Senators hope to preserve oversight agency on Iraq

Senate supporters of an investigator’s office that has unearthed waste and fraud in the rebuilding of Iraq say they will try to keep it running, despite passage of legislation to shut it down.

Led by Stuart Bowen Jr., the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction tracks spending in the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the country.

The agency’s work has resulted in four criminal convictions and, most recently, evidence that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. exploited federal regulations to hide details of its contract performance.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) plans to introduce legislation next week that would extend the office for about a year.

The inspector general’s office “has proven to be a much-needed watchdog auditing reconstruction contracts in Iraq and spotlighting numerous cases of waste, fraud and abuse,” Collins, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Friday.

Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.), Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) also support the extension.

The office, launched in January 2004, was conceived as lasting until much of the $18 billion initially allocated was spent.

This year, Collins pushed through a measure that would allow the agency to review more than $6 billion in additional funding aimed at stabilizing Iraq, in effect keeping the office in business. But that provision was stripped from a major defense bill when it was negotiated with Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Hunter agreed that the office had been useful but said a termination date was needed.

Democrats said that Hunter and other Bush administration loyalists wanted to kill the office to bury bad news.