What a surprise …
When Congress voted the $87 billion for military expenditures and reconstruction in Iraq they were keen to create an office of Inspector General at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to watch out for all manner of waste, fraud, abuse, price gouging and various other shenanigans.
Now it seems that Paul Wolfowitz has gutted that provision.
According to Inside the Pentagon, a weekly newsletter, “Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz last week directed a newly formed inspector general’s office in Iraq not to request sensitive information about Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) activities related to intelligence or operational plans.”
The report goes on to quote Wolfowitz’s order …
In his statement, upon approving the act, the president directed that, in exercising these authorities and responsibilities, the IG/CPA shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investigations by other
administration units of the [Defense Department] related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat
to national security.
In plain English, that sounds a lot like the IG should refrain from doing anything.
On the surface, you can see why you wouldn’t want green-eye-shade types rustling through sensitive intelligence and war-fighting information willy-nilly.
But common sense also tells you that all the other IGs at the Pentagon must have to work with classified information all the time. So certainly they’ve worked out some way of dealing with these issues. And as the article goes to say, they have.
“In the Defense Department,” says Inside the Pentagon, “auditors with appropriate clearances have access to all internal information deemed necessary to carry out their duties.”
But under the new rules IGs can only make the kinds of requests noted above “if so directed by the defense secretary.”
That makes the new CPA IG sound a tad less than fully independent, doesn’t it?
Again, according to the article, the highly restrictive rules Wolfowitz has set forth for the CPA Inspector General are different from those which apply to all the rest of the Pentagon.
Don’t you feel better now?
