New report rips oversight of Afghan war

Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, July 16, 2010 - 6:32 PM Share

The government investigators and auditors who are supposed to be looking for waste, fraud, and abuse of American taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan received a failing grade in a new government investigation of their own activities.

The scathing report on the work of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) comes after months of congressional angst over what certain lawmakers see as the organization's shoddy work product and failure to fulfill its obligations to oversee the billions of dollars being appropriated each year for Afghanistan reconstruction.

"In our view, the safeguards and management procedures in this organization did not provide reasonable assurance of conforming with professional standards in the conduct of its investigations from the inception of SIGAR to April 16, 2010," wrote the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which serves as an oversight board of all inspectors general in the U.S. government.

The report now goes to Attorney General Eric Holder, who will determine whether SIGAR will be stripped of its investigative powers, such as the power to make arrests, issue warrants, carry firearms, etc.

The oversight panel cited 10 major ways in which SIGAR, led by Special Inspector General Arnie Fields, was not conducting investigations in the proper way.

"In sum and substance, there were nearly no official investigative policies and procedures in place prior to March 2010 and, therefore, no investigative activities in compliance therewith," the report stated, adding that what policies were in writing were copied directly from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), SIGAR's older (and apparently more competent) sister organization.

According to the report, SIGAR's investigators also didn't have the proper training and there were no clear quality standards for investigations,

Fields responded in a letter that the newness of his office and delays in funding were to blame for the poor performance.

"It wasn't until the summer of 2009 that SIGAR received adequate funding to begin fully staffing its directorates. Consequently, I have been behind the curve in building the capacity necessary to address my investigative mandate," he wrote, claiming he was already addressing the problems.

In a concurrent but separate review of SIGAR's auditing work, the oversight group gave SIGAR the rating of "pass with deficiencies," and criticized the quality assurance, planning, record keeping, and reporting of SIGAR's audit directorate, run by the assistant inspector general in charge of audits, John Brummet.

Criticisms of SIGAR's auditing are not new. A memo circulated by Hill staffers earlier this year outlined the shortcomings of several of the organization's audits. And Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Susan Collins, R-ME, wrote a letter last December calling for someone to look into SIGAR's operations.

Fields himself asked CIGIE to perform the peer review in this February letter, but most insiders believe he was just trying to head off congressional concerns. Now, some in Congress are calling for his ouster.

"This report proves that SIGAR's performance is inept. It is time for a house-cleaning at SIGAR, including new leadership," McCaskill said in a statement.  "For the sake of our soldiers and the American taxpayer, time is of the essence."

The United States has committed $51 billion to Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001, and plans to raise the amount to $71 billion over the next year, according to the AP.

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. CONGRESS
 

MARTY MARTEL

1:03 PM ET

July 17, 2010

US Afghan mission headed for failure

US mission in Afghanistan is doomed to fail no matter how much money, manpower and effort US pours in there as long as Obama continues Bush policy of mollycoddling Pakistan.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line. This is where rubber meets the road for the famed General.

As Times of London dated 6/13/2010 reported on Matt Waldman’s report titled ‘The sun in the sky’ from London School of Economics, “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US aid to bankrupt Pakistan finances the death of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

The most breath-taking part of this sordid saga is that US is NOT holding Pakistan responsible for sheltering, protecting and supporting Haqqani’s HQN network and Mullah Omar’s QST network all these years while those networks have been causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers ever since 2002 even though Pakistan was SUPPOSED to have joined US fight against same Taliban back in 2001!

Can American CIA not know what Matt Waldman knows? How come Obama administration is continuing Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan with such incriminating evidence against Pakistan’s double game? How can US mission in Afghanistan succeed if Obama administration continues to ignore such Pakistani duplicity like Bush had done it before Obama?

 

VANCE JOCHIM

7:04 PM ET

July 18, 2010

Your Attack on SIGAR is not warranted by the Actual Reports

The peer reports mentioned above are actually out. The AP wrote an article on it, and your comments above on "ripping" SIGAR & being a "Scathing" report are completely unjustified, and overblew the results. The actual reports are available on SIGAR.com . I wrote an analysis of the peer reviews on my blog on Corruption in Iraq at www.FiscalRangers.com . You actually have to read the peer review reports, and if you know the history of SIGAR, it seems they have ramped up operations in the last year, and the peer reviews noted administrative & compliance problems for a new unit that was focusing on RESULTS oriented audits demanded by Congress, rather than making sure a filing system existed, training programs existed for professionals who had 20+ years experience, etc. I have done the same for an oil company when auditing operations in Alaska, and when setting up an anti-corruption program in Iraq or internal audit training program in Afghanistan.

REMEMBER, SIGAR asked for the review, and the peer review audit team did note that most deficiencies are implemented already, or will be soon.

Although I have criticized SIGAR in the past for being slow on issuing audits, the details in the reports indicate they have really improved in the last year. (Note: The review did not evaluate quality of audit reports, but administrative and policy compliance issues).

Next time, before labeling a report like this as "scathing" or "ripping", get an actual internal audit professional to read the referenced reports and give you a proper professional perspective.

Vance Jochim
Former Chief Auditor and US adviser to Iraq's anti-corruption agency, Commission of Public Integrity, 2004-2006.

 

John Hudson reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.

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