Stuart W. Bowen Jr. is one government official who actually is doing a heck of a job, a fact that has led some Republicans on Capitol Hill to try, quietly, to put him out on the street.
Bowen heads up the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He and his 55 auditors and inspectors in Iraq have been doing a bang-up job of uncovering waste and malfeasance in the spending of American money meant to be used for rebuilding the war-ravaged nation.
The inspector general is no trouble-making whistle-blower from inside the bureaucracy; Bowen is a Republican lawyer who’s worked for President Bush in both Texas and Washington. But it came to light last week that a little-noticed provision in a military authorization bill will put Bowen and company out of business on Oct. 1, 2007.
Sure, that’s nearly a year away, but that’s soon enough to start shifting the inspector general’s office away from real investigations and into a transitional mode of handing off its work to inspectors general based in agencies such as the Department of Defense.
The special inspector general’s office has wide authority that agency-based inspectors don’t, and Bowen’s talented group has uncovered some major problems, including:
A $75 million police academy built by Parsons Corp. was so shoddily done that human waste leaked from defective plumbing in the ceilings of the barracks.
About 4 percent of the small arms, machine guns and grenade launchers supplied by the U.S. to Iraqi security forces can’t be accounted for.
For some large contracts with major U.S. firms, a third to a half of the money was eaten up by “administrative overhead.”
Transfer of reconstruction efforts from U.S. agencies to the Iraqi government has “broken down,” according to findings released Oct. 30. Beyond employee salaries and administrative costs, little actual reconstruction is being done.
Bowen’s termination date apparently was inserted in the bill during a closed-door conference committee session, reportedly by staffers of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who recently announced a 2008 presidential bid. Some key lawmakers were not aware of it at the time, and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and John Warner of Virginia say they will work on extending the office’s mandate once Congress goes back to work.
We hope they’re successful. Bowen needs to be kept on the job until the last wasted dime is accounted for.
