Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:45am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed six Afghan civilians in an attack on U.S. troops near the airport in Afghanistan's capital on Thursday, officials said.

Thirteen more civilians were wounded, but the four soldiers suffered only minor cuts and bruises in the attack, close to Kabul international airport during the morning rush-hour.

"Six civilians have been killed in the attack and the bomber used a car," Deputy Interior Minister Munir Mangal told Reuters near the scene.

A bomber in a black car struck the convoy, wounding four soldiers and heavily damaging one vehicle, said a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The soldiers were not members of the 42,000-strong ISAF force, but part of a smaller unit which trains the Afghan army and police, a spokesman for that force said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

"The foreign occupying forces and their Afghan slaves should get ready for the mujahideen's suicide and guerrilla attacks this summer. This new year will be bloodiest," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said by telephone from an unknown location.

The Taliban have threatened to target the capital Kabul with more suicide bombings this year in their campaign to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject foreign troops.

The hardline Islamist movement carried out around 140 suicide bombings across the country in 2007, but foreign forces have become better at avoiding casualties and most of those killed were Afghan civilians and members of the Afghan security forces.

A roadside bomb killed three Afghan police officers and wounded four more in Wardak province, just southwest of Kabul, on Thursday, a provincial intelligence official said.

(Reporting by Kabul newsroom and Saeed Ali Achakzai in Spin Boldak; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

New Account Emerges of Fatal Bus Blast Tuesday; Driver, Passenger Blame Americans

By Joshua Partlow and Saad Sarhan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A12

BAGHDAD, March 12 -- A barrage of rockets targeting an American military base in southern Iraq on Wednesday morning killed three U.S. soldiers, bringing to 12 the number of Americans killed in Iraq in the past three days.

Just after 6 a.m., about four rockets crashed down on Combat Outpost Adder in an attack that also wounded two U.S. soldiers and one civilian, said Navy Lt. Patrick Evans, a U.S. military spokesman.

The military reported that another soldier died and two more were wounded Tuesday near the southern city of Diwaniyah when a roadside bomb exploded during a combat patrol. The dozen military deaths are an unusually high figure for recent months, when American fatalities in Iraq have been dropping.

The deaths came the day after an explosion killed 16 passengers on a bus traveling near Nasiriyah, about 45 miles from Basra. Conflicting accounts emerged Wednesday about the incident, with the bus driver and a passenger asserting that passing American soldiers opened fire on them, an allegation that U.S. military officials denied.

The bus was carrying about 60 people, all but five of them women and children, who were traveling home to Basra after attending a memorial service, as an American military supply convoy drove past them in the northbound lane, according to passengers. About 1:40 p.m., an explosion tore into the driver's side of the bus and blew out the other side, filling the vehicle with black smoke and the screams of the passengers, witnesses said.

The U.S. military said in a statement that a lethal roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, slammed into the bus and also blasted the passing convoy, wounding a U.S. soldier and a civilian traveling in the convoy. The bomb, which shoots heated copper slugs, was similar to EFPs that American military officials say are manufactured in Iran.

But the driver, Zeki Abdul Qader, and a passenger, Qasim Salih Jubur, said they believed the U.S. soldiers opened fire on the bus after it had already safely passed what they were later told was a spot where a roadside bomb had exploded. They said their bus was struck with bullets seconds before they were hit with the explosion, which they believed was some sort of rocket or grenade fired from the U.S. convoy.

"The Americans shot us," Jubur said. "One hundred percent it was the Americans."

"We absolutely did not fire on the bus," said Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "Absolutely not."

The passengers on the bus left Basra on Sunday to visit holy Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf, and to attend the commemoration for a woman from their tribe who had died 40 days earlier. The bus was passing through a desert area when the explosion occurred.

Qader, the driver, said he was reaching the tail end of a long military convoy when he heard gunfire and the sound of bullets striking his bus.

"They shot me with small arms from the beginning of the bus to the end, the whole side, then they shot this rocket," Qader, 58, said in a telephone interview. The explosion tore through three rows near the middle of the bus -- four passengers per row--killing 12 people almost instantly, he said. Four others on the bus were also killed, he said.

"The bus turned to all black smoke, you could see nothing, and all the windows blew out except one or two," he said. "The bus went off the road and I tried hard to keep it from flipping over."

After the bus stopped, U.S. soldiers cordoned off the surrounding area and Iraqi forces arrived at the scene. Qader and Jubur said they themselves did not see American soldiers firing but heard the gunfire and were told by the Iraqi soldiers that the American troops had fired.

Abbas al-Khafaji, director of the funeral home in Najaf where the bodies were taken for burial preparation, said one infant and at least four women had bullet holes in their bodies in addition to shrapnel wounds. Ali Hussein, 37, the uncle of the slain 6-month-old, Abbas Jihad, confirmed that the boy had two bullet wounds in the chest.

Sarhan reported from Najaf. Special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A01

The quiet workaholic is listed as treasurer for 83 GOP fundraising committees over the past eight years, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the past five years alone, he oversaw the accounting for committees that raised more than $400 million, $368 million of it at the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to a Washington Post review of those records.

But in late January, Ward, 39, was dismissed as the NRCC announced that it had found financial "irregularities" that "may include fraud." The FBI is investigating what appears to be "a significant amount of money" missing from the House Republican fundraising arm, according to a law enforcement official.

Now the dozens of GOP lawmakers who had clamored for Ward's help are apprehensively poring over his work along with FBI investigators, trying to learn more about the finances he oversaw. Several lawmakers have told Rep. K. Michael Conaway (Tex.), head of the NRCC's auditing subcommittee, that they think money may be missing from their political committees, as well.

Officials told The Post that the NRCC's problems may be more extensive. Republican lawmakers and former committee staff members now allege that Ward fabricated audits and other financial documents for 2003 to 2006, some of which were turned over to a Wachovia Bank branch in McLean in October 2006, when the NRCC borrowed $8 million in last-minute money for congressional campaigns.

Concerned that they could be investigated for possible violations of bank fraud laws, NRCC officials quickly called in the FBI, according to lawmakers and officials with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Wachovia spokeswoman Carrie Ruddy declined to comment. An official at the Federal Election Commission, which could fine the committee if it misstated the NRCC's financial position in monthly reports, also declined to comment.

What may set this investigation apart from previous confirmed cases of political embezzlement is the sheer number of clients Ward served. Drawing on at least 15 years of experience in the complexities of campaign finance laws, he built a reservoir of trust among House Republicans.

"We were told he was the guy that handled all the campaign committees, he was the best," said Rep. Peter T. King (N.Y.).

But King said in an interview that he has discovered that Ward paid himself $6,000 in consulting fees from King's political action committee in 2007 -- though King believed that he had shuttered the committee early last year. Upon learning of the NRCC investigation, King said he found that his PAC remained open all of last year. Ward paid himself the fees from King's PAC, which received just three contributions and dispensed one check in 2007, FEC records show.

In an election year that holds dismal prospects for congressional Republicans, possible financial problems at the cash-strapped NRCC are the last thing the GOP needs.

The first inkling of trouble came when Conaway took over the NRCC's auditing subcommittee in early 2007. A certified public accountant himself, Conaway said in interviews that he asked for something considered routine in the corporate world: an audit of NRCC books for the previous year by an outside firm and a meeting with the auditors.

"My expectation was that that frank meeting would take three minutes," Conaway said.

Instead, Ward kept putting him off, he said. "Okay, we'll get it for the next meeting, we'll get it for you," Ward said, according to Conaway, who became suspicious of what he described as Ward's "passive aggressive" behavior.

He said Ward avoided the issue for months, until January, when Ward told Conaway that he and GOP lawmakers would meet with auditors. But Ward canceled the meeting 30 minutes before it was scheduled to begin.

Republicans called the outside firm and found out that no audits had been done since 2003. After looking at the documents Ward had given them for each year, they determined that he had fabricated them, according to Davis and other officials with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Davis, who now chairs an executive committee that serves as the NRCC board, said that for several years, Ward turned over documents to lawmakers that appeared to be legitimate reviews by an outside firm. They showed accurate balance sheets.

"This guy produced audits, and they looked fine," he said.

In retrospect, Conaway said he wishes he had pushed Ward harder, but added that Ward had become such a trusted presence that he never doubted him or thought to examine his background.

"Like a lot of folks, he had grown into the job, had grown into the trust," Conaway said. "It would have been pretty weird if we had said, 'Let's do a background check.' "

But now the committee is working with the FBI, which it called in as soon as officials realized that the audits may have been faked and that they may have violated bank fraud laws. The NRCC has hired an auditor to review its books and a law firm to oversee an internal investigation.

"Any material misstatement on a bank application is a federal crime," said Stanley Brand, a Washington defense lawyer. He said the committee probably contacted the FBI in an attempt to portray itself as the victim of a crime -- punishable by as much as $1 million in fines and 30 years in prison -- and to inoculate NRCC officials from prosecution.

"They blew the whistle on themselves, which is what you'd do to protect yourself," he said.

Research director Lucy Shackelford and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Leaders Fail to Stop Securities Sell-Off

By Thomas Heath

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page D01

A publicly traded affiliate of the Carlyle Group said yesterday that lenders were seizing its assets, sending the fund, Carlyle Capital, into insolvency.

The collapse of Carlyle Capital is the first time a Carlyle Group fund has failed and is a stinging embarrassment for the District private-equity powerhouse, which has built an international reputation with a client list that reaches around the world.

The high-profile downfall, part of the broad turmoil in credit markets worldwide, followed a week of frantic negotiations between the Carlyle Group and a number of lenders. Carlyle Group's three founders as recently as Monday were considering injecting cash into the fund as a way to usher it through the credit crisis.

By yesterday the fund had defaulted on $16.6 billion of debt and said it expected to default soon on its remaining debt. The fund's $21.7 billion in assets were exclusively in AAA mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traditionally considered secure and conservative investments, which it was using as collateral against its loans.

In a statement, Carlyle Capital said that it had been unable to meet margin calls in excess of $400 million over the past week and that it expected its lenders to take control of its remaining assets. The lenders, headed by Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase, began selling the securities last night, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site.

The problems at Carlyle Capital have preoccupied the top leaders at Carlyle Group. The firm's founders, David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel D'Aniello, had been in meetings with lenders in an effort to resolve Carlyle Capital's problems, not only to protect their own investment and that of employees who have put millions of dollars into the company, but also to preserve Carlyle's Midas-touch reputation.

Forbes magazine last year estimated Carlyle's three founders to each be worth about $2.5 billion.

Carlyle Capital is incorporated on Guernsey, an island in the English Channel, and is traded on Amsterdam's Euronext exchange.

The fund was set up in August 2006 with roughly $670 million in cash from Carlyle's owners and other investors, and about $300 million in additional capital raised from a public stock sale.

The capital allowed the fund to go to banks and borrow far more, leveraging its cash investment some 20 times into the portfolio.

Carlyle Capital's prospects were dimmed by the same doubts that have upended securities linked to riskier subprime mortgages, namely whether the underlying assets were losing value and whether the homeowners would continue to make their payments.

As the market value of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities has dropped, Carlyle Capital's lenders asked it to increase its cash equity from what was 1 percent to as much as 5 percent. An increase of that amount on $20 billion in loans amounts to several hundred million dollars.

The Carlyle Group last summer loaned Carlyle Capital $150 million to cover debt obligations.

Conway and Rubenstein were in New York much of this week, accompanied by a team of Carlyle Group insiders, including the company's chief financial officer, negotiating a "standstill" agreement with lenders as they tried to work out a financial solution.

The agreement would have stopped lenders from foreclosing on loans they made to Carlyle Capital.

Carlyle Capital stock closed at $2.80 in Amsterdam yesterday before the announcement, off 89 percent from its peak.

Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2008; 11:51 AM