Top General Accused of Blocking Corruption Probe to Help Obama – – What's with all the coverups?

One
of the U.S. Army’s rising stars stands accused of obstructing an
inquiry into widespread corruption and mismanagement of the Afghan
forces he mentored. And if the charges are accurate, they could end the
career of one of the military’s top officers.

Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, until last year the U.S. officer in charge of training Afghan security forces,
allegedly blocked a Defense Department inspector general investigation
into a pattern of misconduct exhibited by the Afghan National Army’s
medical division. Aided by his senior staff, Caldwell prevented that
inquiry to spare his command embarrassment ahead of U.S. national
elections.

“How could we think to invite the DOD IG [the Pentagon
inspector general] in during an election cycle?” Caldwell allegedly
upbraided subordinate officers who favored an outside inquiry in fall
2010. Caldwell, suppsoedly in an “emotional” state, yelled, “You should
know better!”

The accusations are laid out in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (.pdf), who calls the incident an apparent “cover up.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the letter’s contents.

President Obama “calls me Bill,”
Caldwell allegedly bragged, according to the letter. The general
supposedly didn’t want to spoil that first-name relationship with a
messy inquiry into corruption and wrongdoing at Afghan hospitals.

Since
then, Caldwell has assumed command of U.S. Army North in Texas, one of
the Army’s most prestigious posts and the latest in a series of plum
assignments. The son of a prominent Army general himself, his career
trajectory has resembled that of another prestigious, esteemed general —
David Petraeus. Caldwell commanded an airborne division at war (the
82nd; Petraeus ran the 101st); then took a senior appointment to Iraq
(as chief spokesman for Petraeus during the surge); ran the Army’s
big-think Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth (as Petraeus did
before him); and then took a crucial job in Afghanistan running the
training of Afghan forces (eventually under the command of Petraeus, who
did the same job in Iraq). With a massive budget, Caldwell’s training
efforts were considered the key to extricating the U.S. military from
combat in Afghanistan, a critical objective for Obama. Caldwell once
told confidantes he considered himself fit to run the entire Afghanistan
war.

“Scores
of millions” of dollars in U.S. taxpayer aid to the Afghan Army medical
corps disappeared from the official balance sheets, Geller charges, and
into what looked to Geller like a criminal enterprise for selling
pharmaceuticals meant for Afghan troops. Despite nearly $180 million in
U.S. taxpayer money since 2008 for the Afghan medics, Afghan troops far
from Kabul have reported a lack of medical support and supplies. “It was
clear that financial management at the [Afghan National Army] surgeon
general’s office was known by NTM-A Programs leadership in March of
2010,” Geller writes.

But it wasn’t just financial irregularities
and pill-selling. Physicians, including surgeons, went into the Afghan
military based on political connections, since they could earn “five to
eight times” in uniform what they could working for the Afghan
public-health system. The result was “suspicions of fuel diversion” at
the main Kabul military hospital, where Geller says “patients [were]
horrendously neglected and abused.” A medical colonel once had a student
nurse beaten for requesting the colonel not be verbally abusive, going
so far as to pull out his pistol and chamber a round — all in a dining
hall.

Geller and his colleagues, all colonels and captains, took
their concerns to Caldwell and his staff in the fall of 2010. They
sought a top-to-bottom inquiry into the Afghan army medical organization
from the Defense Department’s inspector general. Initially, Caldwell’s
chief civilian deputy approved the request, calling it a “no-brainer.”
Then, allegedly, Caldwell thought otherwise.

Caldwell “directed a
retraction of the request,” Geller said. One of Caldwell’s top officers,
Maj. Gen. Gary Patton, had “concerns about the Congressional election
next week,” and suggested punting on the inspector general request until
after the vote. “Three attorneys in the room” told Patton they
“recommended against anything in writing to the effect that the decision
was timed to the elections.”

Caldwell personally reprimanded
Geller and his colleagues, allegedly yelling “you should have known
better” than to pass the inquiry recommendation to the inspector
general, putting Caldwell in the awkward position of retracting it after
it came to the inspector general’s attention. According to Geller,
Caldwell limited the scope of the request for an outside
inspector-general inquiry to “pharmaceuticals, medical logistics and
mentoring,” instead of the “more comprehensive” inquiry Geller wanted.

. Read more at the link below: