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