Waxman to Investigate State Department IG for Interfering with On-going Investigations

[cui bono]

State Dept. Watchdog: My ‘Foremost Mission Is To Support Bush Administration’

<snip>

But today, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to Krongard under allegations from seven employees that he “has repeatedly interfered with on-going investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment.”

<snip>

Among the allegations:

– Refused to send “any investigators” into Iraq and Afghanistan to “pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud.”

– Stalled investigators from cooperating with a “Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq.”

– Used “irregular” and incomplete investigative procedures to help exonerate a prime contractor of the U.S. embassy in Iraq of charges of labor trafficking.

– Impeded investigators’ efforts to cooperate with a Justice probe into allegations that a “large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into Iraq.”

– Interfered with an on-going investigation “into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove.”

– Censored portions of inspection reports on embassies so that information on security vulnerabilities was “not disclosed to Congress.”

The report adds that under Krongard, the IG office has seen an “exodus of trained staff” as “people come to work every day fearful” of his “daily antagonism.”

more...
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/18/waxman-state-ig/

[Hepburn]

1. Looks like BushCo SOP to me. K&R n/t

[peacetalksforall]

2. Krongard, Krongard ... of CIA Deutsche Bank put options? No.

FYI: This is Howard J. Krongard.

CIA Deutsche Bank was A. B. Krongard.