The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

SIGAR Slams Army Corps for Letting DynCorp Walk Off the Job

By NEIL GORDON

On Thursday, the government’s Afghanistan reconstruction watchdog released a report showing that the U.S. military has failed to address serious construction deficiencies at an Afghan Army garrison that have persisted for more than two years. The report also criticized the military’s handling of the construction contractor, DynCorp International, which was released of its obligation to repair the deficiencies.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) paid DynCorp almost $71 million to oversee construction of the garrison, Camp Pamir, in Kunduz Province on Afghanistan’s northern border. In April 2010, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported that the facilities at Camp Pamir were at risk of structural failure because of poor site grading and serious soil stability issues. During a follow-up inspection this year, SIGAR found that USACE had failed to address the soil stability problem, and identified additional structural failures (one of which is pictured above), improper grading, and new sink holes.

Perhaps the most troubling finding is that, despite DynCorp’s unsatisfactory performance, USACE released the contractor in December 2011 under a settlement that absolved DynCorp of responsibility for fixing the structural defects. Not only was DynCorp paid in full and released from all existing or future warranty obligations, USACE also retroactively extended the contract duration date by 948 days (to make it appear that DynCorp had met contractual deadlines) and changed DynCorp’s unsatisfactory performance ratings to satisfactory.

SIGAR Seeks Debarment of Contractors Who Aid the Enemy

Photo: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee on September 13, 2012.

On Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) posted a letter to top U.S. diplomatic, military, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officials calling for immediate action to stop the disbursement of federal funds to several companies and individuals believed to be actively supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Government investigations have uncovered instances of U.S. taxpayer money being funneled to the enemy in Afghanistan, a serious problem largely caused by weak oversight. To remedy this, Congress inserted Section 841 into the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which requires the Commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) to review recipients of U.S. contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements with an estimated value exceeding $100,000 to determine if they are actively supporting an insurgency or otherwise opposing U.S. or coalition forces in a contingency operation. If this determination is made with regard to a particular person or corporate entity, CENTCOM puts Department of Defense (DoD) Heads of Contracting Activities (HCAs) on notice to restrict, terminate, or void their contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements.

According to the SIGAR letter, in July, CENTCOM Commander General James N. Mattis identified the following 5 individuals and entities as “actively supporting an insurgency” in Afghanistan:

• Arvin Kam Group LLC
• Arvin Kam Construction Company
• Vakil Saadat
• Haji Mohammad Almas Khan
• Haji Khalil Fruzi

SIGAR Saves Money and Lives

U.S. Marines detonate an improvised explosive device in Sangin, Afghanistan.

How important are federal inspectors general (IGs)? Sometimes, they can be a matter of life and death.

On Wednesday, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a safety alert letter warning U.S. commanders in Afghanistan of a heightened IED (improvised explosive device) threat due to the lack of culvert denial systems on roads around the country.

As described on this Army website, culvert denial systems are devices used to block unauthorized access to culverts, which are structures that channel water beneath roads, railways, and embankments. Culverts can also be used for more nefarious purposes, such as hiding IEDs.

In the one-page letter, Special Inspector General John F. Sopko warned of “potentially significant contract fraud in the installation and inspection of culvert denial systems” that poses a threat to the safety of U.S. forces:

Through our preliminary investigative work, we estimate that a large number of culvert denial systems might have been falsely reported by Afghan contractors as complete when, in fact, the denial systems were not installed or were installed in a defective manner, rendering them ineffective and susceptible to compromise by insurgents seeking to emplace IEDs.

Afghanistan Watchdog Says Records for $475M in Fuel Purchases Shredded

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

Records for $475 million in fuel purchases for the Afghan National Army have been shredded, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

Reuters reported that the U.S.-led NATO command that is training the Afghan army shredded the documents and was also unable to provide over half the documents the SIGAR office requested for its audit. In addition, "The training command has also not been tracking whether the fuel it delivers to the Afghan army is actually used or stored, leaving officials unable to determine whether any of it was stolen."

The lack of controls on the fuel and related documents present an opportunity for significant fraud, waste and abuse, which has already plagued the reconstruction effort.

SIGAR has also referred the case to their Investigations Directorate, according to a SIGAR letter, which could lead to a civil or criminal investigation.

Read more at Reuters.

Andre Francisco is an online producer for the Project On Government Oversight. Image from Flickr user willsfca.

Follow @andrefrancisco

New SIGAR Chief Promises Bold Measures to Fight Afghanistan Corruption

 

Officer candidates of the Afghan National Army’s Female Training Battalion learn self-defense techniques.

By NEIL GORDON

For nearly four years, POGO has been closely following the operations of Afghanistan’s reconstruction watchdog, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). As long ago as July 2009, we expressed doubts that SIGAR was up to the challenge of protecting the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on rebuilding the war-torn country.

The intervening years haven’t been kind to SIGAR, with several harsh performance reviews and a major executive house-cleaning. But in May, POGO’s spirits were lifted by President Obama’s appointment of John F. Sopko as SIGAR’s new permanent chief. Since then, SIGAR has been relatively busy, releasing one inspection report (the first in nearly three years), four audit reports, and one quarterly report to Congress.

More than $89 billion has been appropriated for the reconstruction of security, governance, and socioeconomic development in Afghanistan. That total will soon reach the $100 billion mark. (By contrast, U.S. reconstruction aid to Germany in the seven years after World War II amounted to less than $35 billion in today’s dollars.) With the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan scheduled to end in 2014, the pressure is growing to complete reconstruction work, as is the need for aggressive scrutiny of this work to protect the taxpayers’ investment.

“The window of opportunity is closing,” SIGAR Inspector General Sopko writes in SIGAR’s latest quarterly report. “That is why, under my leadership, SIGAR will intensify its oversight work…We will be aggressive. We will be accurate. We will be fair. And we will be smart.”

Have the Pentagon, State Department, and USAID Learned From Their Mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Dudley Moore: Do you feel you’ve learnt by your mistakes here?

Peter Cook (as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling): I think I have, yes, and I think I can probably repeat them almost perfectly.

~British comedians Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, from “The Frog and Peach” sketch (1966)

It’s been almost a year since the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan issued its final report to Congress on the state of U.S. reconstruction efforts in those two countries. In addition to its blockbuster finding that between $31 billion and $60 billion was lost to waste and fraud, the final report, along with two earlier reports, made numerous recommendations on ways to improve contingency contracting.

Some recommendations pertained specifically to the three principal contracting agencies – the Departments of Defense (DoD) and State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) –- and others were addressed to the executive departments in general. (A few months ago, the Project On Government Oversight blogged about the efforts of Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) to implement some of the wartime contracting commission's recommendations to Congress. 

This week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an assessment of the extent to which the Defense and State departments, and USAID have acted on the commission's recommendations. The GAO found that DoD has taken or planned actions that directly align with about half of the contracting commission's recommendations applicable to it, while State and USAID have done so with regard to about one-third of the recommendations applicable to them. Of the remaining recommendations, the agencies took no action either because they claim existing policies or practices already address them or they just don’t agree with them.

Prosecutions for Corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan Reconstruction Skyrocket

By DANA LIEBELSON

The Special Inspectors General for Iraq and Afghanistan are leaving no stone unturned as the U.S. undertakes its reconstruction efforts—and they’re stamping out more than a few cockroaches. As the U.S. pulls its troops out of these warzones, the number of people prosecuted for fraud and bribery continues to rise, according to two new IG reports released on Sunday.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) quarterly report provides an update on the status of reconstruction programs since the last report in July, 2011. Of SIGAR’s 111 total ongoing investigations, about 61 percent involve contract fraud and 27 percent involve corruption and bribery. According to the new report, SIGAR’s investigations during this quarter led to two guilty pleas and five indictments of individuals charged with bribery in reconstruction contracts. In addressing contractor accountability, SIGAR made 18 suspension and debarment referrals.

Also during this quarter, a SIGAR investigation revealed the single largest bribery case since the decade-long war in Afghanistan began. In September, Sidharth Handa, a U.S. military reserve officer, was sentenced for soliciting more than $1.3 billion in bribes and conspiring to distribute heroin. Handa’s job was to assist in awarding U.S. funded reconstruction projects to local contractors, but he solicited bribes that amounted to about 10 percent of the contract cost.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s (SIGIR) quarterly report looks at action over the past year. In that period, SIGIR investigations resulted in the indictment of 21 people for aid-related offenses and recovered $83.4 million. In the last quarter alone, SIGIR made 4 suspensions and 11 proposals for debarment.  

The report outlines many lurid examples of corruption in Iraq during the last quarter. A U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant pled guilty to stealing $124,000 worth of equipment; a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel was sentenced to prison for accepting illegal gratuities from contractors (and hiding them in his mail); and an associate of a U.S. Marine Corps contracting officer conspired to launder about $150,000 in bribes.

McCaskill to Maddow: Contractor Math is Not Working for Taxpayers

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By JOE NEWMAN

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show last night to discuss the findings of our report, which showed that the U.S. government is wasting billions on overpriced private contractors.

Of POGO, McCaskill said: "POGO is a great non-partisan group--they call them balls and strikes."

POGO studied 35 federal job classifications and found that, on average, the govermment was paying contractors nearly twice as much as it would have cost federal workers to do the same work.

During the interview, Maddow asked McCaskill if she thought POGO's report would lead to federal contracting reforms:

Maddow: Is putting a price tag on the contractors issue giving you any more traction on it in a bipartisan way? Is telling people that it's costing us 30, 40, 50, 60 billion dollars more than it ought to be gaining you any political ground?

McCaskill: I think it is. Because I'm an auditor--I want to do the math and when you do the math on this, it's not working for the taxpayer.

Joe Newman is POGO's Director of Communications.

Follow @JFNewman

Non-Partisan Commission Urges Congress to Adopt Contracting Reforms

By DANA LIEBELSON

In these budget-strapped times, it's hard to get Members of Congress to step across the aisle and agree even on where to go for lunch--let alone agree on how to oversee billions of dollars in Afghanistan. But yesterday, the bipartisan commission behind a three-year investigation on wartime contracting did just that by urging Congress to set differences aside and implement reforms to halt massive amounts of fraud and waste in contracting.

"Our final report has no dissenting views from the commission," said Michael J. Thibault, co-chair of the eight-member Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC), at a press conference. “In fact, [during the investigation] you would have been hard-pressed to tell which commissioners were Republicans and which were Democrats.”

Several of the commissioners present at the conference, which was held Wednesday at the Capitol, went so far as to call the Commission, 'non-partisan'—which was quite different from what we saw from the very divided Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, another congressionally-mandated panel empowered to examine another troubling big picture problem that has cost taxpayers significant sums of money.

Calling All Watchdogs -- Another Resignation at SIGAR

By JAKE WIENS  

Who will step up to the plate and take on one of the most critical jobs in government?

Herb Richardson, the Acting Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), is stepping down from his post after only six months at the helm, according to a report by Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin.

As Rogin notes, this leaves SIGAR without a leader for the second time this year. Prior to the tenure of Richardson, SIGAR was led by Arnold Fields. Back in September 2010, POGO joined a bipartisan group of Senators in calling for the removal of Fields, citing his office’s poor performance under his leadership. Fields announced his resignation in January 2011.  

At the time of Fields’ departure, POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian issued this statement:

This is an important step towards more aggressive oversight in Afghanistan. General Fields has served the country with distinction in the military, however, an Inspector General needs to be cut from a cloth where challenging authority comes easily. The Afghanistan watchdog is one of the most important and difficult jobs in the federal government. It is time for new leadership to better account for the billions being spent with little accountability.

As we’ve noted before, U.S. taxpayers have provided at least $51 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2002, according to the SIGAR, a figure that is expected to increase to $71 billion this year. For that reason, the importance of having an independent and aggressive watchdog overseeing those funds is absolutely essential.

So now, with Richardson’s departure, we’re asking our readers to help out. Go ahead–start throwing out some names of tough-minded, qualified people that would be impossible for the White House to ignore. Who do you think would be a good nominee for this job? This is an amazing opportunity to lead an absolutely essential organization–is it you?

Jake Wiens is a POGO Investigator.

Image of provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan by The U.S. Army.

White House Offers Nominee for DHS IG, Other Key Watchdog Vacancies Remain

By ROHAIL PREMJEE and BRYAN RAHIJA

Earlier this week, President Obama announced the nomination of Roslyn A. Mazer for Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This position has been vacant since March 1 of this year, when former DHS IG Richard Skinner retired.

Mazer currently holds the position of Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She previously worked for seven years as counsel at the Oversight & Review Division of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

As Steven Aftergood, Director of the Federation of American Scientist’s Project on Government Secrecy noted in 2009, Mazer has a strong track record when it comes to tackling overclassification:

[F]rom 1996 to 2000 Ms. Mazer was the first chair of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), which is among the most successful classification reform initiatives of the last half century.

…

Under Ms. Mazer’s leadership from 1996 to 2000, the ISCAP declassified information in an astounding 80% of the documents that were presented for its review. In fact, Ms. Mazer’s ISCAP was so successful in overturning spurious classification claims that the Central Intelligence Agency begged for relief from ISCAP jurisdiction. 

While we are pleased that the White House has moved to fill the DHS IG opening, it’s important to note that several other key watchdog positions remain unfilled. Vacancies include the Inspectors General for the Justice Department as well as the State Department, for which, astonishingly, there has not been a permanent leader for over three and a half years. Additionally, there is still no permanent leader at the office of the Special IG for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Here’s hoping the Obama administration takes action to fill these other vacancies with aggressive, independent nominees soon.

Rohail Premjee is a POGO intern. Bryan Rahija edits POGO's blog.

Key Watchdog Posts Remain Unfilled Across Executive Branch

By JAKE WIENS

It's beginning to sound like a broken record.

A story published Monday in Federal Times (and available only in the print edition) is the latest of a number of articles to highlight the effort to press the Obama administration to fill numerous Inspector General (IG) vacancies throughout the government.

Despite longstanding concerns raised by POGO and several lawmakers, the Obama administration has not taken action to nominate candidates for many of these essential watchdog positions. And the most egregious example, by far, is at the State Department, where the Office of Inspector General has been without permanent leadership since January 2008.

Citing former State Department IG Clark Ervin, the Federal Times article discussed the importance of having a permanent, rather than an acting IG: