WASHINGTON — The $736 million new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which American diplomats have occupied for 18 months, contains “multiple significant construction deficiencies,” and the U.S. government should try to recover more than $130 million from the contractor that built it, according to a report released Thursday.
The report, by the State Department’s inspector general, cites flaws in numerous systems throughout the embassy complex and says that the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., failed to properly design, construct and commission the largest U.S. Embassy overseas.
It also cites failures by the former leadership of the State Department bureau that’s responsible for constructing overseas diplomatic posts. Officials there said that those failures had been rectified, and they took issue with some aspects of the inspector general’s report.
News outlets have reported extensively on the troubled embassy project. However, the inspector general’s 58-page report, sent to Congress on Wednesday, is the first to confirm that the problems persisted after the embassy was occupied beginning in April 2008, and it puts a dollar figure on fixing them.
In one finding, the report says that “safe areas,” used to protect staff in emergency situations, “were not constructed according to contract specifications.” In another, it says that fire- protection systems were improperly designed or installed, “thereby increasing the risk that the facilities and personnel would not be adequately protected.”
The audit, conducted with help from the Army Corps of Engineers, also uncovered substandard electrical wiring, roadways and walkways that are cracking, and an improper hookup between the embassy’s water supply and the Baghdad city water system.
However, Rod Evans of the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations said that “nothing is impinging on the operations of the embassy.”
Other State Department officials called the inspector general’s estimate that First Kuwaiti owes the U.S. government $132 million highly speculative. They said it was doubtful that taxpayers would recover more than a small fraction of that. For its part, First Kuwaiti has asked the U.S. government for $49 million more to cover extra construction costs, they said.
