Follow the Money Project

Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling has just published a new article, "A Failure in Generalship" in the newest issue of Armed Forces Journal. He outlines how our current general officer corps has failed the military and the country much in the same way that they did during the Vietnam war era. From his article:

"While the physical courage of America's generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public is immediately concerned with the crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices. They may have waited too long."

Yingling's full article can be found here.

There is one area where the general officer corps also failed in Iraq and hurt not only the war effort and the country, but the soldiers themselves. This week on May 1, our new book, Betraying Our Troops: the Destuctive Results of Privatizing War, will be released. In the very first chapter, we tell a story of a manager for KBR, who was contracted to provide food, water, supply transportation and other services to our troops in Iraq. He told a general at his Iraq base that unless KBR was paid for their submitted invoices, his workers would stay in their housing containers and do nothing until the money was paid. In otherwords, KBR was threatening a work stoppage in a war zone.

This was not an isolated incident. Later in the book, we verified that this was happening across Iraq at various bases as KBR approached or exceeded their "not-to exceed" costs. Since the Army had contracted with KBR to provide these services which had been traditionally done by the Army, they had no back up plan and paid the bills. These generals had to process these questionable billing demands up through the ranks of the general officer corps and the civilian managers to the high level in the Army, and they released the money to be paid.

It is very troublesome that these generals, who may have argued and jawboned KBR in meetings, were allowing "the intimidating management style of their civilian" contractors to run the logistics of their war. Since the supplemental money for the war was what is called "colorless", i.e. could be allocated for whatever was needed, there is concerns that the contractor bills took precedence over other traditional Army needs such as body armor, night vision goggles, and other critical combat equipment. The Congress has been voting more and more money to be sure that the troops have what they need and yet the Army has barely been able to supply the demand for this equipment.

The generals showed lack of moral courage to stand up to this contractor for the welfare of their troops. Surely one of the generals should have been willing to go eyeball to eyeball with the contractor and threaten to walk out and tell the Congress and press corp that this company was threatening not to feed the troops. I often wonder what General Patton would have done in this instance. I envision him leaping up across the table, grabbing the contract manager with one hand while sticking his pistol up the nose of the manager. He then would tell him that if the contractor employees were not slinging hash for his troops in the morning, that he would blow his nose off.

I am not suggesting that the current group of generals should resort to such tactics but surely they should have the moral courage not to allow a contractor to coerce generals in to paying inflated billings at the expense of supplying troops what they need to fight. As more and more of our war effort is reliant on contractor support, we need this type of courage from our general officer corps.

I recently read with great interest the memorandum released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on February 15, 2007, that the Defense Contract Audit Agency (known as DCAA) had identified approximately $10 billion in questionable and unsupported costs on Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts. According to DCAA, more than one out of every six dollars spent in Iraq on those contracts are suspect. Only a year ago, the DCAA had identified nearly $3.5 billion in questionable and unsupported costs. One can only imagine what the final total will eventually be when the total amount of the contracts are audited.

Knowing DCAA as I do from my long tenure as an investigator with the DOD, the $10 billion most likely is a very conservative number. The results of significant audits, such as those being conducted on Iraq related contracts, are normally scrubbed through layers of the agency bureaucracy and end up much lower in amounts initially reported by field auditors.

What is even more astounding than the $10 billion identified by DCAA as suspect is that high level DOD brass decided to disregard 75 percent of the questioned costs – representing $4.9 billion, and pay it to the contractors anyway. Only 25 percent, or $632 million was withheld. Normally, DCAA recommends that DOD not pay contractors on the amounts questioned and most of it is withheld from payment. But for the Iraq contracts, DOD is suddenly reversing long standing policy and essentially sending a message to the hard working auditors of DCAA their work to keep contractors honest means almost nothing.

What does all this mean to the troops struggling in Iraq? A lot. As pointed out in our book Betraying our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, much of the money used to fund these contracts come from emergency supplemental funding appropriated by Congress. So is money being used to keep troops properly equipped and supplied with the essentials for effectively fight and survive. The more that money is used to feed the contractor beast, the less there is in the pot to equip soldiers and replace critically needed Humvees and other vehicles and weapons.

So, while the Army, on the one hand, has been warning the Pentagon and Congress it is billions short, cashed strapped, and battling to save and replace equipment, they are allowing billions in questionable costs to be paid to contractors. It’s the type of decision-making that makes life miserable for the troops in combat.

Robert Bauman

Watch our blog for the most recent information and explanation of the huge and ineffective spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and how the private contractors of the war service industry are monopolizing the appropriations for the troops. This huge appropriations that is going to the contractors is jeopardizing our troops who can't get the war fighting material that they need. The contractors are also not consistantly providing the services to the troops that they deserve. We will be updating this blog at least three times a week or more with the most recent information on the problems and investigations of the money for the wars.

When I started the Follow the Money Project several years ago, we were inundated with stories from the troops and contractor employees about the failure to get the money and resources to the troops. After many months of interviews and work, we will be publishing our new book on May 1, 2007 -- Betraying Our Troops: the Destructive Results of Privatizing War. We tell the story of the failures of the contracting the Iraq war through the eyes of the troops and the contract employees. We illustrate the problems from the planning of the war to the present time.

If you are interested in pre-ordering the book, click on the cover image to the right and it will take you to Amazon to place an order.

The Follow the Money Project will be continuing to investigate and pursue where the money for the Iraq War is going and if the troops are getting what they need to do their mission. We want to hear from more troops and contractor employees about their experiences in Iraq. Click on our CONTACT US link to the left to get in contact with us.

We will be working to inform the public and the media about our investigations and highlight what is and is not working for the troops. We will also be posting to this blog and the rest of the website information on this problem. Our REPORTS page has a whole new list of GAO, CRS and other government reports on the problem. We want to help the Pentagon and the Congress do the necessary oversight to make sure that the huge sums of money that we are spending for our troops are actually benefiting them. We welcome your input.

Dina Rasor
Chief Investigator
Follow the Money Project