Information Withheld from Congress. So says a new federal audit. NYT: USAID, "the State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq, used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects in Iraq and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found. ... In March 2005, USAID asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to 'to absorb greatly increased construction costs” at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce' contractor overhead” on the project. The embassy office approved the request. But the audit found that the agency interpreted the document as permission to change reporting of costs across its program. ... The [Basra] hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,' the inspector general wrote in his report. The rest was reclassified as overhead, or 'indirect costs.' According to a contracting officer at the agency who was cited in the report, the agency 'did not report these costs so it could stay within the $50 million authorization.'”

More on the administration allegedly delaying giving information to Congress, this time on Indian companies selling missile technology to Iran, from the Post today: "The Bush administration will impose sanctions on two Indian firms for selling missile parts to Iran, government officials said yesterday, acknowledging privately that the secret decision should have been shared with the House before it voted this week to support U.S. plans to sell nuclear technology to New Delhi. ... Administration officials said they briefed selected lawmakers on the impending sanctions. But Democratic lawmakers accused the White House of deliberately concealing the information until the House voted Wednesday overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S. plan to supply India, for the first time, with sensitive nuclear technologies."

Posted by Laura at July 29, 2006 12:15 PM