[NYTr] Lawmakers Say State Department Blocks Iraq Information

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by rich winkel - activ-l

Reuters via Truthout - Oct 12, 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101307E.shtml

Lawmakers Say State Department Blocks Iraq Information

By Sue Pleming
Reuters

  Washington - Four congressional committee chairmen on Friday accused
the State Department of suppressing information about corruption inside
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

    In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the four senior
Democrats said endemic corruption was fueling the Iraqi insurgency,
endangering U.S. troops and undermining their chances of success.

    California Rep. Henry Waxman of the House of Representatives
oversight committee; California Rep. Tom Lantos of the foreign affairs
committee; Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton of the armed services committee and
Wisconsin Rep. David Obey of the appropriations panel said the State
Department was stonewalling their attempts to get at the truth.

    "The refusal of State Department officials to answer questions about
the extent of corruption in the government of Iraq undermines our
ability to work together to eliminate this source of support for the
insurgency," said the letter.

    "The American people and Congress deserve honest answers about the
extent of corruption in the Maliki government and whether corruption is
fueling the insurgency and endangering our troops."

    The State Department rejected the lawmakers' claims.

    "I don't think ... we're trying to hide any basic facts," spokesman
Tom Casey told reporters.

    The letter referred to a congressional hearing last week in which a
former Iraqi judge said government corruption was "rampant" and cost
tens of billions of dollars.

    The State Department representative at the hearing only responded to
questions that portrayed the Iraqi government positively, the letter
said, promising to answer others in a classified format.

    The lawmakers said the State Department instructed officials last
month not to answer questions in public about the Iraqi government's
performance or its ability to tackle corruption.

    Casey said there was nothing wrong with officials saying they would
only discuss classified, confidential information behind closed doors.

    The department also retroactively made secret two reports on
corruption that had been widely distributed as "sensitive but
unclassified," the letter said.

    "The wholesale and even retroactive classification of all
information is wrong and a misuse of the official classification
procedures," wrote the lawmakers.

    Casey said the department would see if more information could be
released publicly with sensitive portions redacted.

    The State Department is at loggerheads with several congressional
committees over a range of issues, including the conduct of its lead
security contractor in Iraq, Blackwater, which is under investigation
over a shooting incident on September 16 in which 17 Iraqis were killed.