FBI Agent Isakson and Other Iraq Whistleblowers Tell Senate of Abuse
By Aaron Poehler
Published on September 27, 2007
Former FBI Agent Robert Isakson testified that he was asked to falsify invoices and other documents in order to bilk the government out of tens of millions while working for defense contractor Custer Battles LLC. After threatening to report the illegal behavior, Isakson was allegedly forced at gunpoint into the streets of Baghdad, alone and weaponless.
Isakson and a co-whistleblower filed a lawsuit and were awarded $10 million by a jury — a record amount for a whistleblower case not supported by the federal government. However, a U.S. District Court judge overturned the verdict, claiming the defendants had not adequately established that the Coalition Provisional Authority — the transitional governing body set up by the Bush Administration at the beginning of the war — was part of the U.S. government. The ruling is being appealed, but to date, the Bush administration has failed to join any qui tam suits filed over contracting abuses in Iraq, and no whistleblower cases have gone to trial since Isakson’s.
Other whistleblowers appearing at the hearing testified that they suffered humiliating or abusive retaliatory treatment, including demotion, firing, imprisonment, and assault, after reporting abuses and crimes such as fraud, government corruption, and even the selling of arms to terrorists.
No government officials or contractors appeared at the hearing to defend their actions.
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