Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office

[Jon8503]

Christoph Bangert/Polaris, for The New York Times:

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., left, has received orders to shut down his office, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, by October 2007.

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: November 3, 2006
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

Mr. Bowen’s office has inspected and audited taxpayer-financed projects like this prison in Nasiriya, Iraq.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Mr. Bowen’s office, which began operation in January 2004 to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq, was always envisioned as a temporary organization, permitted to continue its work only as long as Congress saw fit. Some advocates for the office, in fact, have regarded its lack of a permanent bureaucracy as the key to its aggressiveness and independence.

(rest of article below @ link)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03reconstruct.html?_r=1&ref=washington&oref=slogin

[redphish]

1. They let him have some of the little fish just for show but

he was probably starting to get a better bead on the ones running the show. So much for the party of responsibility.