- An inspector who won’t inspect?
Actually, it's worse than that - an inspector who thwarts inspections. That's the charge anyway, as Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, looks into the record of State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard. Some of his accusers are saying that Krongard repeatedly interfered with investigations into fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, including defects in construction of the huge United States embassy in Baghdad. His loyalty, these folks are saying, was directed at the Bush administration and not American taxpayers. Waxman has invited Krongard to a committee hearing on Oct. 16. From the NYT:
Since Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Mr. Waxman has made no secret of his relish in probing activities of the Bush administration. One of the more serious accusations against Mr. Krongard is that he interfered with an investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political adviser, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson. Mr. Waxman wrote that Mr. Krongard’s detractors have described “a dysfunctional office environment” in which he routinely bullies and berates employees and shows contempt for the work of career professionals. As a result, turnover has been so high that the inspector general’s office has been severely compromised, Mr. Waxman wrote.
Here are some snippets from Waxman's 14-page letter to Krongard:
--Although the State Department has expended over $3.6 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, you refused to send any investigators to those countries to pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud and have concluded no fraud investigations relating to the contracts.
--You prevented your investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq and followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.
--You prevented your investigators from seizing evidence that they believed would have implicated alarge State Department contractor in procurement fraud in Afghanistan.
Ouch. Krongard became inspector general in 2005. He worked previously for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, an international law firm, and before that, served as general counsel of Deloitte & Touche. He's a 1961 graduate of Princeton University, where he was class president and an all-American lacrosse goalie, and graduated with honors from Harvard Law.
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| 11:31 AM Sep 18, 2007 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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