"

  South Carolinians in Baghdad 
'""9) Pair of S.C. natives at forefront of rebuilding Iraq
By LAUREN MARKOE
The State (South Carolina)
May 31, 2003

George Wolfe, who usually spends his days in the gilded Washington offices 
of the Treasury Department, rode down Baghdad's equivalent of Wall Street 
last week in a convoy of Humvees protected by machine gunners.

""There were tanks at both ends of the street,"" the Columbia native said 
this week in a phone call from Baghdad. ""We walked into the Central Bank. 
It was badly looted and burned before the conflict ended.

""It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic world. There were 
burned and charred Iraqi dinars blowing around in the breeze.""

From this, Wolfe and his team are charged with establishing a national 
banking system in which Iraqis can place their confidence.

As the deputy financial coordinator for the Office of Reconstruction and 
Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, Wolfe also is charged with creating a tax 
system, establishing a currency that does not bear the face of Saddam 
Hussein and setting up the mechanism for turning Iraqi oil into capital to 
rebuild the country.

He has been in Iraq for less than three weeks and is due to return to 
Washington in September. Then he will resume his usual job - deputy counsel 
at the Treasury Department.

Christopher Harvin, another Columbia native, has been working in the same 
downtown Baghdad palace for about the same length of time. From his palace 
office, where the walls are pockmarked with bullet holes, he directs the 
press operation for the American authority.

He also sleeps in the palace - with a South Carolina flag hung proudly over 
his bed.

Before Iraq, Harvin traveled to more than 30 states, working for the Bush 
presidential campaign, and to more than 50 countries as a Pentagon press 
officer, often accompanying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

But as much as he had seen in his travels, Harvin, like Wolfe, describes 
his life in Iraq as other-worldly - a series of scenes from a bizarre movie.

They live, after all, in a palace that catered to the taste of Saddam 
Hussein. Today, more than 1,000 Americans, Britons and others trying to 
rebuild the nation have made it their temporary home.

""Think Vegas in the 1950s,"" Harvin said. ""Giant gold doors. Crystal 
chandeliers. There are four big Saddam busts on the roof, as big as town 
houses. Have you seen the movie 'Casino'? It's living like that.""

And now - finally - the palace cafeteria serves a down-home favorite.

""This is sweet tea! This is South Carolina sweet tea!"" he announced to his 
buddies when he discovered just what he was drinking. ""No joke. This has 
the sugar boiled right into it.""

Harvin found out the source of the tea was an American cook whose mother 
hails from Lake City.

Harvin has been in Baghdad for three weeks. He has ""no clue"" when he will 
return to Washington.

In the meantime, he said, his job is to serve the Iraqi people, the 
American cause here - and L. Paul Bremer, head of the American authority in 
Iraq.

""My role is to image Bremer, to make him look presidential, to give the 
media access to him.""

Both Harvin and Wolfe are putting in up to 20-hour days under trying 
conditions. Electricity is not always reliable. Harvin sleeps under 
mosquito nets. Wolfe said everything he wears is sweaty and dusty.

They can't leave the palace - once called the Republican Guard Palace - 
without an armed escort. And they are chilled by the recent spike in 
American casualties. Five soldiers died this week; four more were wounded.

Wolfe, once a partner in the Columbia law firm Nelson, Mullins, Riley and 
Scarborough, wears a bulletproof vest and a helmet whenever he ventures 
outside the compound, three or four days a week.

He often returns with stories that astound him.

In the Southern city of Hillah, for example, Wolfe interviewed a group of 
local bankers to ""take a sounding"" of the industry in the region. He wanted 
to know about their deposits and withdrawals and whether they were making 
loans and collecting payments.

When he asked about security, one banker told him it could be better.

""Three weeks ago,"" Wolfe recalled, ""two guys come into his bank with 
machine guns and grenades and said if he didn't give them change, they 
would blow up the bank.""

Wolfe explained: The 10,000 Iraqi