Editorial: Don’t head off probe

Friday, Dec. 19, 2003 | 9:28 a.m.

Last week Pentagon auditors said that a Halliburton subsidiary may have overcharged the U.S. government $61 million for oil that it arranged to be delivered from Kuwait to Iraq during the war. The politically connected Halliburton, which once was run by Vice President Dick Cheney, denies that it did anything wrong and even claims it saved the government money. That Halliburton received the reconstruction contracts for Iraq, without having to go through competitive bidding, has been controversial from the start. While Pentagon auditors initially said the government had been overcharged, over the past several days Pentagon officials have downplayed their own auditors' findings. On Wednesday, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said Halliburton didn't profit from the potential overcharge, saying that it looks like the problem could be traced to an antiquated acc ounting system. "From what I've seen so far ... I have no basis whatsoever to see anything nefarious," Zakheim said.

Despite the Pentagon's new spin, there should be an independent inquiry into the overcharging allegations and the appropriateness of single-sourcing such important contracts. Last week Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called on his committee's chairman to conduct an inquiry into the accusations. Gibbons also is rightly concerned about another audit that NBC News says uncovered unsanitary conditions and rotting food in some of the cafeteria services that the Halliburton subsidiary was supplying to the U.S. military. As we said in a previous editorial this week on the allegations that Halliburton had overcharged the government, this shouldn't be a partisan matter. The congressional Republican leadership shouldn't hesitate to hold exhaustive hearings just because they could be politically damaging to the Bush administr ation.