I think you have it ass-backwards about who attacked and who defended Stuart Bowen. As I recall, it was the Bush Administration who put him out of business, with the support of the 109th Congress, and it was the Democrats of the 110th Congress who put him back in business.
If you're going to be of much use to our side over there, it's these small details that you're going to have to be sure you get right, since the Enemy is going to go after you with a fine tooth comb and trumpet any "inaccuracies" they find as a way of proving everything else you say is wrong.
Not an attack, just a reminder. Remember to duck!
Posted by: TCinLA | March 6, 2007 2:22 PM
And by "Enemy" I don't mean the insurgents. I mean the pinstriped pimps who speak American English like natives.
Posted by: TCinLA | March 6, 2007 2:24 PM
Good to hear from you, Spencer. Write often.
Posted by: Jackmormon | March 6, 2007 4:05 PM
Actually, I think Feingold and Snowe managed to restore SIGIR's funding while still serving during the 109th.
Posted by: Brian Cook | March 6, 2007 4:09 PM
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Posted by: iukdh xtkdq | July 5, 2007 1:25 PM
I just found this article Dec. 5, 2007. It sounds like Boots is trying to implement the plan I wrote up for the Baghdad Embassy in late 2005. I was the Chief Auditor for the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) and could not get the State Dept. to assign us responsibility to liaise with the Board of Supreme Audit or the IG's - thus non-auditors were their liaison, and had no clue what laws needed changing. See my blog at http://webworks.typepad.com/corruption_in_iraq/ for more info on problems with corruption in Iraq. And, I think SIGIR was extended this - I worked with several SIGIR leaders during 2005 on an anti-corruption committee and reviewed SIGIR reports for accuracy on behalf of the Iraq Reconstruction management Office. And, recently, the Democrats are pushing for establishment of a SIGIR like group for the Afghanistan reconstruction spending. Much more is coming out now that the Democrats are running investigation hearings.
Vance Jochim
Posted by: Vance Jochim | December 6, 2007 7:48 PM