[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 37 (Tuesday, April 5, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3164-S3166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise this morning to talk about three 
areas of accountability as we begin discussing a range of things in the 
Senate this week. The issue of accountability rises on the question of 
the report offered to the American people and to the Congress by Judge 
Laurence Silberman and former Senator Chuck Robb. It deals with the 
question of intelligence preceding the Iraq war.
  The 600-page report given us was largely a useless retelling of what 
we know already. I do not want to completely diminish the effort, and 
there are some things in that report that are interesting, but the fact 
is, we already know that the intelligence with respect to Iraq was dead 
wrong. The major question is, How was the intelligence used and for 
what purpose was it used?

[[Page S3165]]

  We know what we were told prior to the Iraq war. All of us went to 
briefings up in the room in the Capitol where we receive top secret 
briefings, and we heard all kinds of language there and in the popular 
press by people in this administration and others who said that this 
was a certainty, that they knew where the weapons of mass destruction 
were in Iraq; it was urgent; there were unmanned aerial vehicles to 
deliver weapons of mass destruction; this is a slam dunk.
  Now we know not only from this report but from previous reports that 
this intelligence was gathered, for example, with respect to one of the 
issues, as our Secretary of State told the world in the United Nations 
presentation, concerning the prospect that the Iraqis were developing a 
mobile chemical weapons lab to produce weapons of mass destruction. Now 
we discover that information came from a source named ``curve ball.'' 
It was a single-source piece of information. Some suspect that ``curve 
ball'' was a drunk, at least when he met with our intelligence folks. 
It says that he was suspected of having a hangover. We know that he was 
a fabricator.
  So on the basis of a fabricator, a drunk, single source, we told the 
world through our Secretary of State that Iraq had mobile chemical 
weapons labs that threatened our country.
  The aluminum tubes are another story. I am not going to go through 
all the stories, but the question is, Where is the accountability? We 
get a 600-page report that tells us what we already know; that the 
intelligence with respect to Iraq was dead wrong. Where is the 
accountability? Where does the buck stop?
  Mr. Tenet, who was the head of the CIA--and this 600-page report 
points certainly to him among others--was brought to the Oval Office, 
to the White House, and given the Medal of Freedom after he left the 
CIA. Where is the accountability? Is there accountability in this 
country for having gotten it not just wrong but, as the 600-page report 
says, dead wrong? Will this Congress require accountability? I think it 
is very important.
  This 600-page report is half the story. The other part of the story 
is not only bad intelligence, but how was it used, and what was the 
purpose of using it? Go to the Woodward book, go to the O'Neill book, 
and one gets some hint of the connection to this.
  I think this Congress is owed additional answers. I think this report 
was far too narrow.
  Second, I want to ask about accountability with respect to an 
independent investigation that is going on in this town. The Washington 
Post report was surprising to me because I was not aware of these 
facts. The Washington Post did a story that said the cost of the 
Cisneros probe nears $21 million over 10 years. This was a probe of 
Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros by independent counsel David Barrett. 
In May of 1995, Mr. Barrett was appointed as independent counsel to 
investigate allegations that a then Cabinet Secretary lied to the FBI 
about money that he had paid to a former mistress. That was May 1995.
  In September 1999, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty, paid a $10,000 fine, 
and then following that he was later pardoned by President Clinton. By 
then, the independent counsel had spent $10.3 million on his 
investigation, and since that time he has spent another $10 million-
plus on the investigation.

  Is there a screw loose someplace? What are they thinking about? There 
was an independent counsel appointed 10 years ago to investigate an 
alleged impropriety by a Cabinet official. The Cabinet official pleaded 
guilty 4 years later, was pardoned a year after that. The independent 
counsel is still working? He is supposed to be supervised by three 
Federal judges, but the fact is, they are leaking money down there.
  I intend to offer an amendment to the supplemental to shut off the 
funding. Ten years later, $21 million, investigating the question of 
whether a Cabinet official lied about money paid to his mistress? He 
pleads guilty to it and we have a guy 10 years later still 
investigating it?
  I think waste is a disaster in the Federal Government. Talk about 
waste, this is shameful, and if the three-judge panel does not have the 
common sense to shut this down, then the Congress, I hope, will have 
the common sense to shut it down. I will offer an amendment during the 
supplemental that shuts off the money and does it now.
  The third area of accountability is this: As chairman of the Policy 
Committee on our side, I have held a good number of hearings on the 
issue of contracting in Iraq. There is massive waste, fraud, and abuse 
going on with respect to contracting in Iraq. All of us know there is 
money going out of this Congress in wholesale quantities, tens of 
billions of dollars.
  Last year, Congress passed a bill for reconstruction money in Iraq. I 
did not vote for it; I voted against it. In fact, I offered an 
amendment to shut it down, reconstruction money to the tune of nearly 
$19 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq. In addition to that, we 
have spent nearly $160 billion to $180 billion on the war in Iraq. 
There is an $82 billion request before the Senate right now. That is 
the supplemental I was referring to earlier. This is a massive amount 
of money being spent with respect to the operations in Iraq and also 
the reconstruction in Iraq.
  I will talk a bit about what we have learned. One contractor was 
feeding our troops and charged the American Government, the Pentagon, 
for feeding 42,000 troops a day. It turns out this contractor was only 
providing 14,000 meals a day. We are getting billed for 42,000 meals, 
but the contractor was only providing 14,000 meals. Someplace 28,000 
meals are charged for that were never offered to our troops, or perhaps 
not needed.
  I come from a small town, and they call that cheating in my hometown. 
That contractor is still the largest contractor in Iraq being paid by 
the U.S. taxpayer.
  We had testimony from truckdrivers who were hired to move goods 
around Iraq, including fuel coming into Iraq by contractors. 
Truckdrivers testified that $85,000 brandnew trucks were left on the 
side of the road to be torched and looted because they had a clogged 
fuel pump or because they had a flat tire they could not fix. What did 
they do? They left the truck beside the road, just abandoned the truck. 
That is the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that is going on.
  We had a guy testify and show us a picture of the bags of cash that 
were used to give to contractors in Iraq. One contract company started 
business in Iraq with $450. They have been paid tens of millions of 
dollars now. Two of their employees, by the way, became whistleblowers 
and said: What we are seeing is making us sick, so we are going to tell 
somebody about it.
  Here is what they said: These two people who started this company and 
are contracting with the U.S. Government--it is called the Coalition 
Provisional Authority that we created in Iraq; it was us, we paid for 
it--were providing security at an airport, and they were alleged by the 
employees to have taken forklift trucks off the airport property to a 
warehouse, repaint them blue, and then bring them back to the airport 
and sell them to the U.S. taxpayers through the Coalition Provisional 
Authority. Again, in my hometown, they call that fraud.
  We had a big picture that one of the other whistleblowers had taken 
who worked in Iraq, and he said: We told contractors in Iraq that when 
it was time to get paid, just bring a big bag because we are going to 
give you cash. He showed us one picture of the contractor I discussed, 
the one with respect to the forklift trucks. He showed one picture of 
$2 million wrapped in Saran Wrap in bundles sitting on a table and the 
contractor comes with a big bag and they get their $2 million and waltz 
off.

  This contractor, by the way, was also alleged to have created a 
subsidiary in the country of Lebanon for the purpose of buying and 
selling to and from itself so it could inflate prices and therefore 
further cheat the United States taxpayer.
  It is unbelievable what we have learned about contracting in Iraq. 
One whistleblower came forward and said he was the buyer who was 
supposed to buy towels for U.S. soldiers. He said this is the towel I 
bought under orders from my superiors. The company wanted to pay almost 
double the price of the towel in order to have the company's name 
embroidered on the towel the soldiers used--unbelievable waste.
  When you think of what is happening, this Congress is shoveling out 
tens of billions of dollars in pursuit of

[[Page S3166]]

all of this and nobody is watching the store. You hear the stories 
about us paying for reconstruction of a building in Iraq--and we are 
doing it for thousands of buildings. We decide we are going to put an 
air conditioner in that building, so it is subcontracted to an Iraq 
subcontracting company. First it goes to the contractors who are in 
Iraq being paid by our Government, some of whom I have described here, 
and then it goes to an Iraq subcontractor, and then the subcontractor 
for that subcontractor, and pretty soon that air conditioner in the 
building became a ceiling fan and we paid for an air conditioner and 
the ceiling fan doesn't work. So there you are.
  The question is, who in this Congress is going to decide this matters 
at a time when we are up to our neck in debt, the largest debt in the 
history of this country, with a fiscal policy that is way off track, a 
President who sends us a budget with the highest Federal budget 
deficits in history, and trade deficits that are the highest in 
history, a combined fiscal policy and trade deficit of over $1 trillion 
in the past year? We are sinking and drowning in debt. Who is going to 
care about this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse, the most serious I 
have seen in all the years I have served in the Congress?
  I raise this because it relates to accountability, accountability 
with respect to the use of intelligence prior to the war in Iraq, 
accountability with an independent counsel who spent $21 million 10 
years after the fact when he was supposed to investigate a Cabinet 
official who lied about paying money to his mistress. This is an 
independent counsel who is still operating and has spent $21 million. 
Who is accountable for that? Who is accountable for waste, fraud, and 
abuse in Iraq?
  Harry Truman had the famous sign on his desk, ``The buck stops 
here.'' These days the buck doesn't seem to stop anywhere. Nobody seems 
to be accountable for anything.
  I intend to offer another amendment. I don't know whether I will 
offer it on the existing bill or on the supplemental, but I will offer 
it again, setting up a Truman committee of sorts. In 1941, at the start 
of the Second World War, Harry Truman, then a Democratic Senator when a 
Democrat was in the White House, traveled around this country and saw 
waste, fraud, and abuse in military spending. He created a special 
committee and as a result of the investigation of that committee they 
unearthed massive fraud and massive waste. That was when a Democrat in 
the Congress did it, when a Democrat was in the White House.
  These days nobody wants to raise any questions. You don't want to 
make any waves because we have one-party control and we don't want to 
talk about this, that, or the other thing. The fact is, I have never 
seen the kind of waste that now exists with respect to our operations 
in Iraq. It undercuts and undermines our soldiers' efforts, in my 
judgment. It cheats America's taxpayers, and it represents the worst of 
Government.

  We ought to be able to hire contractors who will do the job without 
allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to represent the major impact of what 
we see happening in Iraq these days with respect to these contractors.
  Part of this stems from greed. Part of it stems from the fact that 
many of these contracts in Iraq are no-bid contracts--one company. I 
have not mentioned Halliburton, but I could because a lot of it deals 
with Halliburton and KBR--not exclusively, but a lot of it. Any time 
somebody mentions Halliburton, somebody says: Oh, you are attacking the 
Vice President. Not a bit. This happened after the Vice President left 
Halliburton. These are of recent vintage, these activities in Iraq. It 
is not an attack on anybody. It is in support of the taxpayers of this 
country. We ought not allow this to happen. Republicans and Democrats 
all ought to stand on their feet and demand accountability and demand 
that the waste, fraud, and abuse stop--$8,000 a month to rent an SUV; 
$40 for a case of pop or soda--Coca-Cola.
  There were 50,000 pounds of nails ordered by a contractor to Iraq. 
They were the wrong length, so they dumped them. If anybody wants to 
pick up 50,000 pounds of nails, they are laying in the sand in Iraq. It 
is unbelievable the waste, fraud, and abuse we hear about.
  The reason I have held the hearings in the Democratic Policy 
Committee is nobody else will hold hearings. No one else wants to hold 
these contractors accountable. There are whistleblowers all over who 
are disgusted with what they saw, working for contractors and 
supervising contractors in Iraq.
  I have only described a brief portion of what we learned in these 
hearings. We intend to conduct additional hearings. My preference would 
be that we not conduct these hearings in my committee. My preference 
would be that the authorizing committees and the relevant committees 
that should be assuming oversight of this would hold aggressive 
hearings, but they don't and they probably won't, and as a result we 
will continue to do this.
  I am intending to offer an amendment to create a Truman-type 
committee here in the Congress, as we did some decades ago, to take a 
hard look at what is happening through that kind of committee, an 
investigative committee that would include Republicans and Democrats, 
all of whom I hope would be committed and dedicated to the task of 
deciding that waste, fraud, and abuse is not something that should 
happen on any of our watches here in the Congress.
  Again, I think the key issue here is accountability. There seems to 
be none these days in almost any direction. I hope in all of these 
areas we can begin to decide there is accountability, at least here in 
the Congress.
  I yield the floor and make a point of order a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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