Congressional hearing

There was a Congressional hearing yesterday, inspired by the latest IG report, joined by Senators Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan, and Representative Henry Waxman (all Democrats). It included the latest on Custer Battles legal efforts:

Assistant US Attorney Richard Sponseller, according to Grayson [lawyer for the whistle-blowers], has suggested that any fraud committed against the CPA should not be equated with theft from the United States, since the CPA was an international organization. But when President George Bush signed the CPA's original funding mandate, it clearly referred to the organization as "an entity of the United States."

Custer Battles has reached the same conclusion about its own lack of culpability, but for different reasons. The company's lawyers told CorpWatch, a website that monitors the activity of war profiteers, that the claim against them should be dismissed because the money allegedly stolen was rightfully that of Iraqis, not Americans.

Interestingly they seem to have some link to the Administration, as alluded to in the above article:

A lawyer attended the hearings to represent two former associates of Custer Battles who declined at the last minute to testify in person for fear of retribution from both the mercenary firm and the Bush administration.

and in this one:

Another witness accused the government of hampering an investigation into alleged fraud US-based by Custer Battles, which had contracts worth as much as 100 million dollars in Iraq for airport security and other jobs.

I guess, considering the lack of transparency with which contracts were awarded, it should be unsurprising to most sensible people if some were awarded to companies with ties to the Administration, and if those companies consequently abused the system. It seems that they're not very nice guys either way.