GovernmentExecutive.com

The Senate's Democratic Policy Committee will hold a series of hearings starting Monday to investigate contracting abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., announced on Wednesday.

Dorgan is chairman of the committee, which has held 12 such hearings since December 2003 and is ramping up for more in a renewed push to form a select investigative committee on Iraq and Afghanistan contracting.

A bipartisan select committee with subpoena power is crucial to investigating "the most significant government waste, fraud and abuse in the nation's history," he said. Dorgan cited the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, chaired by then-Sen. Harry Truman, as an example of what he hopes to accomplish. That committee is credited with saving the government $15 billion between 1941 and 1948 by exposing wasteful and corrupt military contractors.

"Most of our [Senate] committees are not equipped to fully investigate," Dorgan said. "We don't have the investigators and ... it's more properly done in a bipartisan select committee."

Dorgan has introduced legislation to create the select committee three times on the Senate floor, but has been unable to gain the 60 votes necessary to pass the proposal.

The policy committee hearings thus far have featured primarily whistleblowers. On April 28, three former contractor employees will testify, including two from KBR Inc., which provides myriad support services to the military. They will detail instances of overcharging, double-billing, fraud and theft by U.S. contractors in Iraq, according to Dorgan.

The committee has struggled to get company executives or agency officials to testify at the almost exclusively Democratic hearings. The committee has extended invitations to the heads of Halliburton as well as to Pentagon officials, but they have "decided not to show up," he said.

Dorgan does not see oversight of in-theater contracting as a partisan issue and has publicly invited Republican senators to participate. But Matt Mackowiak, a spokesman for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., chairwoman of the Republican Policy Committee, said the Democratic Policy Committee has not reached out to her panel on this issue.

"Republicans have focused on Defense contracting reform and transparency, and support scrutiny when it's for a useful purpose," Mackowiak said.

With their hands tied unless a select committee is formed, the Democratic Policy Committee will focus on offering a forum for whistleblowers to expose contracting violations. Monday's witnesses will discuss, among other things, burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dorgan said. Contractors use burn pits to destroy old equipment and keep it off the black market or out of insurgents' hands. The whistleblowers will testify that virtually new equipment, even vehicles, are being burned and that the pits have turned into a source of theft, where insiders can access equipment for illegal sale.

"All you can do is dig and disclose ... and keep pushing, because I think this is all an unbelievable scandal," Dorgan said. "The American taxpayers have a right to be pretty disgusted about what's going on."

COMMENTS

• I find this entire situation offensive and wonder just what if anything will come of it. After all, politicians rely on monetary contributions from some of these companies involved in shady dealings and many will not pursue the moral principle determining just conduct and these hearings will be a valuable waste of time and come to a standstill with no resolution. Those of us who have been down range have seen firsthand the heinous abuses, fraud and phenomenal amount of waste by contractors. I bitterly resent my hard earned tax dollars funding the insatiable appetites of money hungry contractors sacrificing the needs of those serving down range to line their own coffers. There are some reputable contractors down range….but, for the most part; there are those who look upon the military as the ‘sacrificial lamb’ by making promises without follow-thru, furthering their own cause and exerting no interest in performing the function for which they are receiving large quantities of money. If Congress is just offering an illusory promise to penalize contractors for circumventing their obligations under contractual requirements, mismanagement and illegal activities in SWA without the bothersome debate and open decision [for penalizing, imposing fines, imprisoning and blackballing] that are the staples of our democracy, then by all means, cease their rumblings and do what they were elected to do….which, thus far has not been much. There should be no negotiation when dealing with many of these contractors aware of their illegal behavior and not depicting one ounce of remorse or concern. CAE Posted April 30, 2008 8:48 AM
• Prior military, have/had family & friends serving over in Iraq and Afghan. . . the fear of not being properly prepared with essential equipment, food so foul we sent care packages 2x a month, and the inappropriate way soldiers were treated by American civilians on teh other side of the world in war . . sickens me and worries me about not only their safety, but the ability defend whatever else we are now doing over there, because it is not about American shores and it's citizens anymore, it is about a CASH COW for civilian businesses. Lauren Posted April 29, 2008 9:33 PM
• And we keep voting them in. Yet some of us still gratuitously point fingers at the other while standing self-righteously on their own bad policy. They make mistakes, we move ahead. I think that what we can agree on is the rule of law and abiding by it. J. Norton Phillips Jr. Posted April 29, 2008 8:01 AM