our duty on the oversight and government reform committee is to protect these rights our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their government we will work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the american people and bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy this is the mission of the oversight and government reform committee good morning and welcome to todays hearing oversight in iraq and afghanistan challenges and solutions i would like to welcome ranking member tierney and members of the  subcommittee and members of the audience and certainly our panel for being here today this is the sixth hearing addressing the accountability of taxpayer dollars in war zones during this session this subcommittee has examined a number of issues including whether the state department is prepared to oversee the surge and private contracting in iraq whether the state department will be able to protect government employees and contractors in iraq after the military withdraws whether usaid and the state department can accurately track reconstruction projects and account for their expenditures whether those projects can and will be sustained by the host nations whether the billions handed to the karzai government under the direct assist program can and will be properly overseen and whether the defense department is working to ensure th been lost in iraq and afghanistan due to waste fraud and abuse in the contracting process according to the commission this was due to ill conceived projects poor planning and oversight poor performance by contractors criminal behavior and blatant corruption this is unacceptable while some may agree or disagree with our engagements in iraq and afghanistan it is universally unacceptable to waste taxpayer money in each of our hearings witnesses have described the success and challenges and oversight is completed environment without a doubt the task is difficult however it is critical that we get it right today the inspectors general community will share its perspective together on one panel the ig community plays a pivotal role in the oversight of federal programs their mission to promote economy efficiency and effectiveness in the administration of federal programs and to prevent and detect fraud and abuse its duties also include informing congress of any corrective action that needs to be taken in addition to defense state and u special inspectors general were established to focus specifically on efforts in iraq and afghanistan each of these offices is present here today while they have produced noteworthy results significant challenges remain we will hear about those today we will also examine contracting support this idea i would like to hear the panels view on that legislation and how such an office would interface with the standing igs the ranking members legislation is a good beginning i look forward to working with him and the agencies and the ig community to structure an effective solution chaffetz to my knowledge the president has yet to nominate any of these replacements nor has he responded to this letter i find that totally unacceptable this is a massive massive effort it is going to take some leadership and some help from the white achieve transparency without inspectors general again i urge president obama and the senate to nominate and confirm inspectors general to fill these vacancies and without delay i would now like to recognize the distinguished ranking member the gentleman from massachusetts mister tierney for his opening statement well thank you chairman chaffetz and thank you all for being witnesses here today and helping us with our job this hearing obviously is a culmination of a series of hearings that the subcommittee and the full committee have had with regard to iraq and afghanistan we heard from the department of defense the department of state on the transition to civilian led mission in iraq and we have heard from the commission on wartime contracting and suggested reforms to reduce waste and fraud in contingency operations and we followed up with the department of defense to  discuss the investigation that we started earlier on corruption in the afghan trucking industry these hearings continue to highlight the challenge of protecting the taxpayer funds from waste and fraud in our operations in iraq and afghanistan in fact the commission on wartime contracting found that billions of dollars had been wasted by agencies that have little capacity to manage their contractors or to hold them accountable even worse billions of dollars more have been dedicated to projects that were poorly conceived and are unsustainable by host governments these findings are consistent with this committees oversight of defense contractors in iraq and afghanistan last year i led a six month subcommittee investigation of a two dollars billion department of defense trucking contract in afghanistan this investigation found that the trucking contract had spawned a vast protection racket in which warlords criminals and insurgents extorted contractors for protection payments to obtain safe passage a follow up hearing held by this subcommittee in september showed that the department has made little progress in rooting out bad actors who undermined our anti insurgency efforts in afghanistan we know now that many of these bad actors continue to serve as u s government contractors in response to these findings of billions of dollars of waste fraud and abuse the commission on wartime contracting made a number of important recommendations for congress to consider one key recommendation  their report was the creation of a permanent special inspector general for contingency operations as the commission stated no entity exists with sufficient resources experience and audit and investigative capabilities to transcend departmental and functional  stovepipes taking up this recommendation i have introduced legislation that the chairman mentioned that would establish a special inspector general for overseas contingency operations these efforts of the commission along with the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction and the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction have shown the critical importance of realtime oversight in our overseas operations we need to preserve the unique capabilities of these entities in a single permanent inspector general with a flexible deplo specialists i urge my colleagues to join me in this legislation while that legislation is designed to address future contingency operations this hearing is about oversight in iraq and afghanistan now to that end i would like to address recent findings by the department of defen inspector general that shed light on some of the problems with one of our largest contractors in afghanistan that report reveals that the supreme group the prime contractor on the multibillion dollar defense departments subsistence contract in afghanistan is under investigation for hundreds of millions of dollar is over billing i understand that there is now a criminal inquiry of the supreme groups over billing these allegations raise significant concerns about the defense logistics agency and their ability to properly manage those large scale contracts and to protect taxpayer dollars from waste and fraud they also raise concerns about the use of no bid cost plus contracts that are so common in contingency operations as we speak the defense logistics agency is preparing to award a new ten billion to thirty billion contract to provide food and supplies for our troops in afghanistan for five years so i would like to hear from our inspectors general today about what more can be done to ensure that our federal agencies are doing their job and properly managing the billions of dollars that are being spent in those two countries i would also like to hear from you regarding what tools you have to ensure the companies who are caught over billing the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars do not have the opportunity to take even more taxpayer funds in the future so i want to thank you all again for being witnesses and department of state deputy inspector general mister michael carroll is the usaid acting inspector general the honorable stuart bowen is the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction and mister steven trent is the acting special inspector general for afghan reconstruction pursuant to committee rules all witnesses will be sworn in before they testify please rise and raise your right hand member of our panel limit their verbal comments to five minutes your entire statement will be inserted into the record i will now recognize the honorable mister heddell for five minutes heddell thank you mister chairman good morning and good morning ranking member tierney and distinguished members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss oversight efforts in southwest asia as many of you may be aware this will likely be my final testimony before congress as the inspector general effective december twenty four i will step down  in my first month alone at the dod ig i testified three times before congress two of the three hearings dealt with critically important issues of oversight contingency operations in southwest asia noting that our nation was engaged in two wars and that we had a pressing need to strengthen oversight to protect our war fighters and the american taxpayer i immediately determined to make oversight of contingency operations in southwest asia a number one priority as a result i instituted a number of organizational changes to the structure and focus of dod ig efforts and to increase our in theater presen which is regularly augmented by our expeditionary teams i believe strongly that an in theater presence is absolutely essential to conducting oversight of operations and engaging with military and civilian leadership in theater to ensure that our oversight is meaningful and effective in our audit division i created the joint and southwest asia operations directorate and the afghan security forces fund group audits in theater provide timely and relevant oversight and our auditors now have extensive experience in conducting complex joint audits with other federal agencies in our investigations division the defense criminal investigative service dcis expanded its presence in southwest asia and today dcis plays a major criminal investigative role in southwest asia by participating in key task forces that tackle complex fraud cases the dcis is already deployed worldwide and has the capability to immediately provide investigative resources to contingency operations anywhere in the world another division of the dod ig the office of special plans and operations or spo as we call it has been a key contributor to providing oversight spo has significantly enhanced our capability to provide expeditionary teams to southwest asia to conduct timely evaluations and assessments and to provide thorough outbriefs to field commanders enabling them to take immediate corrective actions i also appointed a special deputy inspector general for southwest asia to coordinate and deconflict oversight efforts my special deputy has worked extensively with all of the ig offices represented with me this morning today we are an agile flexible no nonsense aggressive oversight organization with the capacity to deploy rapidly anywhere in the world on short notice and the dod ig is prepared to respond effectively and aggressively in coordination with other federal agencies and internal dod oversight offices to address any future overseas contingency operation that arises i would like to thank the subcommittee for the opportunity to discuss the work of the dod ig and i look forward to answering any questions that you may have thank you mister chaffetz thank you and thank you again for your service on your long career in the secret service and your work in the defense department programs in iraq and afghanistan since standing up its overseas offices in two thousand and eight the office of inspector general oig has conducted thirty one investigations and issued twenty seven reports related to iraq conducted fourteen investigations and issued twenty two reports related to afghanistan and issued eleven reports of activities affecting department program and transition issues in iraq and afghanistan our efforts during resulted in more than two hundred dollars million in questioned costs and funds put to better use sixteen dollars sixty cents million in investigative recoveries and twenty contractor suspensions these results demonstrate the impact that oig has achieved since establishing a presence in baghdad and kabul as a result of congressional support oig has fulfilled its commitment to vigorously oversee the departments transition and soon will be one of the few remaining oversight entities in iraq the challenges the department faces in the transition to a civilian led presence in iraq are significant dods planned withdrawals of its troops by the end of this month requires that the department of state provide security life support transportation and other logistical support that dod presently provides in iraq our office of inspections has issued two reports a july two thousand and nine inspection of embassy baghdad and an october two thousand and ten compliance follow up review which addresses the embassys transition planning efforts in response to our cfr the department appointed a washington based ambassador in february two thousand and eleven to manage the iraq transition process we also issued reviews and eleven of the departments efforts to transition to a civilian led presence in iraq both reviews found that the transition was taking place in an operating environment that remains violent and unpredictable our october two thousand and nine report on the departments transition planning efforts recommended that embassy baghdad develop a unified transition plan and assign a senior transition coordinator in iraq establish a workforce plan to ensure timely completion of large infrastructure projects managed by the embassy determine what logcap services and contract management personnel would be required and verify resources needed to meet increased support requirements following d all of these recommendations have been closed our may two thousand and eleven report noted that embassy baghdad and the department had established planning and management mechanisms to effectively transition to a civilian led presence it also mentioned the department had made progress several key decisions were pending some transition planning could not be finalized and progress was slipping in some areas we remain concerned that some reconstruction projects were still experiencing delays and were not expected to be completed until mid two thousand and twelve and that establishing a viable diplomatic mission without dod support and funding would require considerable resources making it difficult to develop firm or detailed budget estimates the department generally agreed with and was responsive to the intent of the recommendations looking forward we have fifteen investigations related to iraq and nine related to afghanistan our two thousand and twelve iraq and afghanistan oversight plans include six audits plus a proposed joint audit dod oig of programs in baghdad and kabul in baghdad we will look at the worldwide protective services wps contract for embassy baghdad and twelve our office of inspections has planned inspections of the office of the coordinator for counterterrorism and the office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons the office of audits is following up on its work in the region regarding treatment by contractors of third country nationals and our office of investigations also is actively engaged on this issue we will continue to provide the department and congress with a comprehensive spectrum of audits inspections and investigations of post transition activity in iraq and preparations for transition planning in operations in afghanistan mister chairman mister tierney and members of the subcommittee thank you once again for the opportunity to appear today and i am ready to answer your affairs foreign service organization and more than two thirds of our auditors and investigators are career foreign service officers permanently assigned to usaid oig so that worldwide availability gives us a great deal of flexibility to put people where they need to be when they need to be in addition to that even though we participate in the nsd thirty eight process by statute we are exempt from country staffing level ceilings so while this has never been an issue and i dont think it ever will be we can put people where we need to put people regardless of what the situation is on the ground with staffing ceilings in the different embassies and again that gives us a great deal of flexibility and over the past eight years a couple of examples are opening country offices in iraq afghanistan and pakistan doubling the size of our staff in pretoria south africa to oversee the hilantos money for aids and infectious diseases in sub saharan africa and then opening a satellite office a smaller satellite in port au prince haiti to help the regional office in el salvador oversee the humanitarian assistance and reconstruction of post earthquake haiti so i think that regardless of whether it is a contingency operation or just a standard agency usaid operation i think we are uniquely situated to do that work to do the oversight work in iraq we started our oversight in two thousand and three with long term tdys and then when the embassy got up and running and the aid mission got up and running we established an office of seven auditors  investigators so we have been there pretty much with sigar right from the beginning and will continue to be there as the trajectory on the agencys programs in iraq are sort of leveling off to a traditional country  egypt and from iraq in afghanistan we developed a little bit differently clearly the infrastructure wasnt available early on so we were doing most of our work from the philippines we created a virtual country office in the philippines and we were literally on the ground full time in afghanistan with auditors and investigators doing the work but as the program increased in scope and complexity we worked out with the embassy to put an office there and now we have seven auditors u s direct hire auditors four foreign service national auditors we have four american u s direct hire investigators one foreign national investigator and we are probably going to put on one more foreign national investigator so we are committed both for the opportunity to appear before you and i would welcome any questions you might have about our oversight activity and the opportunities to improve that going forward mister chaffetz thank you we will now recognize the honorable stuart bowen who is the special inspector general for iraq bowen thank you chairman chaffetz ranking member tierney members of the committee for the opportunity to appear before you again and address our oversight work in iraq and also to take up the issue of improving oversight in contingency operations i just returned two weeks ago from my st trip to iraq over the last eight years met with my ten auditors and investigators while i was there and we are busy still addressing significant issues regarding the substantial u funds being expended in iraq it is true the military is departing the end of this month our footprint is shrinking but billions of dollars in taxpayer money is still being spent and that money requires firm and effective oversight for the coming year and the years thereafter on monday we appeared before the house committee on foreign affairs to address the largest expenditure planned for next year by the state department and that is the billion dollars for the police development program real questions were raised about the preparation for that much work remains to be done to ensure that it can succeed while i was in iraq i met with ambassador jeffrey our ambassador to iraq and ambassador sison who is in charge of the police development program and they concurred with our findings and are taking action vigorously to implement them however i remain concerned about a couple of matters that occurred over the last month regarding our presence there and one is a  review process that the state department has implemented to require us to vet the information that we normally get for our quarterly reports back through offices here in washington which will impede our responsiveness you have come to rely on investigations these raise continuing concerns about our capacity to execute effective oversight in iraq but i also want to address the governments capacity to execute effective oversight in contingency operations the wartime commission in its final report a few months ago rightly recognizes that the united states can improve its ability to oversee contingency operations it will provide funds savings of money in iraq that is the bottom line in iraq afghanistan and all overseas contingencies going forward the special inspector general for overseas contingencies would save taxpayer dollars have done that in iraq it is being done in afghanistan it would be done in future contingency operations let me take very quickly there are three objections to it that have been raised one it would be a layer of additional oversight the opposite is true the experience of sigir in iraq has been that we have coalesced in focused oversight of the iraq reconstruction mission and as a result have generated more effective work more output work that would have been more difficult to accomplish if there had been three four five inspector generals offices operating also we created the iraq inspector general council and as mister carroll pointed out we worked very closely with aid from the beginning and with state and with  over time through that process to generate better work it has been an effective catalyst to synergize oversight efforts in country not a layer second the special inspector general for overseas contingencies would not sit no doubt that the use of this office would be regular and necessary and again would generate savings of funds and finally and this is the most important thing would the amount for the time necessary until contingencies occurred and then would be directed by the congress at the congress call to provide oversight in contingencies as they arise it would be a tool for the congress a ways to strength oversight of reconstruction in afghanistan as you know the president has requested more than eighteen dollars billion in the fiscal year two thousand and twelve budget to assist afghanistan if approved this will bring total appropriations to ninety  which is the largest rebuilding effort since the marshall plan congress created sigar in two thousand and eight to provide oversight for this significant investment since then our auditors and investigators have had a positive impact on the reconstruction effort we have issued forty nine audit reports and made one hundred and forty nine recommendations that have led to great accountability and improvements in contracting and program management just this year our auditors have identified nearly seventy dollars million in funds that should be returned to the u s government sigar investigators have played an important role in both detecting and deterring fraud the work has resulted in the recent successful prosecution of the largest bribery case to date from afghanistan this year they produced fifty one dollars million in fines penalties for seizures and savings however i believe sigar can and must do more to strengthen oversight during this critical transition period in afghanistan so we are taking aggressive steps to focus our audit and investigative work on the most critical areas of the reconstruction effort we have developed a fiscal year two thousand and twelve audit plan that identifies five critical areas to successful afghanistan reconstruction they are private security contractors afghan governance capacity and  sustainability contracting program results and evaluations fraud detection and mitigation we have also added inspections to provide timely assessments of infrastructure projects these rapid reviews will verify if the work was performed correctly and achieved intended outcomes most importantly this work can help determine if projects are sustainable we are also adding a series of audits to examine contract expenditures these audits will allow us to more accurately assess whether the u s government has been billed properly along with our sister oversight agencies we consistently coordinate to avoid duplicating each others work however we know that we need a more comprehensive and targeted approach therefore along with our colleagues we are developing a strategic framework to guide the ig communitys work in afghanistan reconstruction we intend to identify the issues most important to lawmakers and policymakers and use these issues to drive the results of the ig communitys work sigar hosted the first meeting of this effort last week finally sigar is taking a leadership role in holding contractors accountable in afghanistan we are expanding our investigative presence in afghanistan to build criminal cases we have one hundred and eleven ongoing criminal investigations sixty eight of which involve contract and procurement fraud criminal and civil legal proceedings however can take substantial periods of time so sigar has also enhanced its suspension and debarment program to address the need for more timely and targeted actions sigar is currently on track to make approximately eighty suspension and debarment referrals by the end of this year sigar is taking important steps to enhance however the implementing agencies also have a responsibility to strengthen oversight of their own operations during my recent trip to afghanistan i met with high level u s civilian and military officials to discuss what steps they are taking to improve contract and program management i will continue to engage in these important discussions which also help to better target sigars work let me conclude by saying that we have listened closely to this committees thoughtful questions about oversight and we are heeding your concerns the congress has provided enormous resources for afghanistan reconstruction in a difficult budgetary environment at sigar we are committed to ensuring that our oversight not only protects this historic investment but helps u s implementing agencies produce better results thank you mister chairman for giving little bit outside of your lane but i would appreciate it if you would offer a perspective the commission on wartime contracting had indicated that there were some fifty six thousand fifty six thousand contracts behind in terms with respect to dcaa i would just say generally first off that i think they probably are under resourced and need help in that respect but historically dcaa has been a very challenged organization they do a tremendous amount of work for a lot of agencies not just inside the department of defense but outside the department of defense in the last three to four years the dcaa has undergone some sweeping changes as a result of some fairly significant criticisms of their leadership of their process s and not meeting expectations as a result of that it has new leadership today with pat fitzgerald who was the director of army audit and pat has taken on a gigantic job and with the work that  my office has done to try to help them identify vulnerabilities in their management in their processes and how to be an effective organization for the last two years their focus has been and this is gordon heddell talking more internal than external so while under ideal circumstances they would have been focusing outward doing great work doing lots of audits with very experienced and good leadership a lot of hours and spending a lot of money and a lot of resources as that expenditure has gone up help me understand what is happening with the actual auditors themselves because you have been appropriated more money mister heddell absolutely in fact i have been a very is that the budget the eighty seven dollars million in plus ups that i have received have not been annualized and what that means is that although i am very fortunate to get these plus ups i am not able to use that money to  come to haunt us today one is that while we sent our military forces into southwest asia to fight two wars there was a mistaken belief by many of the civilian agencies that they could fight those two wars in the continental united states my own organization being one of those and it wasnt until three or four years ago that we came to the realization you cannot do that you must be present and you have to have the people in place you have to have the footprint the second thing that happened is that the department of defenses budget doubled to about six hundred and fifty dollars billion and at the same time the  contract acquisition and contract management workforce in fact was reduced in size meaning that we lacked thousands and thousands of needed contracting specialists that are not there to oversight these contracts that are not there to raise their hand and say stop the assembly line we are spending money that we are not watching we are not surveiling it so those are two major issues mister chaffetz well thank you i appreciate it i think this highlights a multibillion dollar challenge and problem that we certainly need to address and fix because i think there is a definite need that is pervasive in the congress both the house and the senate to make sure that these types of functions are in place but the way that the money is last part i think we have seriously hollowed out a lot of our agencies in terms of keeping at least the personnel on board to oversee and to manage contracts we find that repeatedly every time we have a hearing on that respect if we are going to contract out which is not always a good idea but if we are going to do it then at least we have to keep on board enough people to sort of manage these things well for everybodys benefit in your report mister heddell on the subsistence prime vendor contract for afghanistan you found that while supreme group provided the products that were required by the contract the defense logistics agency failed to provide sufficient oversight of contract cost and performance specifically you found that the agency overpaid the vendor nearly one hundred dollars million in transportation costs paid the vendor four hundred and fifty five dollars million to airlift fresh fruits and vegetables without properly incorporating those requirements into the contract and allowed supreme to bill the army over fifty dollars million in costs for the wrong appropriation year what recourse do you have  about how bad it can get and clearly this happened this contract was created back in two thousand and five it wasnt a well designed well thought out contract  probably like many contracts during that period consequently we spent some three dollars billion on this contract and as you said we overpaid the prime vendor million in services to airlift fruit and vegetables from the united arab emirates into afghanistan without even including that in the contract all of that is a result of not planning properly  and designing a contract that was not in the best interest of the american people now we have gone my organization to the defense logistics agency and we have told them we want that money back and the defen prices that should have been charged imagine that a contract created in two thousand and five and now in december of two thousand and eleven we are just now determining what should have been the reasonable and fair prices to pay okay but they have agreed mister ranking member to do that and they are currently in face to face negotiations with supreme and the time line projection for a resolution on this and i would never hold my breath and think we will get it all back but a resolution for this is actually scheduled for december th this week so i am hopeful that when we talk again that i can say to you we have been able to recover a great trent you will recall that from the contracts that we looked at in the trucking situation in afghanistan the lack of vision or ability to look into the contracts the subcontracts and the finer detail of those were just never written into the contracts to begin with so mister bowen tell me would a special inspector general for contingency operations help alleviate this problem of sending people in getting part way down the road before you realize all these mistakes are out there was a challenge i think at dod but also with the other igs in moving forward in being there to do the oversight one of the lessons from sigir is that you have to be there to do the work a special inspector generals office would be hiring people who know that when they sign on they are going to go and deploy and carry out oversight in the conflict zone finally and this is a good example of how a sigoco could make a difference cross agency jurisdiction something unique to a special ig that the institutional igs dont have that means i can dig in to problems like this and find out if it is dod money being wasted or state money or aid money however that money  we have a significant and serious challenge as you point out with corruption in the karzai government in afghanistan the efforts with corruption in afghanistan  almost insurmountable clearly we need more of a concerted will by the government there and we need a much stronger and robust criminal justice system which they simply dont have so we are doing what we can to monitor those either what should we be doing because you said something about how we need a more robust criminal system well they dont have one they dont have the proper procedures they dont have the proper oversight people so what should we be that we have to continue to bring pressure wherever possible on the government itself to show a concerted effort in the area of corruption and prosecute some of their own ministers we have to continue to conduct the audits and continue to work on the investigative side with the afghan authorities that we can work with to pursue afghan violators mister trent okay thank you very much mister bowen right now the police development program is the administrations largest foreign aid program for iraq going forward and there is some evidence that the iraqis dont even want this program have you or your staff asked the iraqi police forces if they need the five hundred dollars million a year program that the obama administration is planning to spend on he didnt see any real benefit from the police development program i addressed that with him when i was in iraq a couple weeks ago and i asked him did you need what you said and his response was well provide this program mister bowen there is a belief that security continues to be a challenging issue in iraq a well founded belief i might add given the events of this week  high level training program involving about one hundred and fifty police trainers who as we have seen again this week are going to have a very difficult time moving about the country mister labrador so what other problems have you found with the police development program if any several mister labrador we pointed out in our audit that one iraqi buy in something the congress requires from iraq by law that is a contribution of fifty percent to such programs has not been secured in writing or in fact by any other  country that has significant wealth should be able to contribute but has not been forced to do so in a program as crucial as this mister labrador i know i have run out of time but mister geisel do you have some comments on this  well of course first of all i am not going to second guess my friend and colleague on what his people found and of course the people you need to bring up here are the people from the state department to comment on what he found i saw that the department published a document a twenty one page document that includes goals and measures of performance for the welch thank you very much mister labrador i want to thank each and every one of you for the terrific work that you are doing a lot of the situations that you are uncovering just reflect the impossible expectations oftentimes that congress has and if it were as easy as writing a check and having the police force in iraq and afghanistan be established it would be no problem and against i think our better judgments sometimes we spend this money and then surprise surprise you tell us a lot of it is being wasted  but i really do applaud the work that you are doing i am going to be introducing legislation that does trigger debarment proceedings for contractors that are convicted of violating the bribery provisions of the foreign corrupt practices act and there is some debate between my office and the attorney generals office as to how strict that should be that is a very critical tool for  do you believe that dod usaid and state are adequately and appropriately using the authority in iraq and afghanistan and if not what are the barriers to its use and how can we work through them to ensure th attorney generals office and he was in the anti corruption unit and they were there training afghan civil servants about how to detect corruption and when i asked the attorney general how is it going he said well we had to end the program and i said why is that and he sa because when we were tearing them how to detect it they were using the information to do it so that is a real challenge that we face but when we visited the commanders one of the things they were promoting was the development of the kajaki hydroelectric dam which cost about four hundred and seventy five dollars million and the benefits of it are obvious if it could be implemented it would provide hydroelectric power electricity maybe some irrigation but that is not coming out of our budget it would be a supplemental expenditure so it is not like the military would be taking that out of their ability to do their job it would come from somewhere else so i was a little bit skeptical because it is easy to promote the expenditure of somebody elses money but bottom line that is a conflict zone and significant questions about whether this could be done and my question to you is does it make sense at this point to ask the taxpayers to pay four hundred and seventy five dollars million on a hydroelectric project that would have extensive transmission lines all of which would be easily attackable by insurgents or does it make sense to put that department secretary panetta has said that such a cut as projected under the sequester process would be devastating to the defense department and our security and are we going to know mister heddell if the sequester is really going to have an impact on defense when we dont really have a grasp on the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars we are spending now although i cant comment on the sequester congressman yarmuth i can tell you that in the last three or four years i have seen significant progress in the inspector general community in terms of its oversight and i have also seen progress with respect to the way the commanders in fact i just got back from afghanistan myself and i have seen progress in terms of the approach respect to core capabilities meaning their ability to manage government something we had not done before so that we have a way of teaching them how to do it and then going back and making sure that they are accountable so we are creating systems and processes i cant assure you that that is going to work but it is something we should have done before the other thing the inspector general community itself which is  significant tool in overcoming so many of the challenges four years ago the statement that if you have seen one ig you have seen one ig was really true today it is not true once the  amendment to the inspector general act was passed a few years ago what has happened is similar to what has happened in law enforcement all of the big things now are done in task forces they are done in teams w mentioned earlier the use of tools such as debarment well that is a great tool but you have to realize that what happens is when we debar a company in afghanistan what happens is they just go back and change their name and reapply and get a new contract that happens over and over again so the answer isnt simply debarment and obviously we have had almost no success in prosecuting using the  prosecuting attorney in afghanistan so we have to find ways to influence the leadership to do the right things and i think with the oversight community we have done that again i cant comment on what  me recently is we have a world that is moving at eighty miles an hour and we have a government that is structured to run at twenty miles an hour and it has taken us this long in iraq and afghanistan to even begin to get a handle on this i mean it seems to me we have a fundamental structural problem that we dont know how to keep up with the situations we find ourselves in mister heddell we are habitually late and i said that earlier in my testimony when we had four successfully fight a war unless everyone is involved civilian agencies and that we are ahead it has taken us now three or four years to get there but i think sir i think we are getting much closer to getting to where we need to be mister yarmuth thank you i dont have an answer here in congress is that there are some things that both sides agree on that we need to be working on and yet we are not doing them i look at the oversight committee i dont think there is a lot of difference there might be some s differences between the two sides but it seems like we can identify things like the five hundred dollars billion that we are going to spend in iraq police force that they dont even want we should be finding things in common that we could be saving on if w transparent in history he wants a window for all americans into the business of the government and that is something that i want i actually agree with him on this issue but yet this panel is representing the ig offices principally responsible for overseeing taxpayer money in iraq and afghanistan and as of january th of next year four of the five offices will not have an ig i am concerned about that now i want everybody to comment do you know whether the president has nominated anyone to fill these vacancies if so who has been nominated have you made any recommendations and do you think the absence of permanent igs will actually harm our  efforts in oversight and anyone can take this question mister heddell i certainly would like to comment number one i dont know the names congressman labrador of anyone that might have been nominated or who is being considered to be nominated number two i can when i took over as the acting inspector general in july of two thousand and eight the dod ig at the very top had been vacant for so many years over the past ten twelve years you can imagine so to run an organization using an acting inspector general as the leader is foolhardy you can do it for a few months but you cannot succeed over years and decades and truly a partnership between him and i so as i moved into the acting role other than the fact that it is a bit of a workload issue for me the work goes on and the leadership philosophy continues so i just want wonderful advantage and that is that they have hiring authorities and they had generous funding that the statutory igs didnt have sigoco is one way to approach it another way  approach that issue is to give us the statutory igs those same authorities and robust funding now i cant complain about funding because since i came  the department in two thousand and eight congress has plussed us up marvelously but those hiring authorities it would make a real difference and i agree with what he said those authorities are crucial to doing the kind of job that you would like us to do mister labrador what concerns me about the idea is that it is something that we do here in washington all the time something isnt working and what we end up doing is creating a whole new agency or whole new department instead of giving the authority to the people that are already in charge of doing it giving them the responsibility it seems like we do this in all of our agencies and then what we create is just another layer of administration and responsibility so i just wish we could find a way to actually use the existing people that we have right now the existing authorities instead of trying to create new agencies but i do understand his concern and i think we all share the concern that we should be saving taxpayer money  position on that the sigoco concept the special inspector general for contingency operations would not be duplicative if it is carried out in the way that the legislation is drafted and the way it is intended currently there is nobody responsible for contingency operations unless they are specially appointed they are appointed on a case by case situation as and when it arises and the congress decides to implement and all of the existing inspectors general have a handful doing what they are doing within their country carrying out oversight but frequently as we have learned in iraq as we see in afghanistan programs merge money and when they merge money you are going to ultimately have different igs attacking it or perhaps no one addressing it because of that merger sigoco would allow that that cross jurisdictional power second it would be the primary mission of sigoco to carry out this oversight we know that had sigoco existed in two thousand and three we would have averted the waste of billions of dollars we know that had sigar existed in two thousand and two we would have averted the waste of billions of dollars because of the aggressive presence of investigation and audit on the ground that would have been there third you would  staff that when they sign up they sign up to go to a conflict zone that is not something that my friends and colleagues can require of their staff now they cant say hey you are going to be going to a war zone to do oversight and that was a problem frankly in two thousand five two thousand and six two thousand and seven getting people to volunteer to go to iraq which was a very dangerous place still is afghanistan is today and finally as i said in my testimony this would save money that is the watchword for this era  this is the oversight and government reform committee the latter rubric should be applied when it can be applied in a money saving way sigoco would be one of those ways  you i just remind my colleague that all of these different agencies inspectors general for their respective agencies and departments as busy all the time so when you have a contingency operation all of a sudden now you have to somehow ramp up and try to do all the things you are doing that are consuming all of your time  there are other issues that you raised but i think mister bowen has sort of hit them on the head on that so if can move from that a little bit on to the sustainability of projects that my colleagues raised earlier the whole wartime contracting commission which incidentally we had to do legislation on to get over it because of the issues in contingency contracting we had to get people in there and start looking at why things werent being dredged out in the very beginning their final chapter sums up the whole issue on project sustainability by saying that the commission sees no indication that defense state and usaid are making adequate plans to ensure that host nations will be able to operate and maintain u s funded projects on their own nor are they taking sustainability risks into account when devising new projects or programs just for the do we find that still to be the case or are there things being done to have them include sustainability risks in their projects as they move forward particularly in iraq as we move out of that area but in afghanistan and elsewhere as well whoever might want to volunteer on as far as oversight of that question in every one of our performance audits in iraq and afghanistan we have an audit objective for sustainability and to be honest what we have found to date is that it is sort of a mixed we corrected that mister carroll well i am not sure exactly why the embassy and aid decided to build that project and build it the way they did with diesel fuel that could or could not be shipped in  and then decided to move in a different direction the way it has been described now is that the kabul power plant is a fallback and a surge capacity to the larger infrastructure that they are putting forward so you if you would on that i guess you are not prepared to answer it today but you can go back and find out just what happened and this business about now it is a backup plan or something like that that is just an excuse you and i both know that and i think everybody on the panel knows that they messed up they got is adequate so that the work can actually be done and both of those are huge impediments and it comes into conflict to some extent with policy objectives where lets say in afghanistan there is a desire to build a civil society mister carroll i will ask you because your department bears so much of the responsibility for the implementation of some of these projects it is a predicate question that should be asked an the iraqi police training that mister labrador was asking about or is there a sufficient security situation so that the work can be done that might be relevant to something like the dam project and if you lack either or both of those does it make any sense under any circumstances to do a hail mary pass on a major expenditure hoping that it will happen just because we would like it to happen well aid you are right their meat and potatoes is civil society is democracy and governments it is health it is education it is all those programs they do do reconstruction and they have done reconstruction in iraq and they have done it to an extent in afghanistan and i think it wouldnt be news if i were to say that it is difficult to do development in the middle of a war in the middle of a hostility so it has been problematic particularly on the reconstruction side the infrastructure side you know m funding more development assistance through afghan ministries and they have a process in place to do some capacity assessment of the systems in place and the ministries ability to do the work and as they convince themselves or as the data presents itself they move forward or not on their program so i would say that for the traditional aid programs civil society democracy and governments health  is a meaningless statement the afghan people who are they do you know what i mean in a general sense the afghan people are as desirous to have good things happen as we are but there is not a structure there is not a political implementation program there is not sufficient security i have met contractors who are confined to basically the embassy compound and how do you manage this is enormous frustration for you but i think there is an illusion that congress is the one that is primarily responsible because we have the money go out under circumstances where there is no practical possibility that it will be well used and then we will get angry at you when you report to us that hey a lot of money went missing so there is a predicate question here we probably should be asking it but i am wondering whether some organization like aid might have to certify that for this project we have a reliable governmental partner or we have sufficient security that it can be done