On Monday Feb. 14th a hearing exposing the rampant fraud, waste and corruption by Paul Bremer led CPA in the months after the Iraq occupation was held by the Democratic Policy Committee. The fraud exposed in the hearing involved misuse of mainly IRAQI money (though there WAS also much misuse of US money).

I've been following this little-known quasi-official entity the past couple years. Since the Repubnut "leadership" keeps the Democrats in shackles most of the time, the Dems decided the only way to air the dirtiest of the Bush Junta laundry was in semi-official public hearings. C-SPAN has been most accommodating in airing many of these hearings (that the rest of the MSM corporate mediawhores mainly ignore). You can stream the latest hearing with Real Player...

Dem. Policy Cmte. Hearing on Iraq Contracting Abuses
Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-OR), Dick Durbin (D-Il), and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) lead this Democratic Policy Committee hearing on Iraq contracting abuses. Witnesses include: Henry Bunting, former field buyer for Halliburton in Kuwait; Jeffrey Jones, former Director of the Defense Energy Support Center, the Pentagon office responsible for supplying gasoline for military activities; William Hartung, President's Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, and Steve Ellis, Vice President for Programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense."

Reuters reported the events of the hearing as "Ex-U.S. Official in Iraq Says CPA Was 'Wild West'" -

"Ex-Coalition Provisional Authority official Franklin Willis cited examples of this "chaos" at a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and said he believed most abuse and waste could have been avoided. Willis showed a picture of himself and other U.S. officials holding up plastic-wrapped 'bricks' of $100 bills worth $2 million to pay security contractor Custer Battles, which the Defense Department has since suspended due to billing issues.

"The Custer Battles case, which while anecdotal, reflects a general pattern of waste and inefficiencies which could have been avoided," said Willis of contracting abuses in Iraq. "In sum, inexperienced officials, fear of decision-making, lack of communications, minimal security, no banks and lots of money to spread around. This chaos I have referred to as a 'Wild West'," Willis, who was a senior aviation official for the CPA, told the hearing...

A lawyer representing two "whistle-blowers" in the Custer Battles case, Alan Grayson, said his clients wanted to provide testimony at the hearing but had been too afraid to attend because of death threats, and because they feared retaliation from the Bush administration. 'In our case the Bush administration has not lifted a finger to recover tens of millions of dollars that our whistle-blowers allege was stolen from the government.'"

and AP chipped in with "Iraq Reconstruction Cash Given in Sacks" -

"A former U.S. occupation official in Iraq thought he was in the Wild West in 2003 as he watched colleagues pull $2 million in fresh bills from a vault and stuff them in a contractor's gunnysack... Because Iraq had no functioning banking system in 2003, money was kept in a basement vault in CPA headquarters...

Officials from the CPA, which ruled Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, would count the money when it left the vault, but nobody kept track of the cash after that, Willis said. "In sum: inexperienced officials, fear of decision-making, lack of communications, minimal security, no banks and lots of money to spread around. This chaos I have referred to as a 'Wild West,'" Willis said...

"This isn't penny ante. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars have been wasted and pilfered," said the chairman of the Democratic panel, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. He said the hearing was arranged because the Republicans who run Congress have declined to investigate fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq....

Willis worked in Iraq during the last half of 2003 and said he was responsible for civilian operations at Baghdad's airport. Describing the transfer of $2 million to one contractor's gunnysack, Willis said: "It was time for payment. We told them to come in and bring a bag." He said the money went to Custer Battles of Middletown, R.I., for providing airport security in Baghdad for civilian passengers. Willis' allegations follow by two weeks an inspector general's report that concluded the occupying authority transferred nearly $9 billion to Iraqi government ministries without any financial controls..."

Other than C-SPAN, AP, and Reuters, I've not seen or heard any other MSM coverage of the events transpired at this hearing.

Imagine that...

CP ;>)