Iraq: he made millions!

[Danno 1,228]

Major Gets 17½ Years in Iraq Contract Case

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125980636539574013.html

A former Army major was sentenced to a 17½-year prison term on corruption charges in Wednesday in San Antonio, signaling the beginning of the end of a far-reaching Iraq War corruption probe.

As part of the probe, a growing cadre of career soldiers has confessed to siphoning millions of dollars from defense contracts in Iraq and Kuwait. The investigation into their spree already has led to the indictments of five U.S. military officers, with another dozen expected to follow.

Associated Press

Maj. John Cockerham, shown outside San Antonio federal court in 2007, led a ring of Iraq War officers who collected bribes in exchange for contracts.

U.S. District Judge W. Royal Furgeson's order that former Maj. John Cockerham pay $9.6 million in restitution -- money federal investigators say he collected from steering contracts to favored suppliers -- speaks to the breadth of the conspiracy, which allegedly lasted for years as officers rotated in and out of the war zone. Mr. Cockerham, the ringleader, and his co-conspirators allegedly installed replacement officers to work as bag men in their absence. They expected the bag men to collect as much as $5.4 million in kickbacks from contracts worth over $110 million, according to court documents.

So far, three former Army majors and one lieutenant colonel have pleaded guilty to money-laundering, bribery and other charges. Another major is awaiting trial, while sentencing of former Maj. Christopher Murray is slated to occur in Georgia in two weeks.

Two others have entered not-guilty pleas. A Justice Department spokeswoman says former Sgt. Terry Hall and Maj. Eddie Pressley are due to go on trial in April.

Investigators in Washington say that as sentences are meted out, defendants are sharing information on other alleged co-conspirators. New indictments are expected "within weeks," according to one official monitoring the case.

Unlike the allegations of violence that dogged security contractor Blackwater USA, the case of the Cockerham crew spools out more like Sidney Lumet's films about corruption in big-city police departments. Bribes and kickbacks allegedly involved relatively routine contracts to provide drinking water, laundry and latrine services to military bases, awarded by a small group of officers who seemed to be barely supervised by senior officers.

Almost every suspect comes from the same background: African-Americans who rose from childhood poverty to successful military careers.

In 2005, the Army's Criminal Investigations Division heard about improper ties between Gloria Davis, a 45-year-old major, and Kuwait-based Lee Dynamics International, a contractor run by a retired African-American soldier named George Lee. LDI allegedly provided gifts to Maj. Davis, and put her son on its payroll. LDI also sent regular cash payments to bank accounts opened for Maj. Davis in Asia.

Maj. Davis had come a long way from Portageville, Mo., where she bore a daughter at age 16. A single mother, she thrived during an 18-year military career, completing a master's degree and serving on bases world-wide.

On December 11, 2006, CID agents met Maj. Davis at Camp Victory in Baghdad's Green Zone to ask about $225,000 found in her offshore accounts. Sometime after midnight, the CID investigators escorted Maj. Davis to her quarters, agreeing to resume debriefing next morning. Before dawn, she used her own sidearm to commit suicide.

Within days, CID agents were searching the quarters of her colleague, Maj. Cockerham. Eventually, they seized enough evidence to start building a case against officers at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

Since then, reams of court documents from overlapping cases reveal a pattern of corruption. Army contracting officers, almost all of them African Americans, reached out to African-American businessmen, seeking bribes in exchange for contracting deals.

By the time investigators were closing in, the Cockerham scheme allegedly had spread to new players, minority contractors launched by retired African-American soldiers who already had been vetted by the Pentagon. Maj. Cockerham allegedly hoped to harvest future bribes from them.

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

As he heads off to jail.

[Ban Hammer 14,619]

i bet his final oer is interesting reading.

[웃 910]

John Cockerham