The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised April 27, 2007 |
| Report Number |
RL32370 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
L. Elaine Halchin, Government and Finance Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
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Summary:
Responsibility for overseeing reconstruction in post-conflict Iraq initially fell to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA). Established in early 2003, ORHA was headed by Lieutenant General Jay M. Garner, U.S. Army (ret.). By June 2003, ORHA had been replaced, or subsumed, by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which was led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III. On June 28, 2004, CPA ceased operations. Whether CPA was a federal agency is unclear. Competing, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for how it was established contribute to the uncertainty about its status. Some executive branch documents supported the notion that it was created by the President, possibly as the result of a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD). (This document, if it exists, has not been made available to the public.) Another possibility is that the authority was created by, or pursuant to, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 (2003). Finally, two years after CPA was established, a Justice Department brief asserted that the then-Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) had created CPA. [â¦] Subsequent to the dissolution of CPA, the question of its status arose in a lawsuit filed against Custer Battles, LLC (CB), a company that performed work for CPA. Two former employees of CB alleged in a lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act (FCA) that the company had defrauded the federal government. (The case is 'United States ex rel. DRC Inc. v. Custer Battles, LLC' (E. Va., No. CV-04-199-A).) Justice Department attorneys concluded that CPA was an instrumentality of the U.S. government for the purposes of the FCA, but the presiding judge determined, in his August 2006 opinion, that CPA was not an instrumentality. This report will be updated as events warrant.
