Doug Lorimer
A top Pentagon official conducted unauthorised investigations of reconstruction contracts in Iraq and used the results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients, the July 7 Los Angeles Times reported.
John "Jack" Shaw, deputy US undersecretary for international technology security, disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company and the leading "reconstruction" contractor in Iraq, and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the US military.
Once he had entered Iraq, Shaw presented himself as an agent of the US defence department's inspector-general. He urged US occupation officials to fix problems with reconstruction contract work by directing multimillion-dollar contracts to companies linked to his friends, without competitive bidding.
On July 3, a White House budget office report to Congress revealed that only US$366 million of the $18.4 billion US reconstruction aid package approved by Congress last October had been spent as of June 22. Nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation or water projects.
Fewer than 140 of the 2300 reconstruction projects that were to be funded with the US aid package are underway, US officials involved with the reconstruction program told the July 3 Washington Post.
The Post reported that the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority "spent or locked in for future programs more than $19 billion from the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq, which was established by the U.N. Security Council to manage Iraq's oil revenue, said Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the General Accounting Office, the watchdog arm of Congress".
Christoff told the Post in a telephone interview on July 3 that all but $900 million of the fund had been spent or allocated by the time the CPA dissolved on June 28, leaving the US-appointed Interim Government of Iraq with no independent source of funding.
From Green Left Weekly, July 14, 2004.
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