Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner
Mar 7, 2007 3:00 AM (1 day ago)
Current rank: # 148 of 20,409 articles
WASHINGTON – The United States’ special inspector for Iraq reconstruction is under investigation by a federal panel after former employees accused him of wrongdoing.
An eight-page complaint against Stuart Bowen Jr., appointed by the Bush administration as the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction in January 2004, was filed with the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency a year ago by six former employees, who declined to provide their names.
Bowen told The Examiner on Tuesday that the charges “are without merit” and that he expects to be vindicated. He said charges from former employees that he had long, unexplained absences from work are baseless. He said in some cases, he worked from home on final reports and performed other duties offsite.
“It’s documented I’ve worked hundreds of hours of overtime for which I will not be paid,” he said.
Bowen said the absenteeism charge was not brought by the PCIC’s Integrity Committee. He said it informed him in a letter that three charges were being investigated.
They are: whether the SIGIR gave inaccurate budget estimates to the Office of Management and Budget; the propriety of a contract award to an auditing firm; and the cost of producing a color-studded book on the history of the SIGIR under Bowen’s direction.
“The allegations are without merit, and I’m confident the investigation will prove that,” Bowen said.
Of the former employees, he said, “The rules of the PCIE expect that investigations remain confidential until they are concluded, and these individuals have chosen to ignore those rules.”
The PCIE is headed by Clay Johnson, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It oversees the system of inspectors general and, in this case, assigned two investigators who have interviewed more than 30 people who have worked for Bowen.
Andrea Wuebker, an OMB spokeswoman, said Tuesday, “The investigation is really still ongoing, and so it is not appropriate to comment further on it.”
Bowen is one of the country’s most prominent federal investigators. Congress created the position to monitor the spending of more than $30 billion in reconstruction and development money provided to Iraq by the United States. Bowen has issued a series of reports on fraud and waste, has testified frequently on Capitol Hill, has been quoted widely in the press and has appeared on CBS “60 Minutes.”
The former workers accused Bowen of not reporting to work for long stretches of time in 2004 to 2005, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Examiner.
“Mr. Bowen rarely came to work at various intervals, sometimes for multiple consecutive weeks at a time,” the complaint says.
Bowen said that charge is not in play at the PCIE. He said a similar complaint was filed in 2004 and the PCIE cleared him.
The complaint was filed anonymously in February 2006 by six people, two of whom worked for the SIGIR at the time. The Examiner interviewed three of the six, as well as a former SIGIR worker who edited the complaint. They asked not to be named because they fear reprisals from Bowen or their current supervisors for talking to a reporter. Some contend they were fired by Bowen without justification.
While the complaint is anonymous, the names of the former employees are included in their complaint, along with the identities of other potential witnesses. The President’s Council assigned the case to two inspectors general investigators from the Social Security Administration. It has the power to impose administrative penalties.
The workers also asked the council to review Bowen’s practice of stopping in Paris for several days during trips to and from Baghdad. Bowen, who was in Paris yesterday after a trip to Baghdad, said he stops at the invitation of the embassy to brief French officials. He said his mother lives in Paris.
Investigating Bowen is a touchy issue for the White House. Bowen has issued a number of reports embarrassing to the administration and has uncovered fraud and waste in a number of projects.
In the process, he gained a number of bipartisan supporters in Congress.
The State Department moved in 2006 to end the SIGIR by sponsoring termination language in the Pentagon budget bill.
State officials said that, after three years of having a special inspector general, it was time to move his work to standing inspectors general at the Pentagon and State. But after Democrats took control of Congress, they enacted new legislation to extend the SIGIR.