House Dems Press Rice on Iraq Corruption

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October 12, 2007 11:56 AM

A quartet of powerful Democratic congressmen accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of hiding information about corruption in the Iraqi government and urged her to reconsider her "misguided" efforts Friday.

Citing the sensitivity of the information, State Department officials have in past weeks declined to answer lawmakers' questions about corruption in Iraq, instructed others to withhold information on the topic and retroactively classified once-public documents, noted Reps. David Obey, Wisc.; Ike Skelton, Mo.; Henry Waxman, Calif.; and Tom Lantos, Calif., in a letter to Rice.

"It may be reasonable to classify some information," conceded the men, who chair the House Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, Oversight and Government Reform and Foreign Relations, respectively. "[B]ut the wholesale...classification of all information is wrong and a misuse of the official classification procedures."

The letter comes amid growing alarm that fraud, bribery and intimidation have become commonplace within Iraq's nascent bureaucracies, undermine U.S. efforts to help Iraqis establish a stable democracy and may even support anti-American insurgents operating there.

The men cited recent comment by the former chief of Iraq's anti-corruption unit, who earlier this month told Congress that some Iraqi government operations were "effectively financing terrorism" in the country.

"We urge you to reconsider these misguided directives so that we can work together to find solutions to the corruption that may well be funding attacks on our troops," the lawmakers wrote.

State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said she could not comment on the letter because she had not seen it.

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