Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions / Big, Easy Iraqi-Style

[G_j]

Edited by G_j on Mon Sep-26-05 12:00 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/national/nationa...

September 26, 2005

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/2...

Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans

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As Katrina's flood waters recede, government contractors are flowing into the Gulf Coast and reaping billions of dollars in pre-bid, limited bid, and sometimes no-bid contracts. We speak with Pratap Chatterjee, managing editor of CorpWatch.org, about his latest article titled "Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans." http://www.corpwatch.org/print_article.php?id=1264...

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In it, he writes, "In Iraq, limited accountability, corruption, massive cost overruns, and devastating failures fed the chaotic mess that has followed the 2003 fall of Baghdad. Nonetheless, the largest Katrina contracts have been won by many of the same politically connected companies that oversaw that failed reconstruction. And it is perhaps no coincidence, since many of the same people in the Army Corps of Engineers are awarding them-and in much the same manner: as open-ended, no- or hastily bid contracts with guaranteed profit margins."


Pratap Chatterjee, managing director of CorpWatch.org.
- Read article: "Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans".
http://www.corpwatch.org/print_article.php?id=1264...

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap Chatterjee, take it from there.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Thank you Amy. I want you to remember one name, and that is Carl Strock. He’s the commander of the chief engineer of the Army Corp of Engineers. He’s the man who basically created the no-bid contract for Halliburton to repair the oil pipelines in Iraq. He presided at a meeting at which Bunny Greenhouse, the woman who actually basically blew the whistle on these no-bid illegal contracts was asked the Halliburton people who were sitting in the meeting to leave. He was the man who then demoted her, and asked her, you know, now not to oversee these kinds of contracts. He was then sent to Iraq, where he oversaw all of the Army Corps contracts in Iraq. So, he oversaw the multibillion dollar contracts that Halliburton had.

This is the same man now in charge of the Corps of Engineers, and therefore the man who is now issuing no-bid contracts, so-called no-bid contracts to Halliburton. They're not actually no-bid, they're illegal. And the reason is, the Army Corps has no contract with Halliburton. The navy does. These are contracts in Mississippi to fix the navy facilities like the Stennis Space Center. They borrowed a contract from the sister agency and used it to have Halliburton come in and assess the floodwater damage, something they're not supposed to do.

So, now, Carl Strock, the man in charge of the Iraq contract, he is also the man because he was in Iraq, oversaw the fact that this money, that should have been spent in the levees in New Orleans, was diverted to Iraq. Part of the reason was his boss, Robert Flowers, who authorized all of the stuff under the direction of course, of the White House. The White House called the shots. The Army Corps of Engineers if you go back in history is the agency that basically straightened and the Mississippi river and therefore led to the devastating floods, so now, come the 1990's, they said, well, we need to rebuild and correctly so, they need to fix the levee system.

When the bush administration said to them, we need the money for Iraq, they gave them a palate of what they could spend and they what they couldn't. They cut the Army Corps of Engineers spending by 44%. All the individuals who would have fixed the wetlands in Louisiana were helping fix the Iraq’s southern marshes. The man who was in charge was Carl Strock's boss at the time, his name is Robert Flowers. He now has a new job with a company called HNTB. HNTB is based in Kansas City, Missouri. He -- what they do is they build levees.

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