Former Petraeus Aide Gulty Of Accepting Bribes

By Cernig

Lt. Col. Levonda Selph has pled guilty to accepting bribes in return for awarding contracts in Iraq. The charges related to a period when she was a key aide to General David Petraeus in his role as commander of the effort to equip and train Iraqi forces in 2004-05. It's a plea deal and she'll be helping with ongoing investigations, so you know the charge sheet isn't the half of what really occurred but rather a minimum rap to ensure her co-operation.

A retired U.S. Army colonel pleaded guilty Tuesday to awarding contracts in Iraq to a Kuwait-based firm in exchange for gifts.

Levonda Selph of Virginia admitted accepting $4,000 in cash and a $5,000 vacation to Thailand from the unidentified contractor, which was awarded $12 million in contracts to operate Defense Department warehouses in Iraq. [see below for Selph's link to Thailand]

She pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy. She was secretly indicted on those charges in October; the charges weren't disclosed until her court appearance Tuesday.

Under terms of a plea agreement, Selph could receive up to 33 months in jail. She promised to repay the government $9,000 and to cooperate in an ongoing investigation.

The contractor may have gone unidentified in court, but thanks to some excellent blogging from the folks at Blue Girl Red State, we can make a pretty good guess. Commenters at TPM revealed last year that the company in question was American Logistics Services and they've been in the news before now too.

As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand � Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

�This was the craziest thing in the world,� said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. �They were taking weapons away by the truckload.�

...Mr. Saffar managed an armory on the grounds of the Baghdad Police Academy, which along with a nearby warehouse was operated by an American-owned company based in Kuwait.

In July, the company, American Logistics Services, which later became Lee Dynamics International, was suspended by the Army from doing future business with the government amid accusations that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to military contracting officers. The company had won $11 million in contracts to manage five warehouses with arms and other equipment in Iraq.

... Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, an Army officer who oversaw the warehouse contract and whose activities have been part of the investigation into American Logistics, also must have known about the arms dealings. Mr. Tisdale said the colonel regularly visited the armory and met with Mr. Saffar. Mr. Nordgaarden recalled seeing Colonel Selph at the warehouse 8 to 10 times over a year.

In an brief encounter outside her Northern Virginia home, Colonel Selph would say only that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing, and that she was under orders not to speak to the press. She would not say whose orders.

Is there anyone who still believes General Saint Petraeus' story about 190,000 guns - weighing in excess of 475 tons and worth over $50 million at cost to the US taxpayer (a lot more at black market prices) - being "misplaced" because of "clerical errors" by Iraqi forces?

And Selph isn't the only officer who was involved in corrupt activities in the cowboy world of Iraq contractors. Major James Cockerham, for instance, was charged back in August with receiving and laundering $9.6 million in bribes from Kuwaiti companies doing business with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Back in July, Major John Allen Rivard pled guilty to receiving bribes of more than $220,000 from an un-named US contractor in Iraq from April 2004 to August 2005. Maj. Gloria D. Davis committed suicide in Baghdad in 2006 after admitting taking at least $225,000 in bribes from Lee Dynamics International and another officer, Lt. Col. Kevin A. Davis, who worked with Lt. Col. Selph, has admitted another $50,000 in cash bribes from the same company.

I'm going to say again, as I did yesterday - I find it difficult to believe that senior administration and military figures have not themselves been enriched by some of these missing biliions. Are we really to believe that corruption, graft and bribery - some of which involved missing weaponry which was sold on the black market and used to kill US soldiers - was widespread up to the level of Lt. Colonel, but no further?