Inspector stresses accountability in Iraq

Stuart W. Bowen Jr. was only out of government work for eight months when he decided he wanted back in, a decision that has made him one of the most important bureaucrats in the war to democratize Iraq.

Ensconced at a well-paying lawyer’s job at powerhouse Patton Boggs, Mr. Bowen telephoned the White House personnel director in late 2003 with a simple message: After nearly 10 years of experience with President Bush in Texas and at the White House, he wanted to rejoin the president’s team.

“I wasn’t as content in the private sector as I had been in the public sector,” Mr. Bowen said earlier this year, as he prepared for his 11th trip to Iraq — he has made 12 in all — as the administration’s special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR).

His office in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington across the Potomac offers a stunning view of the Washington power structure that created one of the most influential investigative jobs in the world. He has near carte blanche to probe how the administration has managed nearly $70 billion in Iraqi and U.S. taxpayer rebuilding money. His rapid-fire series of reports on the reconstruction at times have seared the White House and delighted its Democratic critics.

He has found an $8 billion gap in spending accountability by the defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) under L. Paul Bremer’s direction, significant theft and fraud by military officers and an American businessman in the town of Hillah, incompetence in the construction of health care centers and oil pipelines, and a shortfall in what needs to be built with the money on hand. Incessant insurgent attacks have forced planners to eat up more money for security, leaving less for construction.

If the White House thought it was getting a pushover by hiring a longtime legal adviser to Mr. Bush, well, it was wrong.

“We’re friends, I would say that,” said Mr. Bowen of his long relationship with the president. “In a broader sense, he has 10,000 friends … . I haven’t talked to him in two years, though. Part of that has been, I think, appropriate. He’s not in my chain of command, and this is a sensitive topic. ”

He added, “I always took on tough jobs in Texas for the president and was pretty much a straight shooter. I think they knew I would engage and be fairly direct and honest in my execution of the mission. I don’t think there was a political agenda behind my appointment.”

Uncovering corruption

Mr. Bowen has become the public face for a network of financial watchdogs taking root in Iraq. They are warriors in a campaign to rid the country of rampant corruption that was as much a part of dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime as was the torture and repression. To win Iraq, the U.S. and the new Iraqi government must not only defeat insurgents and al Qaeda, but also track down public officials who may have stolen more than $1 billion.

“For the Iraq democratic initiative to succeed, corruption has to be defeated; not just the insurgency,” Mr. Bowen said.

Mr. Bowen’s staff and other U.S. government agencies have aided Iraq in setting up its own watchdog entities designed to tackle corruption, such as:

• Commission on Public Integrity: Established by the old CPA, the panel focuses on white-collar crime. It is headed by a judge, Radhi Hamza al-Radhi. The commission has set up a complaint hot line and relies on inspectors general in each ministry to refer cases. The commission has a staff of about 1,000 for more than 3,000 investigations.

The U.S. considers Judge al-Radhi, a foe of Saddam’s Ba’athist rule who was imprisoned in the 1990s, one of Iraq’s most honest men.

“Here’s why I believe he’s honest,” said Mr. Bowen, who met in April with Judge al-Radhi in his Crystal City office. “Here’s a man who leaves his house for work every day … with a death warrant on him by the criminals that are out there, and his investigators get killed. The price they pay in blood is, to me, a testament to their trustworthiness.”

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