Corruption and Fear Control International Boundary and Water Commission Under Bush Appointee

If another Hurricane Beulah hits, we’re screwed; people are going to die and property will be destroyed on a grand scale” said the International Boundary and Water Commission worker. . . “If another Hurricane Beulah hits, we’re screwed; people are going to die and property will be destroyed on a grand scale” said the International Boundary and Water Commission worker. The employee was referring to the 1967 hurricane that dumped huge amounts of rain in West Texas and Mexico and led to a crisis flood. When the next Beulah comes, there are over 500 separate structures along the border that must be controlled in harmony, under difficult weather conditions, to prevent flooding and loss of life on both sides of the border. But all of the people who could perform such a task have either been fired, forced into retirement, or chased off. Historically, one of the most quiet and competent agencies of the United States and Mexican federal governments is the tiny International Boundary and Water Commission. The IBWC dates to 1889, and the small size of the 240-person employee United States Section belies its important and sensitive mission. The IBWC is charged with overseeing boundary and water treaties between the United States and Mexico and is crucial in managing flood control mechanisms, water availability, environmental quality, and disease along the 2100 mile Mexico-United States border. It is an odd and complex combination of a technically driven engineering firm and a diplomatic mission. The IBWC is a true bi-national agency, composed of Mexican and United States sections, and the sections must agree with each other in order to get anything done. Until recently, the IBWC has been an island of calm reserve in a sea of political turmoil, and before President George W. Bush installed Arturo Duran as Commissioner of the IBWC in January 2004, it had never been politicized in its nearly 120-year history. But Duran has been a disaster, and is emblematic of the Bush Administration’s chauvinism, unthinking actions, relentless cronyism, and corruption.

Duranoia and Duranistas

Agency employees are paralyzed with fear; fear of Duran’s paranoiac personality and irrational decision making. In his short tenure he has fired, forcibly reassigned, or pushed into retirement nearly one-third of all headquarters personnel, as well as numerous personnel from the field offices. Duran’s actions evince extreme distrust and obsessive concerns with control of employees. For example, he installed cameras and microphones at headquarters, some of which are made to look like smoke alarms, so he can monitor employee movements throughout the building and record their conversations. After an anonymous letter complaining about Duran was sent to various media, Duran seized five employee computers to have them searched; one of the computers was never returned. Since the letter was sent on IBWC letterhead, Duran confiscated all of the agency stationary from employees and still refuses to allow non-Duranistas access to agency letterhead. His inner circle, the Duranistas, are friends that Duran hired to insulate himself from the workaday employees, and these friends have been appointed at the highest level, with some of his cronies making in excess of $130,000 per year. A new website, which publicizes information about Duran’s activities is fueled by reports from current and former IBWC employees.

Duran has a groosly distorted sense of self-importance. Tired of waiting in airports, he attempted to requisition a twin-engine airplane to be on call to ferry him and his cronies around the Southwest. He only dropped the idea when one of his other minor corruptions made it into the news. He had attempted to order a “raven black,” smoked window Cadillac Escalade narco car for himself. But these petty Bushite actions are only the tip of a very large problem created by a man with a very large ego. A damnifying Department of State Inspector General report found that since Duran’s arrival, “Internal management problems have engulfed USIBWC, threatening its essential responsibilities for flood control and water management in the American Southwest,” and that “[m]orale plummeted [and] a climate of fear and disaffection spread.”

While there is much to write about with respect to Commissioner Duran, two connected concerns are most interesting. First, he has no respect for the Mexican side of the agency and has engaged in highly disrespectful activity toward his Mexican counterpart, Arturo Herrera Solis. These actions include not showing up for a scheduled bi-national meeting with the Mexican Section in Washington D.C., without excuse or notice, threatening to cut aid to the Nuevo Laredo sewage treatment facility, which would force it to eventually shut down, and acting unilaterally without consulting Mexican officials. Second, Duran is infatuated with becoming a “player” in Washington D.C., to the extent that he even tried to fund a five-person Washington, D.C., office out of IBWC appropriations. These two characteristics of Duran come together over a strange incident that sheds light on his ambitions and his corruption and how he, at least, thinks business gets done in the Bush Administration.

Dams and Lobbyists

In an interview on TV on February 27, 2005, Commissioner Duran was asked by an interviewer if he had given any consideration to a third international dam on the Lower Rio Grande. In his response Duran said “Today, we have issued a contract with S & B Engineering, and they're going to be issued a task to do a more detailed feasibility study on the location, the feasibility of a third dam along the border.” Further, Duran said that the agreement was “a cost plus contract . . . I think a feasibility study of this type, it will range probably [between] $300 to $500-thousand dollars.” Cost plus contracts are most vulnerable to malfeasance, since they create incentive for contractors to jack up prices as high as possible, since the costs, plus profit, are already covered in the agreement. One commentator called these “defraud me please” contracts. But the statements by Duran were lies; no contract had been let to S&B, nor has there been an effort by Duran to make good on this public statement by pursuing such a contract. Employees at the IBWC were perplexed as to why Duran would lie about such a thing and then do nothing to make the lie come true. And the Mexican Section was chagrined by Duran’s failure to consult them on a major contract that implicated Mexican sovereignty and water issues.

S&B Engineering does not undertake public works projects like the feasibility study referred to by Duran, but they do have a subsidiary, S&B Infrastructure, which does undertake such projects. Until March of this year, the President and CEO of S&B Infrastructure was Raúl Romero, a Panamanian-born businessman who had many relatives flee Panama from the persecution of Manuel Noriega. Romero’s family could only return home after President George H.W. Bush’s attack on Panama and ouster of Noriega. So when the younger George Bush came calling for Hispanic leaders to help the Republican party, Romero was ready and willing to do what he could. He and George W. Bush became friends, and Bush said during a 2004 speech, “I want to thank my friend, Raúl Romero -- (applause) -- est, Raúl. . . It's good to see you, friend. Thanks for bringing so many of your friends here. I'm honored to have your continued support. Raúl is a Tejano. I know him well from Texas. He's a good friend.”

Proclaimed by Poder magazine to be the most influential Hispanic in the United States in February 2004, Romero became an indefatigable fundraiser and cheerleader for George W. Bush, and his “constant business travels allow him to scour the country for Hispanic talent to be brought into the Bush administration.” Romero raised over $100,000 for Bush’s 2004 campaign. More to the point concerning Duran, the quiet Romero, perhaps more than any other person, including Alberto Gonzalez, is the king maker for Hispanics in the Bush administration. As one journal noted, “More than anyone else, Romero is responsible for Bush's record of appointing Latinos to top government positions, including U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin and Surgeon General Richard Carmona. The White House expects the appointments to give Bush a boost among Hispanics in the 2004 election.”

It is hard to resist the notion that Duran’s various actions are blatant efforts to curry favor with Washington, D.C., insiders. Since Duran has been at the IBWC he has shamelessly searched for opportunities to springboard into the Washington, D.C., scene; he is not happy with being ensconced in his little agency in El Paso, Texas. As the Inspector General noted, the “Commissioner has made countless trips to Washington, visiting Capitol Hill offices as well as U.S. government agencies, announcing his readiness to undertake needed projects along the border.” In other words, Duran has tried to ingratiate himself to anyone with power inside the beltway. His apparent attempt to buy favoritism from Romero is both crude and doomed to failure. Whatever one may think of Romero’s political views and friends, he appears to be of high integrity and is enmeshed in many philanthropic efforts. No doubt when the Commissioner realized, after his TV interview, that Romero was quitting S&B Infrastructure to open Alliance Consulting Group in Washington, D.C., the reasons for giving S&B a contract disappeared. ACG, located one block from the Whitehouse, seemingly handles high profile clients such as the Panamanian Government and is working with GOP heavyweights to make inroads into the Hispanic population in the United States.

Duran’s run at Romero to curry favor with the big guns is part of a pattern of behavior. In 2004, Duran let a contract for $256,000 to Infrastructure Solutions, a lobbyist firm headed by Karen Johnson, another friend of President George W. Bush and Raúl Romero. The firm, which billed over $3 million over the last several years, seems to have less than half a dozen employees. Johnson also was a champion fund-raiser for the Bush campaigns, and was part of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. It is illegal for federal agencies to expend federal funds on lobbying efforts, but that did not stop Duran, even when the Inspector General report found that Johnson’s lobbying firm was doing very little for the money. But of course, we doubt Duran was trying to buy effectiveness; he was trying to buy a friend on the inside of the Washington, D.C., power scene. Duran is just another hack trying to worm his way through the gutter-slime of Washington, D.C., politics. But in order to do that he is hurting innumerable people, laying waste to a small agency, and putting at risk relations with Mexico over important matters.