Wednesday, September 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee has opened an investigation of the State Department’s inspector general, alleging he blocked fraud investigations in Afghanistan and Iraq, including potential security lapses at the newly built U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Also under scrutiny is whether Blackwater USA, the private security firm banned this week from working in Iraq over the killing of civilians, was “illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq,” according to a letter to IG Howard J. Krongard obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
The Democratic-led investigation accused Krongard of trying to protect the White House and the State Department.
“Your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies,” said a letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Based on charges from a number of current and former senior investigators who worked for Krongard, the letter also questioned whether he adequately investigated illegal labor trafficking allegations involving the Kuwaiti company that was building the embassy in Baghdad.
Ralph McNamara, the former deputy assistant inspector general for investigations, said in an AP interview Tuesday that he came forward with the allegations against his former boss because he was concerned that State Department employees would be at risk when working in the new embassy.U.S. workers, he said, “were putting their lives on the line and assuming that the facility they were going into was going to provide them all the protection they needed, and that’s not true. ... With all these allegations coming in, we need to make sure these folks were being protected.”
Krongard, who has been in Afghanistan and is en route to Iraq, issued a statement Tuesday saying, “The allegations, as described to me and in certain media reports, are replete with inaccuracies including those made by persons with their own agendas.”