Report: Baghdad Embassy misspent millions on phantom meals
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid millions to a government contractor for meals and snacks that nobody ate, according to a new internal State Department report. The State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the embassy overpaid by over $2 million, including over $1 million in snacks alone. The funds went to ...
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid millions to a government contractor for meals and snacks that nobody ate, according to a new internal State Department report.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid millions to a government contractor for meals and snacks that nobody ate, according to a new internal State Department report.
The State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the embassy overpaid by over $2 million, including over $1 million in snacks alone. The funds went to contractor KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton that runs food service for the over 1,500 employees of the world’s largest embassy complex.
"KBR’s headcount records from meals consumed do not match dining facility account records, and OIG was unable to reconcile the difference. These discrepancies suggest that in FY 2009 there were $2.23 million in unsupported food costs," the report stated.
A significant part of the discrepancy was due to how people are counted when they stop by what’s called the "Grab-n-Go" snack stands at the embassy. This resulted in $970,000 dollars paid to KBR it didn’t deserve, the report explained.
Partial blame lies with the embassy, according to the OIG. For example, the embassy staff encouraged employees to sign in every time they stopped by the snack areas, even if they were just picking up a cup of coffee or going back for an apple. As a result, "it was not uncommon to see 6-8 scans per individual for the same meal period. One person scanned his card 25 times in two days."
The embassy management office even put up signs around the embassy last year that read, "More scans = more goodies."
This practice resulted in inflated numbers being sent back to the contractor. The contractor would then prepare more food based on those numbers, resulting in higher overall costs to the embassy and the taxpayer.
The OIG criticized the embassy staff for encouraging this type of behavior. "OIG calculates the current embassy policy inflates the reported plate cost by 16 percent," the report said.
But the OIG did not entirely exonerate KBR of blame. Its report said that, while KBR provides a lot of data to the Defense Department, it isn’t in a form the Pentagon can use. Therefore, there’s no way to tell if contractor staffing levels are correct and finding instances of waste and fraud are more difficult.
The embassy responded to the OIG by saying that its description of how the Grab-n-Go stands work was "not completely accurate" and that the money paid to KBR is based on the amount of food eaten, not the number of scans. Responding to another of the OIG’s criticisms — that many non-authorized personnel were eating at the facilities — the embassy said that it would not refuse a meal to any military or U.S. government employee.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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