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Coleman panel did plenty, but Dems say too little

 By PATRICK CONDON Associated Press Writer The Associated Press - Sunday, September 28, 2008

MINNEAPOLIS

 About the time Norm Coleman stepped into one of Congress's most prestigious oversight jobs in 2003, the Bush administration's handling of Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was becoming a partisan hot potato. Democrats were clamoring for a closer look into the actions of defense contractors like Halliburton. And they accused Republicans in Congress of turning a blind eye - a charge that soon would be leveled directly at the Coleman-led Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Five years later, Coleman's leadership of that subcommittee is a key issue in his re-election campaign against Democrat Al Franken. In a TV commercial and in a series of public appearances, Franken has blistered his opponent's time atop PSI as "maybe the worst thing Norm Coleman's done," in the words of the TV ad. Coleman and his supporters defend his work, saying he should be judged on what he did do - not what he didn't.

They correctly claim that Coleman initiated dozens of investigations that uncovered more than $80 billion worth of waste and fraud by government and its contractors, and argue that corruption in the rebuilding of Iraq was best left to other investigators. "It's frustrating for me to see these unfair attacks launched against a senator who has worked so hard, and who has such a strong record on rooting out waste, fraud and abuse," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a Coleman ally who in 2003 helped pick him to lead PSI. That was a coup for a freshman who had joined the Senate just a few weeks earlier. Collins said she was impressed by Coleman's work as a prosecutor in the Minnesota attorney general's office, and his experience as mayor of St. Paul. "So much of what you're investigating is the workings of government, and he impressed me as someone with a good knowledge of those workings," said Collins, who said Coleman also played an integral role in helping her investigate the failure of the federal response after Hurricane Katrina.

The PSI has a storied history born of Harry Truman's efforts as a U.S. senator from Missouri to crack down on fraud in defense contracting at the dawn of World War II. Assistant Senate historian Betty Koed said it's believed Truman's efforts saved taxpayers up to $300 million during the war. In the late 1940s, senators enshrined what Truman had started. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations went on to serve as a vehicle for investigations into everything from ties between labor and organized crime to Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists in the federal government. "Its main focus today still continues to be investigating waste in government, and fraud in government programs," Koed said. "But the jurisdiction is defined in a broad enough way that they can investigate basically any aspect of government."

When Coleman took over, he continued the tradition of headline-grabbing investigations that highlighted taxpayer fleeces. In his first year, Coleman went after Pentagon officials for abusing government credit cards and travel privileges, and took on the recording industry for filing lawsuits against people for downloading music. "What I would say is that I thought the subcommittee aggressively pursued issues of fraud, waste and abuse with my team," said Greg Kutz, the managing director of investigations at the General Accounting Office, which often worked alongside PSI staff. "I think Senator Coleman provided aggressive oversight of what I think is a bipartisan issue, which is eliminating government fraud and waste."

Coleman took on his biggest investigation in early 2004 by looking into the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil despite international economic sanctions in exchange for humanitarian goods for Iraqis. Coleman, after presenting what he said was evidence that Saddam's government illegally profited, made news worldwide by demanding that then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan step down over the scandal. But around that same time, Democrats in Washington started to express concern that private contractors hired by the Department of Defense to rebuild Iraq were getting sweetheart deals and not delivering the work for which they had contracted. At the end of 2003, Coleman's fellow Minnesota senator, Democrat Mark Dayton, sent Coleman a letter asking him to further investigate a New York Times report that Halliburton was overcharging the U.S. government for gasoline imported to Iraq.

Coleman responded by saying he'd started a preliminary investigation but that other entities were already looking into the claim. Dayton, who was also a member of PSI at the time, said that by the end of 2003 and early 2004, Democratic senators "ran into one stone wall after the other" in demanding oversight from their Republican colleagues. In early 2005, Democrats began investigating contractor fraud on their own through the Democratic Policy Committee, chaired by Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. "In this circumstance today, we have a Republican in the White House, Republicans controlling the House and Senate, and they have no interest in doing any oversight hearings," Dorgan said in a March 2005 Senate floor speech. "There is massive waste, fraud and abuse. Billions of dollars is being abused and wasted and nobody seems to give a whit about it."

In 2005 and 2006, Dorgan's committee uncovered numerous examples of sometimes egregious fraud and unfinished work by contractors. Besides the cost to taxpayers, critics of the U.S. conduct during this period contend that the botched reconstruction helped fuel the Iraqi insurgency that has kept U.S. troops in the country to this day. "When you talk about what fed the insurgency, you're talking about electricity not being delivered, about water infrastructure not being completed, about gasoline not being available," said Charlie Cray, director of the Washington-based Center for Corporate Policy, a non-profit group that promotes corporate accountability. Coleman said he believed that "history would not look kindly" on the argument that lack of oversight played a role in the insurgency.

"There were much larger reasons for the spread of an insurgency," Coleman said. "There were tactical decisions. They disbanded the military but didn't take their guns away. You had guys with guns and no jobs, and then you've got an insurgency." But Coleman's seat atop PSI did put him in a unique position to investigate just about whatever he wanted - and he chose topics other than the Iraq reconstruction. "There isn't a more relevant or a potentially more powerful platform in which to look into this," said Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution. "It seems to me it's a legitimate question to raise."

 Coleman did support other investigations into the reconstruction, and said there were other investigative entities better equipped than PSI to tackle contracting fraud in Iraq. He singled out the work of the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), which Congress created to provide oversight of taxpayer funds spent in Iraq. In 2006, Coleman was among a group of senators that led an effort to extend SIGIR's existence. SIGIR dispatched investigators to Iraq in January 2005. Franken argues that the pivotal years where Coleman could have made a difference were 2003 and 2004, when contractor fraud began to undermine the shaky process of reconstruction.

It was in 2004 that Franken started making fraud in the reconstruction of Iraq a regular topic on his Air America Radio show. To him, the reason PSI didn't look into the problems is clear. "He did it to protect the cronies in the Bush administration, to protect them from embarassment," Franken said. "He was a loyal soldier in the Bush-Cheney army, and that's why he didn't do it." Coleman said criticism like that is clearly political. "We did put in place mechanisms like SIGIR, and gave them the responsibility for investigating the reconstruction," Coleman said. "Whether there could have been more hearings to generate more headlines or generate more arguments, you can argue about that. We made judgments at the time that were based on the most effective use of tax dollars."

Copyright C 2008 The Associated Press.