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(The Independent) – In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.
“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown.
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Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004.
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In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a small-time US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery – linking companies and US officials awarding contracts – existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.
NY Times – Inquiry on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers
(Washington Monthly) – Stoffel was also, early on, publicly intolerant of dishonesty, associates of his remember: His first year at ONI, his coworker Jonathan Pollard was arrested for spying on Israel’s behalf. Stoffel despised Pollard and told friends and associates for years afterwards that Pollard had been unprincipled, a money-grubber who claimed heartfelt allegiance to Israel only as a way out of trouble.
Civil service money may not have been good enough for Pollard, and, in the long run, it wasn’t good enough for Stoffel either. Stoffel left government work in 1989 and joined the staff of a series of defense and intelligence contractors, developing a unique specialty: buying up missiles and other weapons produced in the former Communist bloc countries on contracts for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies who wanted to analyze them. This work–on the legit side of a shady world–introduced him to a circle of adventuresome arms dealers based in Austria. According to his associates, Stoffel simply loved the swashbuckling, high-living lifestyle. “Dale always thought he was going to be someone big, and important,” a close relative said, “but he wasn’t one to plan more than a few months in advance. It wasn’t as if he planned to be an adventurer; he more or less fell into this line of work. But he loved it; he realized that it suited him.” By 1995, Stoffel had become successful enough to start his own company, Miltex, specializing in the same kinds of contracts.
Miltex had a brush with scandal in 1999 when its name appeared in a Human Rights Watch investigation into the arms trade in connection with a missile shipment seized in Bulgaria and presumed to be destined for Africa. Stoffel suggested that other arms dealers might have simply stolen his company’s name for use on some documents related to the illegal weapons sale, which happens not infrequently in the shadowy world of arms dealing. Human Rights Watch’s report mentioned Stoffel’s explanation without assessing it.
In response to the incident, Stoffel dropped that company name and adopted a new corporate name, Wye Oak Technology (pdf), using the same small staff (usually fewer than five employees) and doing the same kind of work.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
