DoD IG backs off Iraq electrocutions report - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

DoD IG backs off Iraq electrocutions report

An interim Pentagon investigation found no “credible evidence” that contractor KBR Inc., was aware of life-threatening conditions at the Baghdad building where a Green Beret was electrocuted in January while taking a shower.

At a Wednesday hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, however, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general backed off that report, which had been released to Congress this week, trumpeted by the committee’s Republican staff and reported Tuesday by the Associated Press.

“We have absolved no one,” said Gordon Heddell. “Let the record be clear on that.”

Heddell admitted that his investigators had not known of new evidence that the committee’s Democrats said demonstrated culpability on the part of KBR, which holds a multibillion dollar contract to provide a wide variety of services in Iraq, including building maintenance.

Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., showed KBR’s Tom Bruni a copy of a KBR work order to install the ungrounded water pump, which, if the document is accurate, was the same ungrounded pump that caused the soldier’s death, Waxman said.

Bruni, KBR’s theater engineering and construction manager in Iraq, countered that the pump on the work order was actually installed at a different building. And KBR’s maintenance work at the building where the soldier died, he and Army officials said, was limited to what the Army told it to do.

Waxman asked for more documentation — although some of his Republican counterparts seemed fairly satisfied with what they heard.

“Based on what we know, it is premature to attribute electrical accidents or fires to just the contractor performance,” said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the ranking minority member.

Davis’s remarks didn’t include the words, “and probably implausible” from the printed version of his remarks released to reporters.

It didn’t get any more conclusive during the 2-hour hearing into the accidental electrocutions of 16 U.S. troops since the start of the Iraq war — eight of whom died when they came into contact with live wires during operations.

“There’s a lot we don’t know — and we should know,” Waxman said.

Little time was spent, and little light was shed, on the problems that did not involve fatalities — specifically, the 283 fires that took place at KBR-maintained facilities over a five-month period ending in January 2007, according to a February 2007 DCMA report. One of the electrical fires burned down the largest U.S. dining facility in Iraq in October 2006.

KBR did operate the dining facility at Camp Al Asad, Bruni admitted. But no one died, he pointed out.

An October 2006 electrical fire at Forward Operating Base Speicher killed two civilians who were working for KBR.

In addition to Bruni and Heddell, legislators fired questions about oversight responsibility at the current and recent directors of the Defense Contract Management Agency and the executive director of the Army Contracting Command.

Former DCMA Director Keith Ernst said his agency doesn’t have the trained personnel needed to perform contractor oversight, and, in his written statement, added that he knew of “no instances where DCMA did not take immediate corrective action to correct deficiencies that would affect the safety of our deployed men and women when it was within the scope of our contractual authority.”

Army Contracting Command Executive Director Jeffrey Parsons agreed and added in his written statement that the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, which it manages and runs, also lacks “sufficient skill sets or expertise to perform adequate oversight of electrical work being performed by KBR.”

He confirmed that the KBR maintenance contract for the building where the soldier was electrocuted was limited, meaning it “does not include routine inspections, preventative maintenance and upgrades.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wondered about uniformed leadership responsibility, asking why the shower at the Radwaniyah Palace Complex in Baghdad, where the Green Beret, Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, died Jan. 2, was not shut down.

“We need to know that the chain of command met its responsibility for the health and safety of its personnel,” Issa said.

Looking on at the hearing was Cheryl Harris, Maseth’s mother.

Waxman also issued a public tongue-lashing to Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, who at the outset of a news conference the previous day, said: “Some seem to believe that this department and one of the Army’s lead logistical support contractors are so negligent or callous that we have failed to address these dangers. I am here to tell you that characterization is flat-out wrong.”

“I find that incredible that he would say he knows it’s an overblown issue,” Waxman said. “The press secretary ought to stop trying to spin these facts away and start looking out for the health and safety of our troops.”

That echoed earlier remarks by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who was drawn to the issue by Maseth’s death. Casey said he was “disappointed” that Morrell “made an unprompted statement questioning the rationale for this hearing and implying that partisan politics are involved.”

“I am not here to prejudge,” Casey said. “Congress must proceed with an open and transparent investigation.”