1115.org

Funny how circumstances are conspiring to shine the spotlight on the State Department this week. They may not have been the villains of the piece in the Blackwater USA saga, but they managed to make themselves look pretty foolish anyway. Today they look a little worse than that.

In June, I wrote about allegations that the Grand Palatial U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was being built by First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co using slave labor.

The funny part of that story was that the allegations had already been investigated by the State Department and found to be baseless, and now the Justice Department was launching a second investigation into the same allegations.

Yes, that was my reaction too. Alberto Gonzales‘ Justice Department! As I wrote at the time:

If (the State Department) did indeed investigate and clear First Kuwaiti, and the Justice Department now feels compelled to conduct their own investigation, that would be a pretty damning indictment of Condi Rice’s State Department. There can’t be many departments of the U.S. government that are even more effed up than Alberto Gonzales‘ Justice Department.

I ended that June post with these prophetic words: “And in the fullness of time, all will be revealed (as the actress said to the bishop!).”

Well, “lo and behold” time is here. The supremely indefatigable Henry Waxman had just leaned over and removed a few veils:

Howard J. Krongard, the State Department’s inspector general, has repeatedly thwarted investigations and censored reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged today in a 13-page letter.
[...]
The letter charged that Krongard “interfered with ongoing investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment.”
[...]
Waxman accused Krongard of refusing to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts; preventing his investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department probe into waste and fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq; using “highly irregular” procedures to personally exonerate the embassy’s prime contractor of labor abuses; interfering in the probe of a close friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove; censoring reports on embassies to prevent full disclosure to Congress; and refusing to publish critical audits of State’s financial statements.

(Do click on that last link. It’s totally unbelievable!)

With shenanigans like these, I really don’t have to do much work. I’m going to just say two things.

How stupid are these people?

Is Condi going to get any heat over this? After all, the Inspector General of the State Department reports to the Secretary of State. And this Inspector General was allowed to get away with incredibly blatant nonsense. On Condi’s watch. How is she going to explain it away this time?