Lawmakers blasted the State Department Tuesday for charging ahead on an overblown $1 billion project to build a new embassy in London before determining whether it met security standards.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the State Department is “gambling with a lot of money” by attempting to build such an ambitious embassy complex during a hearing Tuesday to examine the over-budget project.
For example, Chaffetz noted the State Department had spent $1 million on a granite sculpture that was too heavy to fit in the building.
Slated for completion by the end of 2016, the London embassy is “expected to be among the most expensive embassies ever built by the department,” the inspector general said during the hearing.
Lydia Muniz, director of the agency’s Overseas Building Operations, argued the State Department did not begin construction before certifying that the embassy was secure.
But after Chaffetz presented dated pictures of the construction site from the agency’s social media account as evidence that construction did indeed begin before safety tests were done, Muniz said that kind of building activity didn’t meet the State Department’s bureaucratic definition of “construction.”
What’s more, the contractor raised the price of the project by $42 million between its initial and final proposals without explaining the cost increase.
“The [inspector general] does not believe the money is missing, it’s just not accounted for due to mismanagement,” Chaffetz said. “Quite frankly, I can’t tell the difference. If they can’t account for it, and they can’t find it, I just don’t know how it’s not missing.”
The decadent embassy will be wrapped in a glass “curtain wall” that was not subjected to required “blast tests,” or digital simulations of bomb explosions, before construction started. However, the agency went ahead with construction anyway, failing to obtain blast tests until six months after building began.
Rep. Elijah Cummings praised the State Department for its “rigorous” construction schedule and commitment to safety, noting the funding for the project would come from the sale of the agency’s existing embassy.
The hearing Tuesday was called after the inspector general discovered problems with the embassy project in a July report.
Chaffetz cited the security failings at the Benghazi diplomatic compoud and the U.S. embassy in Tripoli as an “embarassment” to the State Department.
Gregory Starr, a top diplomatic security official, argued the Benghazi compound was less secure than typical facilities because the agency leased it instead of building it. He agreed the embassy in Tripoli and compound in Benghazi did not meet the safety standards of buildings constructed by the agency.
