News Archive
Heat turned up over US embassy project
Released on 15/01/2008
Frank R. Wolf, Senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, has asked the US Government’s Accountability Office to initiate immediately a “full and thorough investigation” of allegations that the firefighting systems at the new Baghdad embassy have potential safety problems.
Mr Wolf has also written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to be involved in the inquiry.
Costing an estimated US$730m, and set to be the largest US embassy in the world, the project has been dogged by delays and cost escalations.
As already reported by iCON, the State Department’s Inspector General Howard Krongard tendered his resignation in December following an inquiry into his conduct by another committee, the House Oversight Committee. The scope of that inquiry included problems with the Baghdad embassy.
Also resigning at the close of the year was Charles E. Williams, the State Department’s director of overseas building operations. He was ultimately responsible for the embassy’s timely delivery.
Mr Wolf’s intervention in the controversy was prompted by a report in The Washington Post quoting unnamed sources in the State Department asserting that potentially life threatening faults in the embassy’s electrical system had been left untouched.
“This is serious enough to get someone killed,” the official told the Post, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
“The fire systems are the tip of the iceberg,” he said, adding that no one has ever inspected the electrical system, the power plant and other parts of the embassy complex, which will house more than 1000 people and is vulnerable to mortar attacks.
Some of these problems were reported to the House Committee on Oversight during its inquiry last July into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse at the embassy site. A stark example came from Karl Demming, an engineering and construction manager with KBR, the firm appointed facilities manager at the embassy’s camp for security guards.
Mr Demming told the Oversight Committee that the first meal was to be served on 15th May 2007 but that when staff initiated the kitchen facilities, wires began to melt and staff received electrical shocks.
He also reported the use of ‘counterfeit’ wire, or wire labeled with more conductor capacity than it had. One sample taken from the Embassy complex was labelled as 10 sq.mm but physically measured only 6 sq.mm.
In other cases, he said, breakers were the wrong size and correct wiring practices and equipment were not used.
The Oversight Committee also heard allegations of labour trafficking and mistreatment of workers at the embassy construction site.
According to The Washington Post, Mr Wolf has insisted that the initial findings of the GAO inquiry should be made available to the Appropriations Committee no later than 45 days “because of the importance of providing security for dedicated and professional personnel in Iraq”.
For a ranking member of the Appropriations Committee to wade into this issue will step up pressure on the State Department to defend its record on corruption and oversight in Iraq reconstruction. ‘Appropriations’ as it is called, is one of the most powerful committees in the US Congress because it controls government spending.
Mr Wolf’s additional letter to Condoleezza Rice will sharpen the focus of that pressure. Ms Rice has been criticised for suppressing information about corruption in the Iraqi government.
In October last year, the chairpersons of four influential Congressional committees, including ‘Appropriations’, signed a letter to her deploring the State Department’s refusal to answer questions about the extent of corruption in the Government of Iraq.
(‘The Krongard Affair’, John Allen’s dramatic report on the resignation of the State Department’s Inspector General, is published in the Quarter 1, 2008 edition of iCON. To subscribe visit our home page.)
