NEWARK, N.J. • A former Army Corps of Engineers employee pleaded guilty Friday to pocketing nearly $3.7 million in kickbacks for providing confidential information to two men working for companies that were awarded government contracts in Iraq.

Federal prosecutors said the ex-employee, John Alfy Salama Markus, took bribes from men whose companies were awarded more than $50 million in Iraqi reconstruction contracts. Salama Markus worked for the corps at Contingency Operating Base Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq, from 2005 to 2008 and dealt with oversight of awarded contracts.

Salama Markus pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and failing to file a U.S. Treasury report. He faces up to 35 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. He will be sentenced Jan. 8.

Salama Markus, 40, and four other men were charged in a 54-count indictment last year.

Salama Markus used his job to "manipulate and influence the bidding, selection, award and administration" of reconstruction contracts, prosecutors said in court documents. Markus would supply the men with confidential information about bidding and finances and approve and modify invoices. In return, prosecutors said, Salama Markus received a cut of the awarded money. He documented payments in emails and spreadsheets found on his home computer, prosecutors said.

One spreadsheet showed Salama Markus was paid 10 percent of a $19.58 million contract.

Prosecutors said Salama Markus built a $1.1 million house in Nazareth, Pa., with the money. He must forfeit the house, along with $3.7 million, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a Cadillac, Corvette and other cars as part of the plea agreement.

OTTUMWA — With all the ribbons, flags and bumper stickers, Americans may think their service members are being treated with respect. But Iowa Workforce Development’s IowaWorks warns there is an area where our nation is falling short: the hiring of veterans.

J.R. Beamer, a veterans representative who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, says amongst veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unemployment is more than 10 percent higher than it is in the civilian population.

“It shocks me in one way and doesn’t surprise me in another,” said Wapello County Supervisor Greg Kenning, a former member of the National Guard.

He said he understands employers want good employees who are going to be there for the company, but they need to open their eyes.

“It disappoints me that we’d have a veteran who couldn’t get a chance, even,” he said.

And that is what’s happening in some cases, said Linda Rouse, the operations director at the Ottumwa office of IowaWorks.

However, she said, a state and private business partnership is now assisting in a program to help change attitudes among employers.

Rouse said Principal Financial Group has started a program called “Hire our Heroes.” The idea is to educate other employers about the benefits of hiring veterans.

Beamer said Principal is one of the companies that gets an “A” where veterans are concerned. The “Hire our Heroes” program comes with educational material that Beamer said reasons employers give for actively avoiding hiring former combatants include fear they’ll suddenly be deployed again, that they’ll be using incomprehensible military jargon or that a combat vet will suddenly become violent due to post traumatic stress disorder.

Beamer said many of the reasons are based on partial truths. But it’s also true that many challenges can be overcome — and that “it’s worth it to the employer [due to] what veterans have to offer.”

“[Ignorance about PTSD] really stigmatized all the services,” said Kenning. “It’s a disease we don’t know enough about.”

And the old image of veterans dumped off after Vietnam had basis in fact, he saw firsthand.

“It would not be uncommon they’d leave a combat zone in Vietnam ... and less than a week after you’ve been on the battlefield, you’re walking around the streets. There were no parades, nothing that would say ‘this is the end of it, fella.’”

So while employers may remember that troubling image, things have changed for the better, Beamer said.

One of the Senate’s chief deficit hawks complained Wednesday that politicians were making false promises of jobs to veterans by discussing a bill that will never become law — and would provide only temporary work for veterans if it did.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was referring to S 3457, the Veterans Job Corps Act, which would devote $1 billion over five years to creating law enforcement, firefighter and conservation jobs for veterans.

The underlying idea is that once veterans are trained, some would find permanent employment.

The measure, a pre-election priority for President Obama, was brought to the Senate floor for consideration without going through the normal legislative process.

But Coburn noted that the legislation is “not going anywhere in the House of Representatives” and charged that “what we are really doing is passing a bill for political reasons.”

The Senate took up the measure on Tuesday after a 95-1 procedural vote to at least begin debate, but it is unclear if any amendments will be considered or when a vote on final passage might come.

Coburn said he doesn’t see the need for another expensive program like this. “We already have six veterans’ job programs. Not one of them has a metric on it to see if it is working. There has not been one hearing to see what the jobs program that we are running now are doing.

“Is this about veterans or is this about politicians?” Coburn said. “I suspect it is about politicians. I suspect it is about elections, not veterans.”