And Still the Baghdad Embassy isn't complete!

Just because we didn't hear about any embassy-related problems or scandals for a while doesn't mean all is well and all the problems have been solved. (I have been all over this issue for months. See here, here, here and here. Click the links and read up on why you should be in the streets with a torch and a pitchfork over this issue alone.)

The problems haven't been adequately addressed, much less solved. They have just been ignored or overruled in a rush to declare victory the 104 acre, $529 $740 Million dollar complex complete.

The latest defect to rear it's ugly head is the firefighting system.

Last month, 19 days before he retired, State Department buildings chief Charles E. Williams certified key elements of the embassy's fire-fighting system as ready for operation, according to the documents McClatchy obtained.

His own fire-safety specialists and an outside consultant, however, had warned Williams and his aides repeatedly about numerous fire safety violations.

Moreover, Williams' thumbs-up was based on tests run by another contractor that was hired, not by the State Department, but by the company building the embassy, First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading Co. State Department officials, members of Congress and others have accused First Kuwaiti of shoddy construction and questionable labor practices.

The State Department's top management official, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, said in a telephone interview that he hasn't issued a certificate of occupancy for the new embassy complex. He said he won't do so until the fire safety systems and other functions are "validated and checked fully."

Kennedy also said that the department's own fire safety specialists have been to Baghdad to inspect the embassy. "They were the ones who uncovered the problem" in the first place, he said.

In May, a mortar shell smashed into the complex, damaged a wall and caused what were reported as minor injuries to be sustained by people inside. The walls were supposed to be blast-resistant, but weren't.

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The project manager, James L. Golden, attempted to alter the scene and conceal evidence of shoddy construction by the contracting company, First Kuwaiti, which is closely tied to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a (former) subsidiary of Halliburton, the war-profiteering company previously headed by Dick Cheney. (As investigations into the company ramped up, Halliburton divested itself of KBR.) According to documents and interviews, the disgraced former IG for State, Howard Krongard, reared his ugly head once more and prevented State Department officials from investigating the incident.

When it came to the attention of Ambassador Ryan Crocker, he banished Golden from the country, yet Golden continued to oversee the project, as well as other projects for the Overseas Building Office (OBO).

Golden, however, continued on as project manager for several months, even though he was not allowed in the country on orders of Ambassador Ryan Crocker. On Nov. 2, he sent and e-mail responding to State Department requests for repairs to underground fire mains, where he referred to the proposed changes as mere "preferences" and do "not change the fact that the work as completed meets all reference codes and specifications."

Until his retirement two weeks ago, the OBO was headed up by Williams, who happens to be a close personal friend of former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In fact, Powell hand-picked his old friend and colleague for the job, and Williams apparently ran the OBO like a personal feifdom, going so far as to refuse to let U.S. diplomats and congressional staffers onto the new embassy compound, according to congressional testimony given in July, and corroborated by a former senior official with first-hand knowledge of Williams and the OBO.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said a State Department official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

Concerns over the embassy's fire safety systems first arose in late August, when fire safety specialists from the State Department inspected the complex. They discovered problems with the water mains, fire alarms and numerous other systems, according to a Sept. 4 trip report.

The State Department ordered Williams to bring in an outside consultant, Schirmer Engineering of Greenbelt, Md., which found the same problems, according to e-mails from Schirmer to the State Department dated Oct. 22, Oct. 27 and Nov. 1.

Williams set up a separate structure to oversee the Baghdad project. E-mail exchanges in the documents obtained by McClatchy portray his project managers as playing down potential problems and refusing to share information about the embassy's progress.

Somewhere along the line, although no one knows exactly when, Baltimore-based Hughes Associates Inc was hired by First Kuwaiti to test water pressure in the underground firemains to assure they would be operable in the event of a fire.

On December 7, a certification was issued by a Hughes contractor that declared the new embassy met fire codes. But Hughes is now backing away from the contract employee that wrote the certificate. In fact, Hughes President Philip J. DiNenno, who did confirm his company had been hired by his company, sent an email to the State Department on December 14 in which he said the contract employee actually did nothing more than witness one test. "He was and is not authorized to speak on behalf of Hughes Associates or to communicate the final status of any deficiencies, and certainly he may not satisfy anything unilaterally," DiNenno wrote, adding that the firm's final report is still being prepared.

If and when the embassy is ever completed and certified move-in ready (the deadline was September but delays have pushed the occupancy date well into 2008) it will house approximately 1200 diplomats and staffers, as well as coalition military officials. The decision to move Petraeus and his entourage into the embassy complex was an after-the-fact decision because in the words of Patrick Kennedy, who heads the State Department director of management policy "Crocker and Petraeus don't want to divorce."

When contacted in Kuwait on Friday, Wadih al Absi, the general manager of First Kuwaiti and a co-founder of the company, refused to comment on issues concerning the embassy, stating that it's a violation of his contract to speak to the media without the State Department's permission and that he's been requesting permission for three months.

Your (incompetent) State Department at work folks - pissing away your tax dollars as fast as they possibly can, like they are so much cheap beer.

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The State Department needs an "Office of Lessons Learned"

Determined as they are to make the worst possible choices, under the leadership of the most incompetent and inept Secretary of State in the history of the Republic, First Kuwaiti has been awarded additional contracts for construction of embassy and consulate facilities.

Apparently your mother was wrong and crime does pay.

The company that used counterfeit, sub-standard building materials, assembled by abducted third-world workers who are essentially slave labor, has benefited further.

Late last month, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co. was part of a team that won a $122 million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, according to contract documents.

That's one of at least three State Department jobs, in addition to the Baghdad project, that First Kuwaiti won in association with a U.S. firm, Grunley Walsh LLC of Rockville, Md.

Since 2006, by operating as a subcontractor to Grunley Walsh, First Kuwaiti has won contracts for work on a new U.S. Embassy in Libreville, Gabon; on a consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia; and on the Jeddah project.

Such partnerships are increasingly common as foreign companies try to win shares of embassy construction contracts that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year under the State Department's aggressive building program. Under a 1986 law, only U.S. firms can bid on embassy construction.

But industry analysts said that First Kuwaiti appears to be the financial muscle behind the partnership with Grunley Walsh. Lebanese businessman Wadih al Absi founded the company in 1996. News reports and Middle East experts say that Absi is a supporter of Lebanese Christian politician Michel Aoun, an ally of Syria and the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah. [emphasis added]

Henry Waxman is already investigating the Inspector General for State, who has facilitated malfeasance at the highest level. Maybe he needs to be looking into the OBO division of State, too.

There's more: "The State Department needs an "Office of Lessons Learned"" >>

More Corruption, Delays and Overruns in the Iraq Embassy Project

Image: McClatchy Newspapers

Even more problems with the new mega-bunker embassy in Baghdad are coming to light - and this time there is a criminal investigation into the construction contract. This criminal probe follows an investigation by Henry Waxman and the House Oversight Committee that was initiated a few weeks ago into the conduct of the IG for the State Department. Howard J. Krongard, the Inspector General for the State Department, has exhibited a persistent tendency to censor reports that might embarrass the administration, and has repeatedly thwarted investigations of the State Department and the problems with the embassy.

The problems started with the bid process.

When the State Department requested bids in 2005, exactly one came in, from J. A. Jones International of Charlotte, North Carolina. In spite of having a track record with the State Department, and having won embassy construction contracts in the past, the J.A. Jones bid was rejected because the estimated to cost was twice as much as had been allotted by State, and the company would not guarantee the June 2007 completion date. Additionally, the J.A. Jones bid was a cost-plus estimate, which frankly, is about the only way a responsible contractor would have bid the job, since the construction site was in a freakin' war zone...that was getting hotter every day. First Kuwaiti was chosen solely because it was willing to offer a fixed-price contract, in which cost overruns aren't passed on to the government.

"The only company in the end that would offer us a firm fixed-price (contract) was First Kuwaiti. The decision was made, and I believe rightly so, that firm fixed-price is the best protection for the American taxpayer. If an American company had bid a firm fixed-price, they might or they might not have won." said Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's director of management policy.

Unable to get a legitimate contractor to walk down the primrose path to potential financial ruin, the State Department Bureau of Overseas Building Operations (OBO) waived the law requiring open and competitive bidding, and awarded the contract to a firm from Kuwait, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Company. When the OBO issued the waiver, they described First Kuwaiti as "capable of completing the design and construction in accordance with the required schedule, budget and performance parameters."

That rosy assessment and vote of confidence was, to say the least, overblown. Four months after the embassy was supposed to be ready to open, it is not only not ready, but problems are still presenting. The most recent setback has been with the sprinkler system. When they tested it, the pipes burst at the junctions. In May, when electrical systems were tested they failed, and an investigation revealed that First Kuwaiti was using counterfeit wiring that fell short of the specifications.

You get what you pay for.

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Counterfeit, sub-standard building materials are one way to turn a profit on a bad bid, I guess. Another way is to abduct workers from emerging and third-world countries and spirit them off to Baghdad against their will, then underpay them to the point that they are essentially slave labor. I realize that "slavery" is a strong word, but I am not the only one using it. "It is distressing to hear that our fellow Filipinos are being deceived into working in Iraq by unscrupulous contracting firms," Senator Mar Roxas of the Philippines said, upon hearing of the abduction of Filipinos to work on the embassy. "Unless we have officially accepted that the days of slavery are back, the government must act." (emphasis mine)

According to testimony by an American who spent a short period of time working as an Emergency Medical Technician at the embassy complex, Filipino workers were given tickets that indicated they were boarding a plane to Dubai, and were not told they were going to Baghdad until the plane was airborne. When they found out, and objected, a security guard reminded them at gunpoint that they were in no position to protest. They were indeed going to Baghdad, and there was not a damned thing they could do about it. The American EMT testified before the Oversight committee that conditions at the site "were deplorable, beyond what even a working man should tolerate." Foreign workers, he said, were packed tight into trailers, equipment was insufficient and basic needs went unmet. "If a construction worker needed a new pair of shoes, he was told, 'No, do with what you have' by First Kuwaiti managers."

He also said in his testimony that workers were routinely physically and verbally abused and another witness testified about the rate of on-the-job injuries. "There were a lot of injuries out there because of the conditions these people were forced to work in. It was absurd."

As if the substandard building materials, the shoddy construction, the missed deadlines, and the abduction and forced labor of third-world workers wasn't enough, the company has also been implicated in a kickback scheme with...wait for it...Kellogg, Brown& Root.

And all that corruption and malfeasance took place with the apparent complicity of the Inspector General for State, Howard Kronegard, whose job it was to provide oversight and prevent those very offenses.

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But wait! There's more!

You know how they say that it isn't the corruption that gets you busted, it's the cover-up?

That holds true here, as well.

In May, a mortar shell smashed into the complex, damaged a wall and caused what were reported as minor injuries to be sustained by people inside. The walls were supposed to be blast-resistant, but weren't.

The project manager, James L. Golden, contractor for State, attempted to alter the scene and conceal evidence of shoddy construction. According to documents and interviews, the IG for State, Krongard, reared his head once more and prevented State Department officials from investigating the incident.

When it came to the attention of Ambassador Ryan Crocker, he banished Golden from the country, yet Golden still oversees the project, as well as other projects for the OBO.

The OBO is headed up by a close personal friend of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired Army Maj. Gen. Charles Williams. Williams was hand-picked by his old friend and colleague to head up the OBO, and Williams apparently runs the OBO like a personal feifdom, going so far as to refused to let U.S. diplomats and congressional staffers onto the new embassy compound, according to congressional testimony given in July, and corroborated by a former senior official with first-hand knowledge of Williams and the OBO.

As recently as August, Williams assured the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the embassy would be ready for occupancy by the end of September.

"This and other incidents involving separate embassy construction projects raise concerns about the adequacy of the Department's management of our overseas building operations," committee chairman Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Cal., wrote to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on October 4.

The State Department declined to make Williams available for an interview and directed questions to Patrick Kennedy, the department's director of management policy.

As of this writing, the embassy is not move-in ready, and there is no clear indication when it will be. They have, however, complicated matters further by deciding after-the-fact to move General Petraeus and his entourage into the embassy, requiring space for an additional 250 people, and an expansion of the classified areas, because, in the words of Kennedy, "Crocker and Petraeus don't want to divorce."

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More questions about First Kuwaiti

First Corruption Kuwaiti is in trouble again, this time for a kickback scheme in which it is alleged that the company arranged to pay a $200,000 kickback for two additional, unrelated projects in Iraq.

...a now-sealed court document obtained by The Associated Press, allegedly involved First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting and a manager for Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. or KBR, a firm hired to handle logistics for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The document summarizes grand jury testimony from the former KBR manager, Anthony J. Martin, who pleaded guilty in July to taking kickbacks in 2003.

Although the government has tried to keep First Kuwaiti's name out of public records related to Martin's case, details from his grand jury testimony were found by a defense lawyer, J. Scott Arthur of Orland Park, Ill., who included a summary in a six-page document filed last Friday in an unrelated federal court case in Rock Island, Ill. The AP downloaded a copy of the document from the court's Web site shortly before a judge ordered the document sealed and removed from the public record.

According to the court document, Martin testified to a federal grand jury that he engaged in the kickback scheme with Lebanese businessman Wadih Al Absi, who controls First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. The company is building the $592 million Baghdad embassy, the largest in the world with working space for about 1,000 people.

These questions come amid the House Oversight Committee investigating the Inspector General for State over allegations the IG stifled investigations into acts of malfeasance by First Kuwaiti. The company is closely tied to Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the war-profiteering company formerly headed by Dick Cheney. Amid investigations coming to light, Halliburton has divested itself of KBR.

There's more: "More questions about First Kuwaiti" >>