Investigating Bush

If Waxman's attempt to catch Clemens perjuring himself represents the low-water mark of his oversight, his most impressive work has come in exposing the epidemic of corruption in Iraq. In February of last year, Waxman called L. Paul Bremer before the committee to confront him over the Coalition Provisional Authority's decision to airlift $12 ?billion in cash to Iraq in the aftermath of Shock and Awe. Under Bremer's leadership, 363 tons of cash were loaded on pallets into C-130 cargo planes and flown to Baghdad. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they are true," Waxman said in his opening statement. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone? But that is exactly what our government did."

As Waxman's investigation uncovered, much of the cash quickly vanished. Billions of dollars that should have been spent to rebuild the war-tattered nation were instead frittered away on "ghost employees" — one ministry claimed to have more than 8,000 guards on its payroll, of which only 600 were believed to be real people — and other forms of corruption.

Such fraud, Waxman's oversight has revealed, is rampant in Iraq. According to testimony last October by Judge Radhi al-Radhi — formerly Iraq's top anti-corruption official — the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has lost nearly $18? billion to corruption, and much of the money has ended up in the hands of insurgents. To demonstrate that the lawlessness reaches the highest levels of Iraq's government, Rahdi provided Waxman with a signed order from Maliki that immunized him and his ministers from prosecution.

Waxman used Radhi's testimony to rake Condoleezza Rice over the coals for the State Department's inattention to corruption in Iraq. In heated questioning, Rice was forced to concede that corruption funds militant groups that target U.S. troops. She was also unable to explain why the acting director of the State Department's anti-corruption office in Iraq was not an experienced diplomat or forensic accountant but a paralegal with no training in anti-corruption efforts. When Rice claimed to be unfamiliar with Maliki's immunity order, Waxman proceeded to read it into the record before tearing into the witness. "These are not unfounded allegations," he told Rice. "This is Nouri al-Maliki's edict. We are worried about the corruption, tens of billions of it, going to supply the insurgents that are killing Americans."

Such tough questioning, Waxman says, is essential to hold the administration accountable for its blunders. "She wanted to keep it secret," he says of Rice. "But there's no reason to keep it secret except to not let the American people know that this is a government that's not working."

Waxman is tight-lipped about what will be on his committee's docket in the coming months. He does, however, offer one tease. Last summer, Rice had been scheduled to testify in what was sure to be an explosive hearing about when precisely the Bush administration knew, during the run-up to war in Iraq, that its intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was wrong. At the last minute, however, that hearing was abruptly postponed and never rescheduled. It now appears that Waxman has been keeping the topic on the back burner, ready to return it to a full boil this fall, as Democrats seek to take back the White House in November.

"I haven't forgotten about that one," Waxman says. "I don't have any announcements, but it's an issue we're continuing to pursue."