TIME.com: Bremer's Next Insurgency: Auditors

TIME.com: Bremer's Next Insurgency: Auditors: "Less than than two months after former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a scathing audit by a longtime confidante of George W. Bush is bashing Bremer's agency for failing to establish 'adequate financial controls,' leaving some fiscal reporting systems 'either weak or non-existent.' The audit charges that the CPA left large portions of the $8.8 billion Iraqi treasury 'open to fraud, kickbacks, and misappropriation of funds,' according to a draft obtained by TIME. The report was written by Stuart Bowen, a lawyer from Texas who became special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. His audit cites Bremer for lax accounting (on one payroll, for instance, only 602 of the 8,206 names could be confirmed, with no paper trail for the rest of the cash) and inadequate disclosure (the CPA allowed Iraqi officials to delay reporting the $2.5 billion the interim government received in oil-for-food money last spring). "