By Sarah Baxter
The Australian, 20 November 2006
WHEN an American adventurer and arms dealer was gunned down in his car near the banks of the Tigris River in 2004, his murder was blamed on an obscure group of Islamic terrorists.
As Baghdad's body count rises, Dale Stoffel, 43, is barely remembered today. But his name is certain to be revived as the Democrats prepare for a barrage of congressional investigations into corruption in Iraq.
A former intelligence analyst, he had hoped to make a fortune by selling ex-Soviet military parts to refit Saddam Hussein's abandoned tanks and armoured vehicles for the new Iraqi army.
But Stoffel was also an idealist who turned whistleblower when he learned that Iraqis in the Defence Ministry and arms industry expected huge kickbacks for their help.
Three days before his death, he met John Shaw, then a senior Pentagon official, whose office was investigating fraud in Iraq.
Mr Shaw describes the Stoffel case as "the first public indication of the seriousness and institutional depth of corruption in Iraq".
He is convinced that "in time, we will discover a pervasive pattern of cover-ups along with revelations of corruption".
American taxpayers have spent $US68.2 billion ($88.7 billion) on reconstruction in Iraq, much of it unaccounted for.
A further $US22 billion of Iraq's own money, derived mainly from oil, has been largely squandered, with little scrutiny.
The Democrats intend to use their new power in the Senate and House of Representatives to harass the Bush administration over the war.
"There is going to be a hefty set of hearings, you can count on it," said Gordon Adams of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre.
Mr Adams oversaw the national security budget at the White House during Bill Clinton's presidency.
Henry Waxman, the new chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, has promised ruthless scrutiny of the money shipped to Iraq.
During the first year, nearly $US12 billion in cash was transferred, much of it shrink-wrapped and flown out at $US2 billion a time.
One of the first acts of Congress last week after the mid-term elections was to reverse a decision to shut the office of Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction. An old friend of President George W. Bush, Bowen had turned out to be doing an unexpectedly good job of investigating corruption and waste.
He recently reported to Congress on a new police academy in Baghdad, which cost US taxpayers $US75 million but was so badly built that human waste was oozing through the ceilings.
Bowen has also highlighted lax scrutiny of multi-million-dollar contracts involving Halliburton, the energy services company, and several American officials have been prosecuted for bribery.
But the real scandal, according to Pentagon sources, is that the opportunity to rebuild the Iraqi army and security services in the first two years of the US occupation was squandered, leaving sectarian militias to multiply.
Stoffel's murder is part of that jigsaw. His body was found in a festering suburb of Baghdad with that of Joseph Wemple, 49, a friend and business associate. An obscure jihadist group claimed responsibility.
Pieces of video began to surface from the group, called Rafidan, which were not standard jihadist fare.
According to Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant, they were obsessed with Stoffel's defence contracting links to senior Iraqi officials and contained documents from his laptop.
"I didn't see anything to convince me that a genuine insurgent group was responsible for their deaths," said Kohlmann. "Given the problems that Dale was having in Iraq, the greatest threat to his life came from individuals he knew."
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Citation: Sarah Baxter. "Iraqi money trail may lead to murder," The Australian, 20 November 2006.
Original URL: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,20786007,00.html
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