Another point to consider — or, perhaps better to say, reconsider — in the whole Cash-n-Kerik drama.
It’s been known for a longtime that the Iraqi Interior Ministry under the CPA was rife with corruption. Lots and lots of US tax dollars went missing.
We also know, at a minimum, that Mr. Kerik really played it to the hilt mixing public service and private profit. And that’s probably an understatement. As we’ve seen in the last few days there appear to be numerous cases where departments and organizations run by Kerik bought goods from contractors for which they seemed to have no use — a key example being these over-priced security doors the NYPD bought from Georal. The companies often turn out to have been ones Kerik was getting money from in one fashion or another. (The Georal case is a rather complicated story, which we discussed at some length last night.)
In any case, it suggests a pattern.
And on top of that we know that when Kerik went out to Iraq he took a leave from the Homeland Security rain-making gig he’d set up with Giuliani. And after his hasty departure he went back to the same outfit.
All of this suggests that Kerik’s time in country might be in store for a bit more scrutiny. And it turns out there’s a decent place to start.
Go back to an article by Patrick Tyler and Raymond Bonner that ran in Times on October 4th, 2003. The headline is “Questions are Raised on Awarding of Contracts in Iraq.” The central issue examined in the piece is why the Interior Ministry payed $20 million to a company in Jordan for (50,000) pistols, (20,000) Kalashnikovs and (10,000,000) rounds of ammunition for the Iraqi police when the US military was confiscating tons of weaponry every month from Iraqi military arsenals.
One governing council member said “There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims.” Another said, “I don’t have the evidence, but I think there is corruption. This is a common grievance that people tell me … It is totally unnecessary to buy [the guns] from outside the country.”
The explanation for the purchase of the weaponry was that there would just have been too many logistical problems involved in purchasing or requisitioning the revolvers and rifles in small lots in country. And without any greater context or being able to judge the challenges the folks on the ground were facing at the time, that seems like it might be a reasonable explanation.
But it turns out there is some context. As you might have expected already, the contract was okayed on the authority of Bernard Kerik.
All the Iraqis on the Governing Council at the time seemed to think the deal stunk to high heaven, that Kerik was spending millions to bring weapons into a country that was already bursting with weapons. And when the Times wanted to talk to Kerik about the deal he didn’t want to talk to them.
The Iraqis wanted Congress to investigate. Sounds like a good idea. Read the article. See what you think.
