What Do They Say About Cookies Crumbling?

/in /by

For the moment, we’re just talking about the singular cookie, the guy in charge of making sure no one was stealing money from our Baghdad Embassy project and also making sure that some jacked up contractors don’t kill Iraqi civilians.

Embattled State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, under fire for allegedly impeding probes into problems with construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and with security firm Blackwater Worldwide, submitted his resignation Friday.

[snip]

In an e-mail to his staff, obtained by McClatchy, Krongard said that he plans to leave the government by Jan. 15.

In a reference to the upheaval in the inspector general’s office in recent months, he told his staff: "I also ask you, frankly, to make an effort to reduce the static that interferes with the harmony we would like to achieve."

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.

Though it’s beginning to feel like the big cookie is finally beginning to give way itself.

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  6. AZ Matt says:

    FRom McClatchy:

    WASHINGTON — A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

    James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.

    “Mr. Golden is still . . . our project manager, and still is working with the contractor, at their base in Kuwait,” Kennedy said.

    …

  10. JohnForde says:

    Lying sack of cute says Waterboarding George has “no recollection” of having seen the waterboarding tapes.

    Why would he assert plausible deniability? Everyone know you can’t possibly forget seeing something that horrific.

    I think ‘no recollection’ sound like a confession he did view the tapes.

  11. BayStateLibrul says:

    OT,

    For you baseball fans, the long awaited Mitchell Report on Steroids will be out next week, according to uninformed sources (NYT)

  12. skdadl says:

    At what point does Rice have to accept responsibility? I mean, it is fascinating but bizarre to watch this long procession of pretty pathetic underlings bumped off out, and yet nothing seems to touch the guys at the top.

    • phred says:

      Given that Rice is planning to bring Wolfie back to State, I would say responsibility is a vocabulary word they skipped in her grade school.

  13. BayStateLibrul says:

    Rancor and Distrust?

    The Associated Press is reporting that Mr. Krongard’s resignation will be effective Jan. 15, and that his letter of resignation cited “the current rancor and distrust” in Washington as the reason he was leaving.

  14. Peterr says:

    State is NOT a happy place these days. Let’s start with Michael Guest, the gay former ambassador to Romania, who resigned in protest last month over Rice’s unwillingness to deal with problems regarding support for glbt State Dept officers.

    In some ways, Guest is kind of like James Comey at the DOJ. Guest came back from his ambassadorship in Romania to head up the Foreign Service Institute (State’s diplomatic training school). He was a career FSO, not political, and was well loved throughout Foggy Bottom. Evidently he had had enough.

    Then you get the mess this last week with the Iraq NIE, where Cheney and the NeoCons are blaming it on State Dept liberals who have obviously twisted the intelligence. State is being blamed for Bush having to dial back the rhetoric on Iraq, and after Colin Powell’s speech at the UN, State isn’t really happy with being treated as the NeoCon’s toy.

    Now the IG resigns.

    Something big is going to blow, and it’s not going to be pretty.

  15. SunnyNobility says:

    “I also ask you, frankly, to make an effort to reduce the static that interferes with the harmony we would like to achieve.”

    Sounds like a none too subtle “keep your mouths shut”.