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WASHINGTON — The senior civilian official who managed the military’s largest contract in Iraq says he was reassigned in 2004 when he refused to approve more than $1 billion in charges to KBR until the Houston company provided credible spending records, The New York Times reported.
“They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” retired Army official Charles M. Smith told the Times.
Smith said he was reassigned and that most of the payments he had questioned were later approved.
The Times reported that Army officials denied that Smith had been replaced because of the dispute. They said his decision to block the payments could have eroded basic services to troops.
