My office at the DoD surfaced Auchi’s central role in the largest case of corruption in Iraq reconstruction in a “preliminary” 120-pages report dated May, 2004. I labeled the report “preliminary” because I anticipated it would be fully followed-up by the DoD Inspector General’s office. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

Here is the story in brief: Auchi had been inserted into U.S. reconstruction plans for Iraq by Ahmed Chalabi, a onetime business partner of Auchi’s.  Chalabi was being promoted by a small circle of people at the Pentagon who wanted to assure pro-American leadership in post-Saddam Iraq. No one outside the circle knew anything about their specific plans, but everyone knew that Chalabi, a secular Shia with a non-sectarian agenda, was the favorite choice.

To his unwitting Pentagon supporters, everything depended on Chalabi having the support, both political and financial, to get to the top. None of his Pentagon supporters’ actions were improper or remotely illegal. Their aim was to assure that the award of the first cellular telephone contracts ever issued in Iraq went to dependable candidates for national leadership: one for the northern (and Kurdish) area to Jalal Talibani; one for the central zone (including Baghdad) to Ibrahim al-Jaafari; and one for the southern (largely Shia) area to Ahmed Chalabi.

The contracts, worth $3 billion, would assure funding for the three Iraqi leaders. It would provide them, in Chicago-street parlance, “street money” for two years.

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