UPDATED--Former Petraeus Colleague Convicted of Accepting Bribes in Iraq

Sorry to do this, but the lede was buried. I am republishing this story with updated information and some observations--originally, I had planned to call Selph a "little fish in a big pond." It now appears there are some serious questions to be asked of some very senior leaders.

From the New York Times, August 27, 2007:

Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

[SNIP]

But now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

Flash forward to today:

A retired U.S. Army colonel pleaded guilty Tuesday to awarding contracts in Iraq to a Kuwait-based firm in exchange for gifts.

Levonda Selph of Virginia admitted accepting $4,000 in cash and a $5,000 vacation to Thailand from the unidentified contractor, which was awarded $12 million in contracts to operate Defense Department warehouses in Iraq. [see below for Selph's link to Thailand]

She pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy. She was secretly indicted on those charges in October; the charges weren't disclosed until her court appearance Tuesday.

Under terms of a plea agreement, Selph could receive up to 33 months in jail. She promised to repay the government $9,000 and to cooperate in an ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors said Selph was a lieutenant colonel at Camp Victory in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 when she led a committee that awarded the warehouse contracts.

The Justice Department said she will be free until her sentencing October 14 but will not be allowed to leave the country.

MISSING from that story is the original link between Selph and Petraeus, of course. Missing is the fact that Colonel Ted Westhusing killed himself over these very issues, according to his suicide note, which mentioned Petraeus by name. Think we'll hear anything about that?

UPDATED 8:50 AM - WS:

Now we know why there was a link to Thailand:

In a phone interview from Bangkok, John Hess, who worked as the assistant director of operations for an American-owned company that helped manage supplies for Iraq, said payments to the companies that supplied arms to Iraq were often delayed because of missing DD-250s. He said he believed that the officers had the right motives but used dangerous methods.

“Once those weapons left normal channels,” Mr. Hess said, “none of us were ever sure where they were really going.”

Several co-workers complained about the unorthodox tactics of the two officers, including an accusation that Major Cox, 38, was stealing weapons, Major Isgrigg said. However, federal officials said the officers were not the targets of an investigation.

Even when they managed to get weapons to the Iraqi military, Major Isgrigg said, it was hard for him and Major Cox to feel triumphant. The Iraqi commanders could barely keep track of their troops, much less stocks of new weapons, he said. He estimated that 30 percent of the equipment he and Major Cox delivered went to Iraqi soldiers who showed up for duty one day, and disappeared the next.
“There were times we would issue a batch of weapons and within 10 days they would show up at the Enemy Weapons Purchase Program,” Major Cox, who is on his second tour in Baghdad, wrote by e-mail, referring to a military effort to buy guns from the streets.

“We didn’t always think we were going about things the right way,” said Major Isgrigg, who left Iraq in July. But he said he believed that his actions were necessary, saying of his commanders: “They rushed it. Their goal was to get those units standing as fast as possible, and then to get out of there. There was no planning for the long term.”

As the American military hurried to train and equip Iraqi security forces in the spring of 2004, the Pentagon turned to contractors to operate warehouses to store equipment and weapons.

Mr. Saffar managed an armory on the grounds of the Baghdad Police Academy, which along with a nearby warehouse was operated by an American-owned company based in Kuwait.

In July, the company, American Logistics Services, which later became Lee Dynamics International, was suspended by the Army from doing future business with the government amid accusations that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to military contracting officers. The company had won $11 million in contracts to manage five warehouses with arms and other equipment in Iraq.

The company’s armory, a long concrete building divided into two sections in the back, was a logistics hub for the new Iraqi police. Crates of AK-47s and Glock pistols purchased by the Pentagon were trucked to the armory by armed convoys from a large warehouse at Abu Ghraib, and Mr. Saffar issued them to cadets.

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Yes, ALL of the crooks should be punished. But she gets prison while numerous others go free after building shit-encrusted buildings, a US Embassy complex that is an embarrassment to civilized society, setting up showers that electrocute troops, setting up water distribution facilities that distribute filthy water and shooting up Iraqis left and right?

We can send Colonel Selph to prison for pocketing a few grand but we can't even put Blackwater guards who have shot and killed human beings on trial because they have immunity? Is this a case where someone is going to point to her conviction and go, "see, we caught everyone who was stealing money, and we punished them, so the problem is now solved?" This is like claiming you saved America from terrorism by catching a bunch of guys who couldn't even buy combat boots.

Talk about a problem with your values system. Damn.

TPM Muckraker was ALL OVER this last year:

Commenter:
Nancy wrote on August 30, 2007 5:03 PM:
You are wrong about Joey Selph. You are getting half a story. I am assuming that you have never been in the military or have been some place like Iraq, during a war, with limited resources. If you knew Joey, you would know that she is an outstanding officer with superior morals. She would never and I repeat Never, do anything that was unlawful. She is the most patriotic person that I have ever met. I served underneath her and have only the utmost respect for her. When this is all said and done, you will find, that she did nothing wrong. Wait and see.......

As soon as Nancy, was done, some REAL commenting was done:

Jack the Bear wrote on November 11, 2007 2:14 PM:
LTC Selph is a nasty person. She lived in the ALS mansion in the Green Zone with the very contractor she was overseeing...drinking and carousing and having a big time corrupting good soldiers. Shame on you. Perhaps they will find out about the $5M in shipping containers you bought from Basil without authorization.

Jack the Bear wrote on November 12, 2007 9:42 AM:
Jon,
You must not have really worked for her. I too, worked with her. I predicted, sooner or later, she would pay a high price for her greed and avarice. She trampled and corrupted many a good soldier while she was downrange and now she is paying the piper. She laid up with her KBR/PWC boyfriend and crushed anyone in her way. LTC Davis, her cohort, was just as bad, but I didn't know him that well. Just that they were working hard to ensure ALS had all the warehouse business in theatre locked up. Now I know why they were so keen to back a broken company who couldn't execute. Anytime there is an irrational exuberation about any one contractor for no reason, there is something bad going on. She is no hero, just a skanky zero.

The Truth wrote on November 13, 2007 6:04 AM:
The shame of it all is that General Patreaus' good name is ruined by this "skanky zero". LTC Selph worked for COL Hinton and when ever he tried to control her she would go to her CENTCOM buddies and then to Patreaus spewing things like they are hindering the distrobution of weapons. She would obtain and distribute alcoholic beverages to E-5s and below she also had a co-conspirator in CW3 McPheron who left country under the guise of heart trouble only to return back to Iraq within a month working for Basil who was supposed to provide 20 trucks per day but rarely had more than five but was always paid the full amount. When complaints were made again she would run to her CENTCOM buddies. LTC Patreaus did and is keeping his eyes on the big picture and trusted that officer's would do the right thing.

Jack the Bear wrote on November 13, 2007 9:51 AM:
Truth,
You are correct. GEN Petraeus was busy focusing on the big picture and the "Scarecrow" LTC Selph was busy enriching herself and her cronies. There are other names not mentioned and I can't wait to see the next shoe drop. The KO who signed those sweetheart contracts forcing all incoming equipment into the ALS system had to be government. The stinky Taos weapons buys also had to be awarded by a govie. There will be much more uncovered before this is put to bed. Anyone who tried to manage the Scarecrow got stomped. Too bad for Gen Petraeus and COL Hinton. Two great soldiers whose reputations will be sullied by LTC Selph.

So who's going to ask General Petraeus to comment? Anyone?

Think we'll ever hear back?

This was in my original post, but it has been overtaken by events:
It is a good thing that she was caught, tried, and convicted when the evidence against her was weighed. You can't have crooks running around in Iraq if we're going to be there for a hundred years, obviously. And we can't have crooks who aren't smart enough to actually get paid--I mean, come on. You can save nine grand in a year if you ride the bus and use the generic toilet paper. I'm sorry, but nine grand is chump change for a O-5 deployed to a combat zone for a year.

Let's say she was at 18 years time in service, paid as an O-5, and we'll use the current numbers. Her monthly pay is, TAX FREE, $7,212.00. On top of that, she gets 12 months of imminent danger pay ($225 a month) and 12 months of family separation pay ($250 a month) if she has a family. Her income for one year of service in Iraq, just based on those figures, is approximately $92,200--and I'm not counting housing allowances or anything else. That's just her base pay, imminent danger pay and family separation pay. And she took a bribe on top of that for a measly $9,000? And risked her entire career, her retirement, everything for what amounts to a little more than a month of pay?

I don't know if it's better that we caught a crook or that we got one of Jerry's Kids out of uniform.

I'm not saying that she should have been given a free ride because she, quite clearly, did not hold sway over a whole lot of purchasing power while she was at Camp Victory in 2004-05. It looks to me like she was a very small fish in a much larger pond--full of people who were handling vast sums of money--so much so they needed forklifts to move it--and it looks to me like she was involved in some petty crimes.

Bribes, Bribes, and more Bribes

The NY Times does a number on BAE--the British defense firm that does major business in this country--and exposes for at least a few of us some of the inherent corruption that has prolonged the Iraq war.

Britain is leaving Iraq because of political change--not because it's the right thing to do, but because the people are fed up. In Australia and Poland--more of the same. The governments in those countries would love to stay in Iraq and keep spending billions in their defense sectors. Nothing pads the coffers of a politician, regardless of who they are or what country they practice their trade, more than defense spending. Corruption is exposing the war for what it is. It's a massive transfer of wealth from social programs to the defense sector. It doesn't matter if this is London, Canberra, Washington DC or Warsaw--that's what it is.

The people have spoken and they will continue to speak. Even the Pope wants the war in Iraq to end. Wow. Talk about your non-headline headline. The Pope is Against War. Who would have thunk it?

Now the Brits aren't all that fired up about corruption--they could use their own Henry Waxman over there, I suppose, or his equivalent in rough parliamentary terms. But even they have had to look into how BAE was doing business with the Saudis and how it connected to public funds. But in this country, we go about things a little differently. A law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is forcing the Justice Department to pay attention to how BAE has done business with the Saudis:

Much of the debate turns on the fact that BAE made billions of dollars in clandestine and questionable payments to Saudi royals over the last 20 years as part of an $80 billion contract to supply the kingdom with advanced fighter jets and other military hardware. While the investigation of BAE’s business practices has followed a circuitous path in Britain, it has recently gained independent momentum in the United States, where the Justice Department is now investigating the company.
BAE generates nearly half its revenue in the United States, and it recently acquired a major supplier of armored Humvees used by American forces in Iraq. American officials who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter said the Justice Department is examining whether BAE violated domestic laws banning international bribery and money laundering. Accounts in Switzerland, the Caribbean and elsewhere are involved, and, like Britain, the United States has a strategic relationship with the Saudis that the investigation threatens.

This decision to apply the FCPA to actual real world events shocks me, because, normally, "the rule of law" and "enforcing regulations" is a quaint afterthought left on the desk of an incompetent hack in the Bush Administration. The Saudis are the drivers behind our "strategery" in Iraq--that is, they summoned Dick Cheney and told him that the US was now going to do business with Sunni tribal leaders and give them guns and money. How much we upset the Saudis is dependent upon what they tell us we can and can't do, apparently.

But no--this is what the BAE investigation could force the Department of Justice to start looking into:

The revelation that British investigators had discovered that BAE deposited $2 billion in payments into Prince Bandar’s Washington bank accounts led the Justice Department to enter what analysts describe as the highest-profile F.C.P.A. case to date. Passed by Congress three decades ago in the wake of Watergate, it is only in the last five years that the F.C.P.A. has become a powerful tool for prosecuting domestic and overseas companies suspected of bribing foreign officials to secure business.
Justice Department officials estimate that there are about 60 such cases under investigation or prosecution in the United States, with a new, five-member F.B.I. team dedicated to examining possible violations of the act.

How enthusiastically these 60 cases will be looked at depends on whether or not the new Attorney General actually believes in the rule of law. I'm not holding my breath--it'll probably take an AG appointed by a Democrat to actually turn over the rocks and expose the corruption. Better yet, a Truman Committee could be created in January 2009.

Til then, we can only hold our head in our hands and wonder what might have been.

Claire McCaskill & Jim Webb advance legislation to rein in "contractors"

For more than two years I have been screaming for a reprise of the Truman Committee.

Before Claire McCaskill announced her Senate bid, I was encouraging her to run for the Class I seat that Truman once held, and touting her background as our state auditor and as a tough prosecutor as reasons she should run and reasons we should vote for her, because the Iraq fiasco needed a good auditing, in the spirit of Harry Truman.

During her campaign, she seized on my the idea of a modern day Truman Committee to investigate waste, fraud and corruption in the reconstruction of Iraq. During a speech in Harry S Truman’s hometown of Independence last year, she spoke admiringly of the former President and his diligence in reining in war profiteers. "He was fearless. He uncovered enormous undeserved profits. I believe we need a new Truman Committee. I will fight for such a committee.”

Less than a year after she was elected, and a mere nine months after taking her seat, she is very close to bringing the notion to fruition. The Senate recently agreed to a plan from Senators McCaskill and Webb to get a handle on the Pentagon’s scattershot method of awarding private contracts for work in Iraq. It was added to the Defense Authorization Bill for 2008.

The legislation sponsored by McCaskill and Webb, if it survives and is signed into law, will give oversight authority over private defense contracts to an independent, bipartisan commission. To the incoming Democratic freshmen, plus Bernie Sanders, the McCaskill-Webb amendment is symbolic of their pledge to restore integrity and accountability – the platform on which they stood for election.

The two freshmen senators wanted their bill on the FY 2008 DAB, and were told to take a number. Some 500 amendments were in the air, most by far more senior members of the chamber than the two of them, Webb’s tenure as Secretary of the Navy notwithstanding.. He has an insiders knowledge of just exactly how things don’t work.

Then Blackwater went on a killing spree in Nisoor square on September 16th and suddenly there were more than a couple of senators and a handful of bloggers paying attention to the issue of contractor corruption and criminal conduct, and the Webb-McCaskill amendment gained some traction. “We see stories of the corruption of these defense contractors and people are outraged by it.” said freshman Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio.

Now – I am all for giving the Senator the benefit of the doubt for her good intentions. But this in no way gets her a pass on the votes she has cast that disappointed us bitterly. She could advance ‘round the bend of redemption quite convincingly if she just stood up and stopped voting to fund the occupation of Iraq.

I thought we had made pretty damned clear during the campaign just exactly why we were working so freakin’ hard to elect her – the war in Iraq, and bringing it to an end were number one. Civil liberties and the restoration of Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment were a real damned close second. Yet she voted for the supplemental last spring, and she stabbed the Fourth Amendment in the back in a rush to get her vacation started.

On both of those counts, Claire has been a crushing disappointment, and a deserved recipient of blogger ire. She has a ways to go to restore our faith.

Claire, you represent Missouri. Show us. We demand as much and will accept no less.