Report cites wasted Pentagon money in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The embattled Pentagon agency blamed for building a budget-busting gas station in Afghanistan and renting luxury housing for its employees also imported Italian goats to boost the cashmere industry in the impoverished, war-wracked country, according to a government investigator.
Meanwhile, the former head of the Task Force for Business Stability Operations, Paul Brinkley, blasted back Wednesday at the government inspector general, accusing him of inaccuracy and hype.
At a Senate hearing, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said in prepared testimony that the task force lacked “strategic direction” and suffered from a “scattershot approach to economic development.”
Among the more egregious examples of boondoggles he cited: “importing rare blond Italian goats to boost the cashmere industry.” The $6 million program included shipping nine male goats to western Afghanistan from Italy, setting up a farm, lab and staff to certify their wool.
A chart summarizing task force initiatives shows the inspector general did not conduct an audit of the program. The program, according to a contractor’s analysis, may have created as many as 350 jobs. Sopko ripped the Pentagon and the task force for failing to track its spending. It’s not unclear, for instance, if the goats were eaten.
“We don’t know,” Sopko said. “This was so poorly managed.”
Sopko testified Wednesday on his report, “Preliminary Results Show Serious Management and Oversight Problems.” The task force was charged with jump starting the economy of Afghanistan with nearly $800 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who chaired the hearing, called the allegations about the filling station troubling and called for a full accounting of task force spending.
“What happened to the money?” Ayotte asked. “All of it?”
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., was livid about task force spending and called the natural gas-station program “dumb on its face,” given the cost of converting cars to natural gas exceeds the average income of Afghans.
“This is a terrible waste of taxpayer money when we have so many other uses for it,” McCaskill said.
In a letter and other documents, Brinkley, who led the task force in Iraq and later Afghanistan from 2006 to 2011, defended his oversight of the agency and lashed out at the government’s watchdog.
“A meaningful and balanced review cannot be accomplished through a sustained media campaign or a practice of repeating uncorroborated allegations,” Brinkley wrote to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sopko has released several provocative reports charging the task force with waste and shoddy accounting practices. Among the most eye-catching: a $43 million natural-gas filling station that should have cost $500,000 and proved of no use to average Afghans; and $150 million spent on renting luxury villas for task force staff and visitors. Those alleged boondoggles have drawn ire from Capitol Hill and cast Brinkley as a profligate spender.
Brinkley, through his lawyer, bristled at the charge from the inspector general that he had approved of programs without knowing their cost. Brinkley told investigators on Dec. 17 that his task force had no contracting authority, relying instead on career military officials to make deals within government regulations, according to his lawyer.
“This was done, in fact, in fact to ensure proper oversight — not to avoid it,” Brinkley’s lawyer, Charles Duross, wrote Wednesday to the inspector general’s office
Pentagon wasted 'tens of millions' on private villas in Afghanistan
The Pentagon on Wednesday also took issue with Sopko’s price tag for the gas station, saying it was closer to $5 million, not $43 million. Brian McKeon, a top Pentagon policy official, said in a statement to USA TODAY that the methods used Sopko were “flawed, and the costs of the station are far lower.”
The refueling station itself cost $2.9 million, and the balance of the $5 million paid for associated buildings and equipment, McKeon said.
Brinkley, in his letter, challenged the assertion that he and his staff lived in luxury, eschewing the basic, free accommodations offered by the military in Afghanistan.
In a previous report, Sopko criticized the task force for spending $150 million on “western-style hotel accommodations” that included flat-screen TVs, private bodyguards and “three-star” menus for staff and guests.
Bunking with the Army, Sopko suggested, could have saved taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
Living conditions during his tenure, Brinkley wrote, were far from luxurious — “basic and minimal, with multiple bunks in shared living quarters” or on military bases.
“When this was not possible or practical, the challenge was to find facilities that did not continually smell of raw sewage, and food that did not frequently sicken our personnel or visiting government and business leaders — a challenge we never fully overcame,” Brinkley wrote.
The task force’s final grade is not yet in, McKeon said.
“Ultimately, time will tell whether the task force succeeded in its overall objectives,” McKeon said. “Reports that the (Pentagon) commissioned to assess the Task Force's work — as well as SIGAR's work — tell us that the Task Force had a mixed record of success, with some successes and some failures.”