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RULE OF LAW ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 17, 2001

Serial No. 107–66

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

——— ———

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

TOM LANTOS, California

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

——— ———

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

THOMAS COSTA, Professional Staff Member

JASON CHUNG, Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 17, 2001 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Ford, Jess T., Associate Director, National Security and International

Affairs Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by Stephen M. Lord, Assistant Director, International Affairs and Trade;

and James B. Michels, Senior Evaluator .................................................... 5

Rosenblum, Daniel, Deputy Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the Newly

Independent States, U.S. Department of State; Viviann Gary, Director,

Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Europe and Eurasia,

U.S. Agency for International Development; Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, Department of Justice;

Peter Prahar, Deputy Director, Office of Asian, African and European/

NIS Programs, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs; and Pamela J. Hicks, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary

(Law Enforcement) of the Treasury ............................................................ 32

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Ford, Jess T., Associate Director, National Security and International

Affairs Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 8

Gary, Viviann, Director, Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau

for Europe and Eurasia, U.S. Agency for International Development,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 40

Prahar, Peter, Deputy Director, Office of Asian, African and European/

NIS Programs, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, prepared statement of ........................................................... 75

Rosenblum, Daniel, Deputy Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the Newly

Independent States, U.S. Department of State, prepared statement of ... 34

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

Swartz, Bruce, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division,

Department of Justice, prepared statement of ........................................... 60

(1)

RULE OF LAW ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS

AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:30 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Mr. Shays, Mr. Putnam, Mr. Kucinich, Mr. Platts, and

Mr. Clay.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director/counsel; Thomas

Costa, professional staff member; Jason Chung, clerk; David

Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant

clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. The subcommittee will come to order.

Where law ends, tyranny begins. With these words, British

statesman William Pitt succinctly mapped the boundary between

democracy and despotism. From the Ten Commandments to our

Constitution, free peoples have enshrined their principles and aspirations in statutes, preferring the rule of law to the whim of tyrants.

For more than a decade, U.S. foreign assistance programs have

promoted development of the legislation, institutions, procedures,

and habits that establish the primacy of law and justice over fiat

and corruption. Rule of law programs seek to assure the power of

the state is used to advance, not diminish, collective and individual

rights through legal education and training, an independent judiciary, impartial law enforcement, and broad access to the courts.

Since the former Soviet Union dissolved, the United States has allocated more than $200 million to the Newly Independent States

to fuel the transition from political and economic totalitarianism to

a fair, just and prosperous civil society.

To determine whether these efforts are capitalizing on indigenous democratic urges and achieving lasting reforms, we asked the

General Accounting Office [GAO] to analyze how effectively the Departments of State, Justice, Treasury and the U.S. Agency for

International Development manage and monitor rule of law programs.

With the past as prologue, the findings GAO reports today

should be of no surprise. Eight years ago, GAO concluded judicial

and legal reform assistance was ineffective and wasteful unless

program managers gauged the receptiveness of the host nation, acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:20 Aug 21, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\79866.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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knowledged entrenched political and institutional barriers, evaluated progress toward tangible outcomes and coordinated with other

agencies.

Despite the benefit of these lessons learned, current rule of law

assistance in the former Soviet Union has had little lasting impact,

according to GAO. Like seeds cast on rocky soil, market reforms

and legal improvements have not taken root. Naive hopes often

supplant hard measures of host country willingness to embrace

change. Local funding to sustain the infrastructure of an open,

transparent legal system is not available. Program managers too

often settle for intangible, unmeasurable benefits, such as improved law enforcement contacts, which could be achieved as effectively though other means.

The failure to set realistic goals and monitor progress has resulted in millions wasted in places like Haiti and Ukraine, where

conditions now appear worse. Money spent is not the measure of

success for rule of law programs. U.S. aid can fan the flames of reform. It cannot generate the spark. In a nation ready and willing

to embrace change, a small grant can yield profound and lasting

results. In a nation determined to cling to the old ways, no amount

will overcome institutional corruption and cultural resistance to

equality under the law.

This is not to say rule of law assistance should be abandoned.

Our reverence as a nation for the rule of law demands we not just

mean well, but actually do well in helping translate nascent democratic aspirations into the words and deeds of an open, just society.

So potentially potent an element of U.S. foreign assistance should

be better planned, more accurately targeted, more effectively coordinated, more rigorously evaluated and better managed. It

should not take another 8 years for the GAO recommendations in

this new report to be implemented.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We appreciate the assistance of the General Accounting Office in this oversight, and we welcome the testimony of all

our witnesses.

We’re pleased to have the first panel today, giving his testimony,

Jess Ford, Associate Director, National Security and International

Affairs Division, GAO, who’s accompanied by Stephen Lord, Assistant Director, International Affairs and Trade, GAO, and James

Michels, Senior Evaluator, International Affairs and Trade, again

for the U.S. GAO.

We’d also like to acknowledge Mr. Platts from Pennsylvania. Mr.

Platts, do you have an opening statement?

Mr. PLATTS. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Very well.

At this time, I’d ask the panel and all those accompanying you

who intend to give testimony for the record to stand for the swearing in.

Raise your right hands, please.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Let the record note that the witnesses responded in

the affirmative.

With that, Mr. Ford, you’re recognized for your opening statement.

STATEMENT OF JESS T. FORD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS DIVISION,

U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY STEPHEN M. LORD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRADE; AND JAMES B. MICHELS, SENIOR EVALUATOR

Mr. FORD. Members of the subcommittee, with your permission

I’d like to have my full statement added for the record. I’m going

to try to summarize it.

I’m pleased to be here today to discuss U.S. rule of law programs

in the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union, which

we reviewed at your request. My testimony will highlight some of

the major points that we made in our report which is being released today.

With me is Mr. Steve Lord, who is our assistant director responsible for this project and Mr. Jim Michels, who is a senior analyst

also heavily involved in this project.

Since 1991, the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet

Union have been struggling to overcome a long tradition of totalitarian rule marked by an arbitrary system of justice and state suppression of human rights. To support these states’ transition to a

more open and democratic style of government, the U.S. Government has committed about $216 million in assistance in fiscal

years 1992 to 2000 to help them develop sustainable institutions,

traditions and legal foundations for establishing a strong rule of

law.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department

of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department of Treasury are the key Federal agencies responsible for administering this

program.

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My discussion of the U.S. Government’s rule of law program in

the Newly Independent States will focus on two key issues. First,

our assessment of the extent to which the program has had impact

on the development of rule of law and whether program results

were sustainable. Second, identification of factors which affect the

program’s impact and sustainability. By sustainability, we mean

the extent to which the benefits of the program extend beyond the

program’s life span.

Our review focused primarily on Russia and Ukraine, which received at least half of the total U.S. rule of law assistance during

that timeframe. The U.S. Government’s rule of law assistance efforts in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union

have had limited impact so far and results may not be sustainable

in many cases. U.S. agencies have helped support a variety of legal

reforms and have had some success in introducing a variety of innovative legal concepts and practices related to the operation of the

courts, legal education, law enforcement and civil society in these

countries.

For example, United States helped establish legal eduction clinics in Russian and Ukrainian law schools to help provide practical

training for future lawyers as well as greater access to the court,

to legal remedies for their problems. However, U.S. assistance has

not often major long term impact on the evolution of rule of law

in these countries.

In some cases, countries have not clearly adopted on a wide scale

the new concepts and practices that the United States has advocated. Moreover, it is not clear whether U.S. supported activities

are likely to be sustained beyond our current involvement. For example, we’ve found that judicial training centers that the United

States helped establish in Ukraine to train judges and other court

officials have either been shut down or dismantled or are seriously

under-utilized.

In Russia, jury trials which the United States helped introduce

have not been expanded beyond the initial pilot project in 9 of the

89 regions within the country. In other cases, continuation or expansion of innovations depend on further funding from the U.S.

Government or other donors. For example, in Russia and Ukraine,

local non-government organizations that we visited continued to

rely heavily on foreign donor support to conduct activities initially

sponsored by the United States, such as continuing legal education

for practicing lawyers, as well as legal advocacy and public awareness activities.

Overall, progress in establishing the rule of law has been slow

in the Newly Independent States and appears to have actually deteriorated in recent years in several of these countries, including

Russia and Ukraine, according to data used by U.S. agencies to

measure U.S. involvement and assistance results. It is clear that

establishing the rule of law is a complex, long term undertaking

and in the Newly Independent States, laws and institutions that

were designed are generally still under the power of the state.

In our review, we found that the impact and sustainability of

U.S. rule of law programs has been affected by a number of factors,

including limited political consensus for reform, foreign government

budget constraints to institutionalize some of the more expensive

7

innovations and weaknesses in how U.S. agencies designed and implemented these programs.

The first two factors have created a very difficult environment in

which to foster rule of law development. As a result, many key

legal institutional improvements have yet to be made, including the

passage of some post-Soviet era criminal and civil code procedures.

Moreover, U.S. agencies have not always designed and implemented these eight projects with an emphasis on achieving sustainable outcomes and monitoring program impact and sustainability.

The Departments of State, Justice and Treasury have not developed specific strategies for achieving long term objectives or desired

outcomes of their assistance projects, such as reforming national

law enforcement practices. Instead, efforts have focused on achieving short term outputs, such as training a finite number of people.

Further, none of the agencies, including USAID, have effective

monitoring and evaluation systems in place to fully assess the

longer term results and sustainability of their efforts. Recently,

U.S. agencies have begun to pay attention, increased attention, to

improving project planning and evaluation or are in the process of

making changes.

However, the State Department has committed but not yet spent approximately $30 million in law enforcement training projects,

many of which were designed prior to these new reforms. Unless

these funds are reprogrammed for other purposes or the projects

are redesigned, they may have limited impact or sustainability.

In our report, we made three recommendations to the Secretary

of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Treasury and the

AID Administrator. First, we recommended that they require for

each rule of law project that their agencies implement specific

strategies for achieving impact and sustainable results. Second,

that there be a provision added for the monitoring and evaluation

of outcomes and indicators used to measure those results. Third,

we recommended that State, Justice and Treasury review the current pipeline of training projects to ensure that they are designed

to achieve sustainable impacts and sustainable results.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. We would

be pleased to answer any of your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much for your opening statement.

At this time I’d like to ask the ranking member, Mr. Kucinich,

if he would like to give his opening statement.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman, and I’d be glad to go right

to questions.

Mr. SHAYS. You are recognized for questions. Oh, we have one

more statement. I’m sorry. Mr. Clay, would you like to make an

opening statement?

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I will forego an opening statement and

ask some questions of the panel. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Very good. Mr. Kucinich, you’re recognized for questions.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you. A question of GAO. I want to ask

about your basic findings. You concluded that the impact of U.S.

rule of law programs in the former Soviet states is limited. You

gave examples of the goals that have not been achieved. You also

provided examples of some remarkable achievements.

My question is, what standard did you use to arrive at your determination that the impact of these programs was limited?

Mr. FORD. Essentially, we reviewed project documentation provided by each of the four key agencies involved in implementing

the projects. We attempted to use criteria that they themselves employed to determine whether or not actual impact was being

achieved on individual projects.

We found that in many cases, such criteria didn’t really exist as

far as long term impact. They often talked about output type of indicators, such as training people without necessarily a follow-on

outcome measure to say what the purpose of the training or the follow-on, to make sure that this was going to be applied on a broader

basis.

So we essentially used the criteria that existed in the program

documents that all of the agencies used in each of these projects.

Mr. KUCINICH. Your prepared statement said that progress has

been slow, compared to what?

Mr. FORD. Well, we’ve been doing this for 8 years. I think that

using the indicators again that some of the agencies use, if you look

at the overall impact of rule of law in Russia and Ukraine, there

hasn’t been a significant amount of overall change in their government. So again, we used both their project level indicators and also

broader indicators, such as the Freedom House results, which were

included in our statement, to try to get a sense of whether or not

there is any real broad based improvement and we just haven’t

seen it.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you use indicators that are connected with the

IMF, for example, or any other international financial institutions?

Mr. FORD. For this particular project, we have not used those

types of indicators. Now, we did issue a report on Russia in November of last year which did include assessments of IMF, World Bank

and also broader foreign assistance programs, which included economic reforms, privatization. It was a different type of audit, but

we did use those type of criteria in that effort.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. I thank the gentleman and yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman yields back his time. Mr. Clay, you’re

recognized.

22

Before we move forward, let me read into the—I ask unanimous

consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to

place any opening statement in the record, and that the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statements in the record. Is there objection? Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. Ford, the focus of this report was on the former Soviet

states. How does the progress or the lack thereof in the former Soviet states compare to other regions of the world where similar programs have been attempted?

Mr. FORD. That’s a little tough question to answer on a global

basis. We have done some work on rule of law similar to this

project in the last couple of years. We issued a report about 2 years

ago on five Latin American countries, and we issued a report last

year on Haiti. I can say that when you take probably the case that

was the more difficult one in terms of showing impact, it was the

work we did in Haiti. The key point there in that work was that

the political commitment on the part of the government wasn’t

there. And as a result, a lot of the effort that we had put into Haiti

didn’t bear much fruit.

With regard to the other report that we issued in 1998, we found

much more mixed results. The common thread that I think we see

in all of these types of projects is there needs to be fairly strong

political will on the part of your partner that you’re working with,

be that the local government itself or the NGO community, for

these things to be successful. I think that our work overall would

tend to show that we had more success when there’s a stronger political will and commitment on the part of our partners, and then

when you don’t see that type of thing occurring, the impact tends

to be significantly less.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me rephrase my questions. Have rule of law programs worked anywhere in the world?

Mr. FORD. Have they been successful?

Mr. SHAYS. Have they been successful.

Mr. FORD. I think it’s fair to say that in some countries we’ve

had some fairly significant success in getting various aspects of

rule of law implemented. I think that again, the work we did in

Latin America, there are examples, El Salvador is one that comes

to mind where we’ve had a number of successful programs there

to implement aspects of independent judiciary, legal reforms.

Now, to say whether or not these governments are fully Jeffersonian democracies, I can’t get that far. But I think there are

places where we’ve had success.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m not sure that we’re a Jeffersonian democracy any

more. [Laughter.]

You mentioned that one of the key indicators is the political will

there in the indigenous country. How do you evaluate, how do you

determine whether or not the political will is there?

Mr. FORD. Well, I think as we say in this particular report, one

sign would be whether or not some of the efforts that we have undertaken are being sustained, or are going to be picked up by our

partner. So for example, when we make an investment in developVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:20 Aug 21, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\79866.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing, say, a legal center, where we’re going to train indigenous folks

to be lawyers, I think at some point there should be a commitment

on the part of our partner to help sustain that effort. That means

they have to put resources into the project, they have to make

equipment available. And when we looked at some of the projects,

in this particular case, we didn’t see that happening.

So I think that’s a sign, perhaps, of lack of political will on the

part of our partner to carry through with some of the reforms that

we’d like to see.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there an objective way to evaluate whether or not

the political will is there before we are into it, before we’ve committed resources and time and personnel?

Mr. FORD. I think there are some steps that can be taken. I think

adding some conditions to the assistance that we provide, where we

expect to see a quid pro quo for the assistance that we provide can

be added to some of the agreements that we sign up for. So I think

yes, there are some things we can do. Let’s try to get a commitment up front that whatever efforts we undertake, there will be

some further follow-on activity on the part of our partner.

Mr. SHAYS. Which NGO’s have been most helpful in assisting the

various departments of U.S. Government in developing these as

well?

Mr. MICHELS. We visited a wide variety of NGO’s, some of which

were more active than others. There was an NGO in Ukraine that

was working on women’s rights issues, one of the few NGO’s that

we saw that actually raised money locally from businesses and citizens. We found pockets of NGO activity that were very aggressive.

Most of the rest of them depended on foreign support, U.S. support

or other countries over the longer term. But many of them, especially while they were getting the funding, were very active.

The ones that come to mind, in Ukraine also, environmental

NGO’s. We’ve been supporting them for several years. It’s time for

them to become more independent now. But they’ve been very effective. There are some labor rights NGO’s in Russia that we found

that actually were pushing litigation through the system and getting legal rights for workers. Again, dependent on a lot of support

from labor unions and organizations outside of Russia. But very

committed.

Mr. SHAYS. How much private support is there from within the

United States for these programs? Is the bar association a leader

in this effort? Are there other attorneys’ organizations or professional associations that are leaders in this effort, or is the Government out there by themselves?

Mr. MICHELS. There are certainly pockets. We noticed for example in Russia, in Korellia, there were partnerships between lawyers

and judges in Vermont and in the region of Korellia. It’s hard to

canvass and figure out exactly where all those exist. But we certainly did find pockets. We found that the Soils Foundation, which

particularly is very active, was supporting many of the same types

of programs that we were doing, especially in the legal clinic area.

It was almost a little bit of competition among donors to find things

that will work and that will fund them.

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Ford, what are the results of the agencies’ focusing on short term outputs, and how should they retool their programs to establish some form of long term objective?

Mr. FORD. I think what we’d like to see, and by the way, since

we’ve completed our work, we understand that a number of the

agencies are in fact moving in the direction we’d like to see. What

we want is for them to design projects and efforts that have much

more clear and long term outcome orientation than just saying that

they train 20 people in a particular course or something of that nature. We want to see more of a linkage between a broader outcome

when we’re going to make an investment in most of these programs. What we saw in the work in the past was that often didn’t

occur, wasn’t readily available in the documentation that we reviewed. Particularly this was true in the law enforcement area.

So we would like to see the key agencies that are involved in

these type activities in effect have a better game plan that articulates a longer term goal.

Mr. SHAYS. What are the major barriers to success in these programs? Are the cultural barriers? Is it a resentment that the U.S.

Government is there to tell them how to do things? What is the

biggest obstacle to success in this regard?

Mr. FORD. I think the biggest obstacle is really whether they

really want to make major changes in the way they do business.

If you read, particularly for Russia and Ukraine, the literature

with regard to real reform of the judiciary, a real attempt to overcome some of the problems they have, like pretrial detention, there

hasn’t been much progress in that area. I think, to me anyway,

that’s a sign that maybe they’re not as committed to making fundamental changes that they need to make.

So I think that’s a key factor. I think the economy of these countries obviously is a factor because they need resources in order to

be able to replicate many of the suggestions that we’re making, and

we’ve seen cases where we have good suggestions, like on jury

trials, they’re not stepping to the plate and expanding the program.

They’re arguing they don’t have the resources to do it. I think

that’s another key factor that has to be weighed in here.

So I think those are two major external factors, environmental

factors, and they exist in just about any country where we run

these kind of programs. I think on the program side, we felt that

we needed a better integrated effort and we needed to have better

indicators up front when we design these kinds of projects, and we

believe that the executive branch is now starting to move in that

direction.

Mr. SHAYS. So is it your opinion that the obstacles are benign in

the sense that it is a cultural reluctance or hesitancy or that it is

a darker, more conspiratorial reason that through corruption, that

the powers that be actually benefit from the system as it is without

the rule of law?

Mr. FORD. Well, certainly, I think your latter comment, there’s

a lot of commentary that would suggest that exists. I think that we

have to look for targets of opportunity, places where there is an opportunity to make some changes that the governments and the

local communities there will actually take action. For us to expect

a place like Russia, that’s been governed by totalitarian rule of one

25

sort or another for hundreds of years to suddenly change the way

they operate is, to expect that change overnight is just not realistic.

This is going to be a long term effort. And if we want to see change,

we have to recognize it’s going to take a long time before fundamental changes really occur.

Mr. SHAYS. Has it been your observation that economic efforts,

the opening of trade agreements, the exchange of cultural programs, have contributed to the historical reluctance to move toward

rule of law programs? How much of an impact does free trade and

access to the internet and access to television and access to information contribute to the success of these programs at a cultural

level?

Mr. FORD. Well, we didn’t really cover that in this particular assignment. I can just give you my opinion.

I think that any time you have open access, be that through the

internet, media or other mechanisms such as that, the chances of

having a more open society and effecting some kind of change, you

have a better chance than having a closed society where you don’t

have access to any kind of outside influence. But that doesn’t mean

that even with those types of mechanisms in place that you’re

going to see major changes overnight in a lot of these countries.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Clay, you’re recognized.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Ford, your report said that you conducted various

interviews, studied numerous documents and visited former Soviet

states on several occasions, is that right?

Mr. FORD. Yes, we sent teams into Russia and Ukraine to visit

several locations in both countries.

Mr. CLAY. Did you conduct any surveys that would have given

you a more statistical sample of the programs and their effects, or

did you plan to do one and change your mind?

Mr. FORD. I think we attempted to address all of the major programs that each of the four key implementing agencies had identified to us as being their key rule of law programs for both of those

countries. We didn’t visit all of the projects. We just logistically

couldn’t get to all of them.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Ford, the State Department says their followup

research shows that exchange programs have a major impact on

the participants which over the long term have a significant impact. Did you meet with alumni of U.S. Government exchange programs?

Mr. MICHELS. I just want to say a couple of things about surveys,

and this question as well. Initially we thought about doing a survey

of some of the participant training of exchanges. After consulting

with our colleagues, State, Justice, and USAID, we were discouraged from doing that because for cultural reasons, it’s very difficult

to get responses from people by telephone or by mail. So we didn’t

pursue that.

We did meet with a lot of people who participated in a lot of different kinds of exchanges. By and large, for the most part, they

really enjoyed the exchanges. We found relatively little about what

actually came about as a result of the exchange. One exception was

a dean of a law school in St. Petersburg who clearly credits the exposure to U.S. law schools to the transformation of that particular

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law school. It’s a very prestigious law school, to make a special

case.

He told us that although that exchange helped him, he really

didn’t see those kinds of transformations going on with his colleagues at other law schools. So we were able to get kind of a cross

section of views from people that did exchanges. But we weren’t

really able to address it systematically.

Mr. CLAY. What would be the best way for the U.S. agencies to

implement the kinds of measures you described in your report, and

how could the agencies most improve the delivery of their assistance?

Mr. FORD. Well, again, I think that the recommendations we

have in our report are designed for the agencies that are a little

clearer focused on what the expected outcome is for the activity

that they’re going to undertake. We think, particularly in the case

of AID, they have a lot of experience in implementing assistance

programs where they have better indicators of success. This particular program, up until recently, those kinds of indicators didn’t

exist. It was particularly a problem in the law enforcement area,

where most of the information we saw had to do with just numbers

of people that had been trained.

Mr. LORD. And also within each country, I think it’s important

for the embassy to approve all the training that’s being offered by

all the subordinate agencies. In the past, I think we found some

examples where people would fly in, fly out, get some training, the

post itself was unaware of what the objectives of the courses were.

So to their credit, I think the agencies recognized that and they

have formed working groups at the embassy level to ensure all the

training that’s being offered is consistent with the overall goals of

the programs.

So I think they’re doing a much better job of making sure whatever they’re offering is coherent and part of an overall game plan.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Ford, you said that you didn’t see substantial improvement. But you say in your report that the United States has

helped several of these countries adopt new constitutions and pass

legislation establishing independent judiciaries and post-communist

civil and criminal codes and procedures, as well as other legislation

that supports democratic and market oriented reform.

Doesn’t that sound pretty impressive? Wouldn’t you agree?

Mr. FORD. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Again, we didn’t say we

didn’t see any successes. In fact, we went out of our way to try to

identify any cases where we felt there was some positive impacts

from the assistance that we provided. And certainly in the case of

legal reforms, we acknowledge in the report several cases where

our assistance did in fact help passage of laws.

I think the key issue here now is implementation. Because what

we’ve also found that while there’s a lot of these laws on the books,

many of them aren’t being fully implemented, so that the real benefits from these laws haven’t yet accrued to the populations.

Mr. CLAY. I see. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Clay, you’re more than welcome.

I’m struck by the fact that—the gentleman from Pennsylvania,

you have the floor.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question.

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I certainly appreciate the panelists’ comments and testimony

they’ve shared. Certainly maybe there’s a perception of a love-hate

relationship between office holders and the media. But as one who

believes that the free press, the media plays a very important role

in the openness and effectiveness of our government and the rule

of law here, could you give me an assessment of how the lesser

level of freedom of the press in these developing countries or these

countries in question has impacted the programs and the ability for

us to be effective?

And I think of the television station takeover not too long ago,

and certainly if the public is not aware if the law is not being followed or not being implemented, it’s harder for the society to embrace change as opposed to just in name but not in reality. So if

you could address that, I’d appreciate it.

Mr. FORD. I’m going to let Jim handle this. But we didn’t cover

media in the scope of our work. I think the environment there, we

can comment a little bit about that, because I think you have a

valid point.

Mr. MICHELS. Yes, as Mr. Ford said, the media programs are

only really, in this case, were only a very small part of the program, because there are other media efforts, assistance efforts, outside of what we looked at. But in terms of it being directly related

to judicial reform, there was a big media focus.

Having said that, we did see areas where open media was really

important for development of the rule of law, especially on a local

level, because corruption of judges in particular, and the police, is

one of the biggest obstacles to developing rule of law. Judges don’t

get paid much, they’re kind of low on the social ladder. And corruption, bribe taking, is one of the few ways that they can make

enough money to support their families.

And exposure of corruption through the media is one way on a

local level, particularly, that they’ve been able to uncover some of

this corruption, especially on a police level. Just on the streets, the

shakedowns and things like that, getting this thing on the television. We saw it.

And some of these civil society projects, had a component, a little

tiny component, but I think disproportionately effective, in terms

of exposing corruption and letting people know what’s going on,

what the courts are all about, what the police procedures are all

about, telling people about what their rights are. These things were

really important for local citizens. They can get involved if they

know about it.

So opening up of what the court system is, what the legal system

is, to the media has been an effective component of this program.

Very small, though.

Mr. PLATTS. For the programs you analyzed and assessed, did

you see because of that small investment a big return in public exposure there being consideration of trying to broaden the direct involvement, and that the media and the public exposure does very

much relate to all these programs? And that long term sustainability to me goes to the public being more aware of their rights,

more aware of corruption and demanding change. That goes to the

long term.

Did you see that within the agencies?

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Mr. MICHELS. I may be wrong, and perhaps the agencies can tell

you a little bit better, I didn’t see that as major thrust of their coming up efforts. We saw more continuation. Eurasian Foundation

supports a bunch of local NGO’s. One of those NGO’s involves a lot

of media. I think there was some consideration of continuing that

in Russia, in particular, but I don’t think it was the main thrust.

Mr. PLATTS. So the reference to some other media were not U.S.

funded, part of our Government funded programs, but private or

other organizations?

Mr. MICHELS. As far as I know. And also, there may be other,

I’m sure there are, other media projects that USAID and others

sponsored that we didn’t look at and I’m not aware of. But in terms

of the rule of law program, that’s the main thrust of that, but it

certainly is, I’m sure, part of their portfolio. They can tell you more

about it.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I’m running off to another meeting as well. Maybe the subsequent panel, I may not be

here, but if they can be asked to address the media aspects of their

agencies and trying to coordinate, if they can plan on addressing

that as part of the record.

Mr. SHAYS. I will ask the question specifically as it relates to

your request, and thank you very much for being here, Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for your testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Sorry I missed your statements. There have been

some developments in campaign finance reform that I have been

very eager to see moved forward, so we needed to address that. You

were in very good hands, by the way, with the vice chairman. In

fact, I had a few people tell me that they prefer it when I’m not

there, because he does a better job. Those staff members are no

longer working for me. [Laughter.]

Mr. Ford, in your work, did you come across any programs that

were canceled, restructured or scaled back because they were not

meeting strategic objectives?

Mr. FORD. There were some programs that we identified, I mentioned earlier the judicial centers in Ukraine, which we had started

up with our assistance. And when we went to visit them, one of

them had been closed down, and the other one was operating at

very limited capacity.

Now, we were told that the reason that happened was that resources weren’t available, basically, to continue those efforts.

Mr. MICHELS. I think one of the key examples would be legal

education in Ukraine. I think it’s an area where AID really identified that they weren’t making any progress in this area, or a lot

of progress, and had scaled back. Much to the chagrin of their

major grantees, partners, ABA. But there wasn’t a lot of express

activity on the part of the legal education community to reform. So

the assistance was kind of shortened, turned back in that area.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I’m going to not say the name the way

I’d like to, but Uri Gongazi, the journalist in Ukraine, the crusading journalist, what am I to feel when I read in the newspaper

today that the crime, I think he was beheaded?

Mr. FORD. Yes.

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Mr. SHAYS. That his murder was solved, that there were two hooligans that did it, and they’re dead.

Mr. LORD. I think that highlights some of the problems you encounter in trying to develop a rule of law in these countries. I think

the issue in Ukraine is the power is highly concentrated within the

executive branch, and there isn’t a system of checks and balances

like we have in our country. So these types of things occur and it’s

difficult to address them effectively to the courts.

Mr. SHAYS. When we fund various programs and we have individuals who we hire to do that, my perception is that they take

some risk to their own life by participating in these programs. Is

that a fair assessment, that, I’ll say it this way, it’s not without

risk, significant risk?

Mr. MICHELS. I don’t think that we saw any particular examples

of it. But there certainly is risk. This type of reform, you’re dealing

with really entrenched interests. You’re dealing, any time you’re

dealing with just about any major entity where a lot of money is

involved, you’ve got mafia concerns, you’ve got concerns with the

police, police corruption and difficulties with police detention.

So although I don’t think many people expressed it to us, you

could feel it, tangibly. Yes, it’s a corrupt environment.

Mr. LORD. For example, we met with a couple of NGO’s interested in investigative journalism. We met behind steel doors about

6 inches thick. So it was palpable, some of the security concerns

they had.

Mr. SHAYS. I usually ask this question having been at the entire

hearing, but is there a question that my colleagues or I should

have asked you that you wished were asked? Is there anything you

prepared for that you think we should have made sure we requested?

Mr. LORD. That you could have asked of us or the executive

branch witnesses? [Laughter.]

Mr. SHAYS. Both. Was there any question, though, that you

would like to answer that we haven’t asked you? I don’t want you

to go home to your spouses tonight and say, you know, I stayed up

all night cramming for this, and they didn’t even ask me those

questions.

Mr. LORD. I would ask a question more along the strategic line,

how these programs should be either re-thought, reshaped, given

all the problems we’ve had.

Mr. SHAYS. Given all the problems we’ve had, how should all

these programs be reshaped or changed?

Mr. LORD. In the past, how to reorient them.

Mr. SHAYS. How would we reorient them? I’ve asked the question.

Mr. FORD. Let me jump in here. I think we ought to look for opportunities to get a firmer commitment on the part of our partners

in these endeavors to try to get an opportunity to make sure that

when we start a useful program, there will be a likelihood that it

will be carried out and sustained by our partner. I think that’s one

thing we should incorporate more than perhaps we have in the

past.

And I think that we ought to be willing to walk away in those

cases where we’ve started something that we’re not getting that

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type of a commitment from our partner. My view is that if that’s

the case, we should walk away from those kinds of projects and try

to move to another area where we have a better likelihood that

we’re going to get some meaningful result.

Mr. SHAYS. So you talked about walking away when we don’t get

the results we want. But the question Mr. Lord asked was a little

more than that. And now it’s my question.

Mr. Lord, why don’t you respond to that? Would you make any

other response? Mr. Michels. Or Mr. Ford as well. Are there ways

that we should be redesigning the programs, specifically that you’d

like to see redesigned?

Mr. FORD. Well, yes, the people that implement these programs

have to assess the environment they’re working under. We understand that working in the environment in the former Soviet Union

is a very difficult environment because of some of the things we

just talked about. But I also think that having reviewed a number

of rule of law activities over the years, that we should be in a position where we can, through lessons learned, come up with the approaches that we think have a better likelihood of success in making sure that when we plan those kinds of activities we have sort

of an integrated game plan where all of the agencies involved work

together toward a common goal, so that the folks that are implementing law enforcement programs, the folks that are involved in

democracy building, the media support, they all work together toward a common goal. I think that in the past we’ve seen the cases

where that didn’t always occur.

Mr. SHAYS. Any other questions or comment you’d like to make

before we go off to vote? Mr. Lord, would you like to make a final

comment. I’d welcome a final comment from all of you.

Mr. FORD. Well, let me make a final comment based on, and the

executive branch is going to get their day in court, but——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me do this. Let me have Mr. Michels and Mr.

Lord make final comments, and then you can make sure you qualify any response you get. Mr. Michels.

Mr. MICHELS. Yes, I spent several months deeply mired in a lot

of programs in a lot of countries. Sometimes it’s hard to sort out

all of the different things that have happened. But I would say

that, there are a lot of innovative, very creative energies that were

tapped into in these programs. You’re up against really entrenched

interests in these countries, the prosecutors in these countries, the

corruption and things.

There are certainly sparkling finds on a local level of people that

want to change. It’s a very difficult environment. Saying that

they’ve had limited impact, as we did, I don’t want that to put a

cloud over the whole program, because there’s a lot of really good

things that have happened. I think it’s the environment that they

work in, and a kind of unwillingness or lack of willingness to really

be, a hard assessment of the program at the end of the day, and

looking to the future when you’re finished 2 years from now, are

the accomplishments still going to be there, are they going to grow?

Sometimes they get so mired into working on what’s going on

right now that they don’t always look at what’s really been accomplished.

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Mr. SHAYS. And I guess you come back with a tremendous appreciation that the legislative process works if you have a fair judicial

system and a legal system that works as well, a police system that

works as well.

Mr. Lord.

Mr. LORD. Just briefly, I would ask the agencies to focus on the

long term and on projects that work, where you do achieve meaningful results. In the past, it’s been more of a shotgun approach.

Also with the law enforcement people in particular, I think they

need to adopt more of that orientation. They continually stress the

importance of promoting the so-called cop to cop relationship,

which we acknowledge is important. But it’s not really, we view

that more as a subordinate objective.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. And your final, Mr. Ford.

Mr. FORD. I’m not going to add anything. I agree with the comments my colleagues just made, and I think we shouldn’t necessarily give up these type of programs. I think there’s value in

them, we just have to do a good job of making sure we do it right.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m always grateful for GAO’s participation. You are

a wonderful resource for Government and particularly the legislature. Also the agencies that I think make changes as a result of

your work. I think you all have an interesting job, frankly. I think

this must have been a fascinating effort to have worked on.

So we thank you for being here. We’re going to get to our next

panel after this vote. Thank you, gentlemen.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I will call this hearing to order. I appreciate the patience of our second panel.

We have Daniel Rosenblum, Deputy Coordinator for U.S. Assistance to the Newly Independent States, Department of State;

Viviann Gary, Director, Office of Democracy and Governance, Europe and Eurasia Bureau, U.S. Agency for International Development; Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal

Division, Department of Justice; Peter Prahar, Deputy Director of

the Office of Asian, African and European NIS Programs, Bureau

of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Department of

State; and Pamela Hicks, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for

Law Enforcement, Department of the Treasury.

I welcome all our panelists. I will ask them to stand, so I may

swear them in. Raise your right hands, please.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I note for the record that our witnesses have responded in the affirmative.

We have a 5-minute rule, but frankly, we go over it, particularly

since you’ve waited. If we could clearly be under 10, that would be

nice. But I want you to make your statement, make sure it’s part

of the record. We will go down the list as I read it and in the order

that you’re seated.

So Mr. Rosenblum, you’re first. Thank you for being here, all of

you.

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STATEMENTS OF DANIEL ROSENBLUM, DEPUTY COORDINATOR OF U.S. ASSISTANCE TO THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT

STATES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE; VIVIANN GARY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE, BUREAU FOR EUROPE AND EURASIA, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT; BRUCE SWARTZ, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CRIMINAL DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; PETER PRAHAR, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF ASIAN, AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN/NIS PROGRAMS,

BUREAU FOR INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS; AND PAMELA J. HICKS, ACTING DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY (LAW ENFORCEMENT) OF THE

TREASURY

Mr. ROSENBLUM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I’m glad to be here today representing Ambassador Bill Taylor,

who is the coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the NIS. He’s traveling

overseas today and couldn’t be here.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to talk to the subcommittee

about this GAO study of rule of law programs in the NIS. As you

noted, I’ve submitted a written statement for the record, but I’d

just like to briefly highlight a few of the major points in that statement.

My colleagues on the panel here represent the agencies that plan

and implement the actual rule of law related programs. They’ll be

able to address your substantive questions about the objectives of

those programs, some of their successes, some failures. But to help

set the stage for them, I’ll emphasize a few general points about

U.S. Government work in this area.

First, we believe that U.S. foreign assistance programs are a tool

of our foreign policy, so they should always support an identifiable

U.S. national interest. We have to be able to draw a clear line between any particular program and a specific U.S. interest.

Now, do the rule of law programs in the NIS pass that test? We

think that they do and that they serve both short and long term

U.S. interests. My colleagues can give you some specific examples

of this. There’s a clear short term benefit when these programs promote better law enforcement cooperation which helps us fight

against transnational crime, against drug trafficking and so on.

There’s also a long term benefit in helping these countries establish more transparent rules based legal systems. Countries that

have firmly established rule of law are more likely to observe basic

human rights. They are more sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy

priorities. They are better trading partners and better places for

U.S. investors to make money.

Second, as I think my colleagues’ testimony will make clear, our

strategy for rule of law programs in the NIS has evolved over the

past 7 years. The GAO report acknowledges this, and I want to emphasize it. Probably we were overly optimistic in earlier years

about the degree of commitment that the governments of the region

had to establishing rule of law. Now we’re willing to wait until we

see clear evidence of political will before we offer technical assistance directly to the governments. We can talk about some specific

examples of this during the question period.

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Also over time, we’ve given more weight to what we call bottom

up reform. By that I mean demand for rule of law from the citizens

of these countries. This means, concretely, that we’re doing more

work with non-governmental organizations, helping establish legal

clinics, something that was referred to in the GAO panel, promoting community policing and generally focusing more in the provinces and less in capital cities, like Moscow.

We can’t neglect the top down reform altogether, because those

centrally run institutions ultimately have to change, too. But when

we’re stymied at the top, there are still significant efforts we can

make at the grass roots.

As we mentioned in the written comments that the State Department submitted on the GAO report, this is one area we think was

given less than full treatment in the report. We understand that

they couldn’t look at every aspect of our programs, because of time

and manpower constraints, but we do wish that they had been able

to take a more thorough look at some of our exchange programs

and some of the grant programs to NGO’s that are working on this

bottom up reform.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, a word about coordination. Coordinating

the efforts of 20 or so U.S. Government agencies who are involved

in our overall assistance program, now I’m speaking beyond just

rule of law, is a continual challenge. With regard to rule of law, the

challenge is especially great. That’s because achieving rule of law

in these post-communist societies is a very complex matter. It

touches on practically every part of society and it involves not only

getting the right laws and the right institutions in place, but it involves also changing attitudes and behaviors that have taken shape

over decades, even centuries.

Because rule of law is a complex issue and requires a comprehensive approach, what we’ve done is to mobilize a wide variety of

agencies to implement the programs, trying to take advantage of

the diverse talents that we have within the U.S. Government. But

an inevitable side effect of having so many agencies involved is

that there are going to be questions, for example, of jurisdiction,

who should be responsible for one area or another, and there may

be differences of philosophy and approach among agencies.

But even though it’s a challenge, we’re continually working at it

and trying to improve it and we think we’re doing better as time

goes by. I can address this issue in more detail if the subcommittee

is interested during the question period.

Now I’ll turn the floor to my colleagues, and I look forward to

responding to any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rosenblum follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Gary.

Ms. GARY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting USAID to testify today on the impact of the law assistance activities in the former Soviet Union.

We’re pleased the committee has taken interest in this area, because it’s a key component of our efforts to achieve democracy, good

governance and a functional market economy in these countries.

I too would like to respectfully ask that my written testimony be

put on the record and I will just try to summarize some of the key

points.

Before going on, I’d like to say that we clearly do not entertain

any delusions about our ability to make fundamental change in

these countries. The challenges are really formidable. We also don’t

want to all suggest that rule of law programs produce sweeping

changes. They clearly haven’t. But that said, we do believe that a

lot has been accomplished and that there has been significant

progress, especially given the limitations that were mentioned by

my colleague as well.

Some of those limitations include the level of resources, not that

we’re criticizing the allocation of funds, but relative to the task at hand, AID has spent approximately $90 million over 9 years for 12

countries. Given the type of change you’re looking for, that really

is not much. Again, the magnitude of the change, you’re basically

talking about countries that didn’t have frameworks for modern

legal systems, their judiciaries were totally subjugated to the executive branch, they basically had to transform every public sector

institution and so forth.

There’s also a limited time. Unlike Latin America, we have only

been working in this region for less than a decade. Actually our

rule of law program started after the programs for economic reform. They started probably in about 1992, 1993.

So that said, we did, when we started in this region, we did

adopt many of the lessons learned that we had learned from places

like Latin America. That included the need to concentrate efforts

on building constituencies for reform outside of the government as

well as inside the government. And have done a lot of thought in

terms of targeting who are the key reformers in these countries,

who can we work with and who will make a difference.

Two is that we paid more attention to implementation of law

rather than just drafting of laws. While there was a lot of drafting

originally because there were no constitutions and so forth, there’s

been a really heavy emphasis for building capacity of courts and

agencies to implement.

Also one of the lessons that was learned is that you don’t rush

in full scale, that you do deal with pilot activities and see how they

work. You’re not trying to impose your systems on them en masse.

Finally, very important is that law revision and so forth has got

to be as fully participatory as much as possible. That is, if you’re

going to get people who really want to play the game they’ve got

to be part of making the rules of those games.

One of the significant differences from the programming in Latin

America, however, in Latin America it was found that working

with the judiciary was often not particularly useful, because they

38

had calcified them, in a way. While in the former Soviet Union, we

found exactly the opposite. The judiciary in some ways was such

a stepchild of the system that there was a real desire for reform

from the members of the judiciary and people who supported judicial reform, so that many of our programs have now been targeted

to the judiciary.

We have in this area then contributed to some real change, and

we think lasting change. There’s been change in attitudes of judges

and other in places like Uzbekistan for strong and independent judiciary. They realize that they need to curb the power of the plutocracy.

In Armenia, you’ve gotten a legislative foundation for modern

legal systems. In Georgia, you’ve empowered the judiciary to actually take control of their own reform process. In Russia, you’ve actually started establishing a sound framework for laws.

I wanted to just quote from one of the people who have been

working from the Vermont Bar Association that USAID has supported and working for 10 years in Russia. His assessment is that

the court system in Russia now is better funded, judges are better

paid and better trained, and the judiciary is in control of its own

destiny and has leaders with a vision of the future that is in part

based on U.S. models. We think that does have significance.

With that said, we also at AID have a very extensive monitoring

and evaluation process. We start off with country development

strategies which are reviewed by all agencies or open to all agencies for review, where we set long term targets. We then have a

whole series of annual reviews in terms of our resource requests for

the next year, evaluating how well we have done in our results up

until that time.

We also use external evaluations and internal evaluations. It’s

about a seven-or eight-tiered process that we use, and do not believe that any one indicator or one set of indicators, be they internal or external, are what is needed to really evaluate a system in

terms of the type of assistance that you should be providing. So we

do believe that our system is fairly good, not perfect, and it is in

fact getting better. We are working on trying to increase the effectiveness of our indicator system.

I wanted to make another comment. In terms of keeping political

space open, I think that in talking about the idea of political will,

which is tremendously important for any of our programs, political

will is not a model. You have to find the targets of political space

where you can and try to keep them open. One should not walk

away if in fact there are places within society that you can work.

I think the examples that one can really use in that sense is that

anyone asked a year ago if you should be working in places that

had no political will on the top, such as Croatia or Serbia, people

would have said, of course not, you don’t work there. But I think

a lot of our efforts in countries like that, working with the media

reformers, civil society people, made a tremendous difference when

the opportunity arose. I think that we have to keep that in mind.

Again, in many cases, that doesn’t have to be a lot of money. But

it really is important that you make sure that you keep the political space open in countries.

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Finally, I want to agree that it’s certainly within our national interest to help create open and transparent and accountable systems

that people can trust, that they can adjudicate their grievances.

This is essential in order to prevent conflict and also to promote

trade and investment.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gary follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Ms. Gary.

Mr. Swartz.

Mr. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting the Department of Justice to testify today on the important issue of rule of

law assistance to the Newly Independent States. With the subcommittee’s permission, I would like to submit my full statement

for the record and summarize my testimony this morning.

Mr. SHAYS. You can proceed. It will be part of the record.

Mr. SWARTZ. Thank you.

There are four points I would like to make today. The first is

that rule of law assistance is a vital part of our international crime

control strategy. As the subcommittee is well aware, international

crime has been denominated a national security threat to the

United States and to its citizens.

In the international crime control strategy developed by the Departments of Justice, State and Treasury, one of our primary goals

was to extend the first line of defense against international crime

abroad. As that strategy recognizes, one of the key components of

extending the defense abroad is to ensure that we have effective

law enforcement partners in foreign countries to establish a seamless web of cooperation.

The strategy itself points out that can be accomplished only if the

United States is in a position to provide assistance to those countries that are not at a stage where they can be effective law enforcement partners.

The second point I would like to make is that the Department

of Justice, in implementing its rule of law assistance to the Newly

Independent States has constantly sought to follow our international crime control strategy. That is, our goal has not simply

been to assist the citizens of the Newly Independent States, important as that goal is, but to try and assure the safety of the citizens

of the United States of America.

In order to do so, we have sought to ensure law enforcement

partnerships, wherever possible, in the Newly Independent States,

on all levels of the criminal justice system. At the prosecutorial

level, the Department of Justice has placed resident legal advisors,

experienced Federal prosecutors, in a number of the Newly Independent States.

Those prosecutors have not only been advocates for improved

training and trainers of prosecutors, their foreign prosecutorial

counterparts, but have also become trusted advisors. Those prosecutors, as I was stating, have not only been important in terms

of the prosecutorial training that they have done for their foreign

counterparts, but they have also, because of their long term status

in the country and their expertise, become trusted advisors on

issues of law reform.

With regard to the judiciary, working in cooperation with the

ABA-CEELI program, the Department of Justice has placed a number of criminal law liaisons in the Newly Independent States.

Those law liaisons have been important in helping develop an independent judiciary. Finally, and not least in this regard, the Department of Justice has established a number of relationships at the

police level through training by our Federal law enforcement

agents, both in country and also at the ILEA in Budapest.

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The third point I would like to make is that we feel that while

it is clear there are many obstacles to success in NIS, that we have

made significant strides through the rule of law assistance that

we’ve provided on the law enforcement side. In Russia and Georgia,

for instance, new criminal codes have been drafted, and that’s an

important development not only for the peoples of those countries

but also for our citizens, since any predicate for effective law enforcement cooperation and to ensure that crimes are prosecuted in

those countries, rather than flowing at the United States, can only

take place when the legal framework exists.

Even the GAO report at pages 12 to 14 recognizes the significant

assistance that Federal law enforcement has provided in the drafting of constitutions and laws in the Newly Independent States. We

believe that is no small achievement.

Similarly, with regard to the judiciary, again we believe that

there has been significant success in helping to create an independent judiciary in a number of Newly Independent States. To be sure,

we are not there yet. But again, without our assistance we don’t

think we’d be anywhere near that close to the place where we need

to have our effective counterparts to be.

Again, I would refer the subcommittee to pages 16 and 17 of the

GAO report, which catalogs some of those successes. And in all of

the Newly Independent States, our law enforcement agencies have

laid the foundations for partnerships with their foreign counterparts, partnerships that have already borne fruit in terms of joint

investigations that directly affect and benefit U.S. citizens.

Again, the GAO report notes this on page 26, but we feel does

not give it significant attention. This we feel is among the most important of our accomplishments, that we have created the kind of

networks that will benefit U.S. citizens.

My fourth point is that although we believe that the GAO has

undervalued the successes that we’ve attained thus far, we agree

that changes do need to be made and improvements can be made.

As the report itself notes, and as the panel noted earlier today,

those improvements already have begun over the past several

years. We fully agree with the idea of moving toward a more

project based approach toward funding of rule of law assistance.

And we believe in trying to, wherever we can, develop effective

methods of testing what we have accomplished.

We’d like to stress again, however, that it’s not only sustainable

institutions, but sustainable relationships that we’re working toward here. And we believe particularly with regard to the latter,

we have had some signal successes thus far.

In conclusion, we believe that the Department of Justice’s rule of

law assistance has been of significant value, not only the citizens

of the Newly Independent States, but to the citizens of the United

States. To be sure, much remains to be done. But non-engagement

in our view is not a realistic alternative. It is essential for our law

enforcement interests and for the protection of our citizens that we

remain fully engaged in seeking to create stable law enforcement

partners in the Newly Independent States.

Thank you. I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Swartz follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Swartz.

Mr. Prahar.

Mr. PRAHAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to talk about the direction of our rule

of law programs in the Newly Independent States. You have a copy

of my prepared testimony and I request that you accept that testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. That will be part of the record, as well as the statements of all.

Mr. PRAHAR. Thank you.

Today I am going to summarize to you the response of my bureau, the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement

Affairs of the Department of State to the GAO report. I’m happy

to report that INL has already undertaken initiatives to address

the issues raised in the report prior to the GAO study. We believe

that the fundamental restructuring which we have undertaken,

which includes INL’s assistance programs not just in the NIS, but

worldwide, addresses many of the criticisms in the GAO report.

First, let me stress that we agree with the GAO and our colleagues here today that the difficult political and economic conditions in the region have hampered effective implementation of rule

of law programs during this period. We think, however, that we’ve

seen some real progress. My colleagues have provided examples of

that here today and in their response to the report.

That said, we also agree with the GAO that INL managed assistance in the 1995–1998 period fell short in the area of sustainability

and monitoring. Based on lessons learned in the NIS and worldwide, we have substantially modified our approach. Our new approach, begun in fiscal year 2001, has two key elements. The first

is that it is project based. The second is that initial decisionmaking

is decentralized.

By project based, we mean interagency, multiyear and multidisciplinary law enforcement projects, rather than isolated standalone

training courses. We built into these project designs sustainability

and measures of effectiveness.

Second, regarding decisionmaking being decentralized, the chief

of mission, that is the Ambassador, decides now what to request

and determines the priority of the assistance and training requirements for his or her country. The chief of mission works with the

law enforcement working group at post, comprised of representatives of all law enforcement agencies at the post to make these determinations.

Let me describe our project based approach and our methods for

ensuring sustainability in a little more detail. We know full well

that our projects cannot succeed without host government commitment and will. Because of this, we have asked our missions in the

NIS to develop, negotiate and sign letters of agreement with the

governments in the NIS region. These letters of agreement represent host government engagement in and commitment to the bilateral relationship. A LOA, a letter of agreement, clearly describes

the law enforcement programs we have agreed to cooperate on, sets

forth what is expected of both governments, and describes the

measures that will be used to evaluate the success of the programs.

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LOAs have been a powerful management and internal control

tool in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. And they

will be in the NIS region, as well.

While we’re in general agreement with the recommendations of

the GAO report, I would like to draw your attention to one comment that may be somewhat misleading. The GAO report notes

that about $33 million in INL managed funding for fiscal years

1995 to 2000 had been obligated for law enforcement training and

other assistance that has not yet been provided. The report may

leave the misimpression that these funds may not be used in the

most effective way, and that the activities they fund will be subject

to the management weaknesses identified in the GAO report.

I wish to assure the committee that we at INL have been working with the law enforcement agencies to ensure that the $33 million in undelivered courses and assistance in the pipeline is fully

integrated in the comprehensive and sustainable projects. I’m

happy to report that the law enforcement agencies are cooperating

fully with INL in this effort.

I would also like to draw your attention to one other point in the

report. The report failed to take note of the extensive work with

NGO’s that INL has undertaken. In the last 5 years, INL has fund- ed over $6 million in community policing, domestic violence and

anti-trafficking grants with NGO’s and universities, working especially with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. We are proud of

these programs and believe they are effective in contributing to the

development of rule of law cultures.

In conclusion, I would like to stress the importance of assistance

programs and their relevance to national security. My law enforcement colleagues have briefly addressed the specific crime threats to

the United States from these countries and have highlighted the

role that assistance programs play in developing competent and reliable foreign counterparts. It is thanks in part to the assistance

from INL managed programs that our U.S. law enforcement colleagues can operate successfully against transnational crime

threats to the United States.

In a nutshell, if we do not implement programs that develop effective institutions, U.S. law enforcement agencies will have no one

with whom to cooperate. That is the challenge before us and what

we are trying to accomplish.

Thank you. I’d be happy to answer questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prahar follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Prahar.

Ms. Hicks.

Ms. HICKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m pleased to be here today to discuss Treasury’s role in providing rule of law assistance to the 12 Newly Independent States of

the former Soviet Union. While Treasury has provided advice on

drafting money laundering and other legislation in these countries,

most of our rule of law assistance has been law enforcement training by our law enforcement bureaus and offices. In providing training to these countries, Treasury and its bureaus worked closely

with the State and Justice Department.

In the area of international law enforcement training, Treasury

has two main goals. In the shorter term, we work to build relationships with our law enforcement counterparts that enable us to

work together on particular matters, improving both nations’ ability to protect their citizens from criminal activity. In the longer

term, we seek to support broad U.S. Government efforts aimed at

assisting the foreign government in establishing and maintaining

fair and effective law enforcement institutions.

Today I will briefly outline our efforts to design, coordinate and

evaluate our training programs to meet these goals. Of course,

international training is an interagency effort. Treasury and its bureaus provide international law enforcement training as part of a

broader plan for a country or region.

In coordination with the Departments of State and Justice, and

the host nation, Treasury and its bureaus lend their expertise in

a wide variety of areas. In recent years, we have provided law enforcement training to the Newly Independent States both directly

and through the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest. Among other things, this training has been on firearms trafficking, excise tax administration, forensics, economic fraud, counterfeiting and money laundering.

The majority of training courses that we have provided to these

countries has been Customs Service training on various types of

smuggling, including drug trafficking, weapons of mass destruction

and child pornography. As detailed in my written statement, Operation Blue Orchid, a recent U.S. Customs case with the Moscow

City Police, provides a useful illustration of our training efforts. In

Blue Orchid, Customs worked with a unit within the Moscow City

Police to take down a Web site in Russia that depicted the sexual

and physical abuse of children. Most of the Web site’s customers

were located in the United States. The investigation led to enforcement action in Russia, the United States and other countries.

While working the Blue Orchid investigation, Customs provided

training, funded by the State Department, at Customs’ cyber-smuggling center to the Moscow City Police, the same unit that was

working on the investigation. The training helped the Moscow police pursue the case, and the success of Blue Orchid, in turn, reinforced the training. The joint investigation also strengthened Customs’ working relationship with the Moscow police.

As a result of Blue Orchid, Russian authorities are better

equipped to combat child pornography on the internet. Just as importantly, Customs’ improved relationship with the Moscow city poVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:20 Aug 21, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\79866.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lice has enhanced Customs’ ability to enforce U.S. laws relating to

child pornography.

While we are pleased when we have success on a particular case,

our goal is to sustain the progress we make and improve the overall functioning of the foreign law enforcement institutions. The primary way we seek to accomplish this is through our coordination

with other U.S. agencies, particularly the Departments of State

and Justice and the host nation. We support the Department of

State’s efforts to increase the sustainability of the international

training program.

In addition to our work with State, we also seek to make sure

our own efforts support improvements in foreign law enforcement

institutions that are sustainable. Among other things, we build relationships with foreign law enforcement, provide the trainer

courses, and evaluate the training provided to make necessary adjustments.

We continue to believe that international law enforcement training serves U.S. interests. It enables us to improve our relationships

with our overseas counterparts to better protect the American public from international crime. In addition, by assisting foreign governments and developing effective law enforcement agencies, we

believe we can stop criminal activity before it reaches the United

States. And in the long term, it supports the creation of stable

democratic societies.

We have worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice to improve our international training efforts, and we are committed to continuing this cooperation.

In closing, I want to thank the committee for its interest in this

important issue. And I’d be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Ms. Hicks. We are very interested in this

issue, and we appreciate the good work of my staff and I appreciate

the quality of both panels that are before us.

I wonder if you all have thought about it yourself, the cold war

is over, but I feel the world is a more dangerous place. I also feel

that for a variety of reasons, some of which are easy to understand,

others which make me wonder, I feel that Americans are particularly targets around the world, that there is, Tianneman Square,

in the United States, was viewed as the hero to the extent that we

had a system that people wanted to model. We’re learning today

that Chinese, the young people in China have tremendous antagonism for the United States. It was really, candidly, a surprise to

some of us.

Which is to say, when we set up these programs, how do you assure these host countries that we aren’t trying to proselytize American democracy and American ways, and that we are simply trying

to have them understand how they can have this system of law

that works for them?

Let me say it this way. First, is this the problem, or am I perceiving a part of it that doesn’t exist? Do some people question our

motives and so on, and then how do you deal with it?

Mr. ROSENBLUM. Some people do question our motives. Some

people in these societies do, and sometimes people in the governments. I think it’s definitely country specific. There’s a lot of variety of diversity among the NIS countries in that regard. And my

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colleagues have more probably specific examples they could cite.

But I think we’re particularly sensitive to this reaction, or we tend

to get it in Russia, frankly, because of the past history of the cold

war and the superpower confrontation. A little more sensitivity to

not wanting to be lectured at by Americans.

I’m talking very generally, though, not specifically about in the

law enforcement area. Again, my colleagues can confirm whether

that’s the case there.

In the other NIS, there’s much more willingness to listen to

American models and experience, not always to apply it, unfortunately, as we’ve seen. So I guess it is a factor, and I’d say it’s particularly a factor with Russia. I’d be interested if others have comments on that.

Mr. SHAYS. I think what we’ll do is just go down the list.

Ms. GARY. I think from a USAID perspective, we have found

clearly that is something that is not particularly useful to do, that

is, the systems that we have are very unique to the United States.

What we need to do is define those aspects of the systems which

are best studied, or things that other groups can learn from. I

think that we have particular expertise in such areas, certainly in

civil society, we have one of the most robust civil societies in the

world. There are a lot of experiences here that our groups can

transmit to others, likewise in the local government arena.

So I think that we really do try to take out those aspects that

are best suited, or that we believe these countries can benefit from

without imposing our system. Likewise we’ve found that it’s incredibly useful to do exchanges within the region, that groups learn a

lot from each other in terms of some of the things that we’ve done

in Georgia, for instance, in terms of the examination for judges

there, the system that the Georgians have taken over themselves.

We’ve been able to take some people from Kazakhstan and other

places to look to see how that’s worked. So we’ve found that has

been a very useful tool.

Mr. SHAYS. My staff made the comment, rule of law versus rule

of our law, but then the next comment was parachuting in dozens

of U.S. lawyers could be seen as a hostile act. [Laughter.]

Mr. SWARTZ. Even in the United States. [Laughter.]

Mr. Chairman, it is certainly an issue that we have to be sensitive to throughout the countries we deal with. On the law enforcement side, we go to great lengths to stress that what we’re

talking about is a law enforcement partnership. To be sure, we particularly in the legislative and constitutional area, do try and advance the constitutional rights, the criminal codes and procedures

that we feel are appropriate. But we try to do it within the context

of the systems of the Newly Independent States and explain why

we’re doing this, rather than try and impose it from above, not that

we are in a position, obviously, to impose directly.

On the law enforcement side, in particular the training of law enforcement agents, I think that there’s a real advantage to our law

enforcement agents being able to share their experiences, the difficulties that they themselves have faced in law enforcement matters, to elicit the kinds of reactions from their counterparts and to

suggest again that this is a common fight that we have against

international crime. It doesn’t always go across all areas of crime,

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but we think it has had a successful result so far in many areas

of crime.

Mr. PRAHAR. Well, I certainly agree that it’s a legitimate concern.

I’m afraid that those that have worked abroad many, many years

can find bad examples of people coming with their flags flying and

clearly proselytizing for a way.

Our programs, I think, begin with an awareness of our own

uniqueness. That’s particularly true in the legal field. We’re working with our counterparts in the NIS, the government completely

different or rapidly evolving legal system. A lot of what we do here

in this country isn’t going to apply to them.

At the same time, we are proselytizing. I do represent the United

States abroad, I am very proud of our systems, and don’t have any

problems sharing good experiences with them. To address that

issue, though, we have certain techniques. Many times it behooves

us to get out of front row center in these programs. Here in INL

we work, for example, through the U.N.

On occasion, we work through NGO’s. We can work through the

financial action task force on money laundering issues. We don’t

necessarily have to be the lead on these, and we can accomplish the

objectives or help these countries accomplish the objectives we

want through that. We don’t necessarily need a bilateral program

every single time.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Prahar.

Ms. Hicks.

Ms. HICKS. Well, in the law enforcement training area, I think

we do it in a couple of ways. I think first of all, our daily relationships, particularly on joint investigations, is very helpful. Because

it gives both nations sort of the same goal, and allows them to sort

of work in their country and us in our country and communicate

back and forth and share information. So I think that helps build

a trust level among the law enforcement entities.

On the training courses, we have had evaluations in past years

of criticisms of the training, that it was too American focused. We

have worked to overcome those criticisms by focusing a lot more on

the criminal threats that the host nation faces. We now do a lot

more interaction, I think, within the embassy and with State and

Justice to try to address the crime problem as it exists in that

country within the legal framework that the law enforcement folks

have to work in there.

For example, Customs now sometimes, often in their courses on

border control, go out to the border control areas of that country

to see first hand the equipment that they have and the kinds of

challenges that they face daily there, as opposed to just limiting it

to the classroom and sort of theoretical discussions of border control.

And we also encourage in the classroom a free flow of discussion

about the situation as it exists in the host country as well as we

get feedback on the courses that we do about how useful the course

was, what was most useful, what wasn’t useful, those kinds of

things, so that we can constantly make adjustments to the courses

going forward, because we want them to be useful to the host nation and not just seem like you have to suddenly do everything our

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way or there’s no other right way to do it. So we have tried to address that.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. When I look at, as we’ve been reviewing

the papers preparing for this hearing and hearing testimony, last

week we had testimony from a gentleman named Mr. Slovekian

and his wife, Maria, Resevati. He was in jail for 30 years for a

crime he never committed, fingered by a corrupt FBI informant.

And the FBI knew, Chelsea police knew and the Boston police

knew and Massachusetts State Police knew. And you think, my

God, this can’t happen, and it did. She visited him for 30 years.

Now, I’m mentioning that so we’re not self righteous about our

system and realize that there are sometimes some real breakdowns. People in four different law enforcement bodies knew that

this man was clearly innocent of a crime he didn’t commit. But at

the same time, I think of how much we take for granted the system

we have.

If you were to tell me in a system of rule of law whether honest

police are the most important, honest prosecutors and judges, honest politicians, honest bureaucrats, and I’d even say honest citizens, but I’m going to leave citizens out for now, and bureaucrats,

of those three, honest police, honest prosecutors and judges and

honest politicians, which becomes the most important? Anybody

thought about that? And I’d like to know what you say it. And then

we’ll get to some other questions.

Mr. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, although this may not be a completely satisfactory answer, one thing that we have found in our

rule of law assistance is that you can’t build any real success without working on the honesty of all of those levels. That is, if you

train the police, if you establish a vetted police unit, if you have,

there are corrupt prosecutors or prosecutors are not prepared to go

forward with the cases, it doesn’t accomplish anything. Of course,

the same is true with the judiciary.

I’m not sure that I can say which is the most important to work

on, but I think it’s fair to say we believe that all of them have to

be worked on simultaneously. And I think that does go to the kind

of project based approach that the Department of State has referred to in its testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Does anybody else want to respond?

Mr. ROSENBLUM. I would say that, not talking specifically about

our assistance, but about what’s most important to make rule of

law work, the one that we have the least control over I think is

the most important, and that is the honest leadership, the honest

government. Because I think it all starts from there. That gets to

the question of political will that the GAO identified in their report.

So you know, we can work in all of these other areas. But ultimately, it does come down to that leadership and political will, I

think. And that, we have to recognize that. I think that has to

make us a little modest about what we’re ultimately going to be

able to do without that element.

Mr. SHAYS. You can tell them how the process should work, you

can do even some preaching, but you need honest people to make

it work.

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I’d like each of you to name one lasting accomplishment of a rule

of law program you’ve funded. Why don’t we start there, a lasting

accomplishment of a rule of law. We don’t have to take it in order.

Ms. GARY. I can start if you’d like.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s not a trick question, but one that you’ve said, my

gosh, this is a best practice, it’s one of wonderful success, tell us

about it.

Ms. GARY. I’d like to say that the success and lesson learned

from that success that I would probably take Georgia and the examinations that they have instituted for their judges, that they

now have taken over that system of doing examinations, over 80

percent of the judges have been tested. There are people that have

been actually thrown off the courts because they have not passed.

They also have an ethics group that also has gotten people off

the bench. And it’s a process that they have taken ownership of,

and that’s really important, that it is theirs now and they will

move it forward and they will have to adjust it as it goes along.

So that’s what’s really important.

The lesson learned, however, is that you can’t claim success and

move on, because one of the things that was also promised in that

reform movement was that the judges would get higher pay. That

has not happened yet. So that is something that one has to work

with as well, to make sure that the support structures also come

through, so that as we often think about in the political process

arena, in terms of an election does not a democracy make, I think

that’s true with any one of these systems as well.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Ms. Gary. Mr. Swartz.

Mr. SWARTZ. If I could focus on Georgia as well, I think that the

anti-corruption commission is something that we would point to as

significant and we believe lasting success. Time will prove, of

course, but it is something that the Department of Justice worked

on long and hard with our colleagues.

We also I think learned an important lesson from it, and that is

the importance of developing grass roots support for something

along these lines. Because it was not only by pushing it to higher

levels, but by helping to create grass roots for anti-corruption, we

were able to succeed in establishing that commission.

Mr. SHAYS. Anyone else want to jump in? Don’t be reluctant.

Mr. PRAHAR. In terms of success on the ground, I’ll let my colleagues speak for the successful projects that we’ve been behind.

The thing that we have come out of this, and it relates, I think

more to process, thinking back to 1995, our programs were almost

entirely counter-narcotics oriented. We worked with three law enforcement agencies, DEA, Customs and Coast Guard. We’ve spun

up a relationship now involving 21 law enforcement agencies, fielding programs all over the world, including in the NIS. We have

learned, I think, and the success in our part, how to improve those

programs in the future.

I have in mind not a success that I can show you today, but a

success that I think we’re on the cusp of, and that’s in Georgia.

Again we go back to Georgia. It’s no coincidence there, because the

political will to make the necessary and hard changes is evident.

In 1998, we identified a requirement for forensics laboratory upgrades in Georgia, and we put aside some funding for that. We

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also, when we did our assessment, determined that the political

will to go forward and do the hard and necessary in Georgia wasn’t

there. So we stopped.

And I think, Mr. Chairman, you asked the question earlier of the

GAO, do you know of any projects that have been stopped in the

face of adversity, and the answer is, I have many examples of

them. This is one of them. We could have pressed ahead, we could

have wasted our money, and we didn’t.

Recently, a new minister of justice has come into office, he’s

young, he’s energetic, he’s reform minded, he has the full and unconditional backing of President Scheverdnaze, and we spun up another assessment to Georgia to look at what we could do there. On

that assessment team, DOJ was represented by several of its offices. ATF was represented, State was represented, and later, Secret Service and FBI have expressed an interest in this.

They looked at this kind of project that we could implement

there with the support of the host government and with the cooperation of the host government and determine, you know, we

didn’t simply need labs and lab equipment. We needed a holistic

approach, a soup to nuts program, which is what we are prepared

to implement now.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

I think some of you have said why there were a success. But it

would be, let me just ask that we have three programs, well, two

plus a process, success. I’d love to know in Georgia why it was a

success, because there was the political will, pretty much, and the

level of involvement with the host country was my other question,

and that is because they are involved in this process. You’re nodding your head, Ms. Gary, but it doesn’t show up in the transcript.

Ms. GARY. Yes. That is the case, they had the political will and

they were very involved.

Mr. SHAYS. And you need to involve the host country.

Ms. GARY. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. I feel a little bad asking what was a failure, since

some of you didn’t step in and say what was a success. But learning from our failures is important, too, right? And if we had no failures then we aren’t taking any risk. So I’d like to know of a failure

and I’d like to know why. Everybody’s looking at someone else.

[Laughter.]

Mr. SWARTZ. We’ve had instances, Mr. Chairman, in which we’ve

found that our training, our proposed training, has actually in a

sense put the cart before the horse. Money laundering in Russia,

for instance, early on the Department of Justice had received funding to do money laundering training in Russia, and proceeded on

the assumption, based on what we’d been told by our Russian counterparts, that there was an effective Russian money laundering

law.

We quickly discovered, however, that was not the case. But if one

considers this a failure or a recognition of having to pull back, as

my colleague has suggested from State, we realized that more fundamental work had to be done first, that is, trying to establish the

will to act against money laundering and put legislation in place.

But I think it is fair to say that we’ve discovered in some instances

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that the work that needed to be done was more fundamental than

we originally anticipated.

Ms. GARY. I would say that some of our efforts that we did in

terms of trying to work with parliamentary strengthening, Congressional Research Services that we tried to develop, in which we

found one, were very costly, often inappropriate technology, they

really didn’t have the infrastructure for it, they didn’t have the

staff, and there was really not the political will to do it.

Oftentimes they were unstable institutions, so those were things

that we found that made us back away from working in that arena,

as well as sometimes another institution that we found very difficult to work with are legal education institutions, because they

also are not very prone to change. What we’ve done in situations

like that is help establish oftentimes legal clinics that are then run

by young, energetic lawyers and provide access to citizens to the

legal system that they otherwise wouldn’t have. So that’s a matter

of trying to deal with when you’ve got a constraint, how you try to

find another way to deal with the issue.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask you, how do you monitor and evaluate programs? How does USAID monitor and evaluate programs?

What’s the system you use?

Ms. GARY. We start off with something called a country strategy

that we usually develop, a 5-year strategy. We then have what is

called an R4, that’s the resource results and resource request.

That’s a yearly exercise in which you look at all the programs that

you have and you look at them again, their progress against indicators and targets. You look to see if they are in fact living up to the

expectations that you had.

You do that again every year. And when you find that they are

not measuring up, you try to find out why, and you alter the program accordingly.

An example that I would give right now that I think is pretty

apropos is, we have spent not an insignificant amount of money in

the rule of law in the Ukraine. Now for the Ukraine rule of law,

there is nothing budgeted for the next couple of years in terms of

the judiciary, until they in fact pass the law of the judiciary, without which we do not think that we can move forward.

Mr. SHAYS. What I need to do is break for no more than 5 minutes. I’m sorry, but I need to break for 5 minutes. My intention is

to conclude by 2 o’clock, so this will be short. I may be less than

5 minutes, but no more than 5 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I call this hearing to order.

And we were in the process of your telling how you evaluate, Ms.

Hicks, and I would like the same question for the other agencies.

How do you monitor and evaluate a program?

Ms. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, with regard to our different types of

programs, are of course, evaluated in different ways. For the resident legal advisors and the criminal law liaisons, that’s an evaluation according to their success in actually achieving not only prosecutorial training goals but more importantly, becoming advisors to

the states. I think we have seen a remarkable level of success, particularly in the legislative and constitutional area.

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With regard to our training programs, we do a variety of assessments, including evaluations filled out by those taking the training,

especially at ILEA. And it’s constantly a process of evaluating and

reevaluating what those program offerings are to see if they are effective, both for our colleagues, our foreign counterparts, and from

our point of view in terms of developing those counterparts into effective partners.

Ms. HICKS. We evaluate our law enforcement training similarly,

I think, to the Justice Department. We participate with Justice and

State in tweaking the ILEA programs as is necessary to make sure

that they’re being as effective as possible. We also look at referrals

from the things. And our in-country are very helpful, as is the embassies where we don’t have people permanently stationed to make

better determinations of what agencies are being effective. Because

sometimes they’ll want to train a certain agency, and having folks

in the country and working with the embassy, we know that perhaps that’s not the correct agency to be trained and those kinds of

things.

So we do a variety of means too, to try to do it. And constant

communication, I think, between State and Justice and Treasury

on what we’re finding out and what we see I think is critical to effective monitoring.

Mr. SHAYS. So far, I guess what I’m kind of wrestling with is how

we measure success. It seems like it’s somewhat of an art form

here. So I’m being assured that we are monitoring. I guess what

I’m not hearing is how we measure success or failure.

Ms. HICKS. I think measuring success, even among U.S. law enforcement agencies, is an art form, and it’s difficult to do. I think

what we look for a lot of the times is our ability to find people over

in another country, an agency that we can work with, and whether

the agency is improving its ability to work with us or not. Because

oftentimes that speaks to larger institutional issues about integrity

and effectiveness and those kinds of things.

For example, where we have countries where we have a unit that

we can work with, we develop more confidence in them and we try

to put more training into those. We hope to see joint investigations

out of it and information exchange.

Mr. SHAYS. This is a good lead in, though, to this question, and

I noticed that with Justice as well, in the Justice and Treasury testimony, it appears the goals of assistance are networking and protecting the United States, not necessarily establishing the rule of

law. And so what are the goals of the rule of law program?

Mr. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, the rule of law used as the largest

rubric for this encompasses both the law enforcement training, cop

to cop, as the term is used, and trying to develop the legal framework at the other extreme, that is the constitutional and legislative

framework. We believe both are important and both have to be

looked at as part of the measure of success, in large part because

it’s not only the police networks and the cooperation on particular

cases, important as that is.

But we have to be able to ensure or to try to work to ensure that

a foreign country has in place the ability to prosecute crimes in

that country, crimes that otherwise might flow outside the country,

and has the ability to criminalize conduct that allows them to conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:20 Aug 21, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00091 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\79866.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sider that conduct the appropriate subject of mutual legal assistance for the United States.

So all of those feed into our assessment of what a success is. But

we fully agree with Treasury’s views on that as well.

Ms. HICKS. I would just add that we see the agency to agency

cooperation as a way of supporting overall rule of law sort of from

the bottom up as one of the earlier speakers mentioned. Because

having people within an agency committed to doing it the right

way can help lead to larger reforms that are needed from the top

down, which our law enforcement training, we do train managers,

but oftentimes we’re trying to train sort of the front line folks that

are doing the day to day work.

But it I believe creates hopefully an environment that is supportive of larger reforms, such as completely revamping the way the

border police operate or things such as that. So it is designed, not

only does it serve the United States in getting us information, but

we hope that it supports the larger, broader institutional changes

of the country.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Prahar, I just want to resolve what appears to be an inconsistency, which may not be, and it deals with the $35

million of obligated but under-utilized funds.

Mr. PRAHAR. That’s right.

Mr. SHAYS. In part of your testimony you talk about, you seem

to give the impression that there isn’t cooperation. You’re saying,

there’s a sense that you’re saying you’re not getting cooperation, in

another part you’re saying you’re getting cooperation. Let me put

it this way. The GAO is questioning whether you’re getting cooperation. And I’m interested to have you respond to that. You say

on page 3, I am pleased to say that we are receiving excellent cooperation from the law enforcement agencies.

Mr. PRAHAR. And that is correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And there’s no question?

Mr. PRAHAR. There’s no question about that. The pipeline issue

is one we’ve been wrestling with for about a year and a half. What

we’re attempting to do and what I think we’re succeeding in doing

is reprogramming these courses or scheduling these courses in support of broad based projects. The law enforcement agencies understand this entirely and are fully supportive.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to have counsel just ask this question.

Staff COUNSEL. The question is, in the Department’s written response to the GAO draft, the Department urged GAO to recommend its cooperation, leaving, I think, the reasonable impression that it wasn’t there or you wouldn’t need to urge it. Now in

testimony you say it is there. So did it appear between?

Mr. SHAYS. This is not a trick question.

Mr. PRAHAR. No, it’s not a trick question. I assume the language

was included in our written response to emphasize the importance

of this. We regard this as an extremely critical process that we’re

engaged in and we haven’t detected any backsliding. But more

words to the wise would be welcome.

No, the law enforcement agencies understand what we’re doing,

are cooperating with what they’re doing. We have the same goal

moving beyond courses to building institutions with which we can

work in the future. And that’s it.

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Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this question before we conclude. In

your testimony you discuss letters of agreement with the host country. What preconditions are placed on the host country in order to

receive assistance? And what are the consequences if the host country does not live up to the LOA?

Mr. PRAHAR. Letters of agreement have two parts to them. The

first part is the project design where we set out what is going to

be done, who’s going to do it and how success is going to be measured. In that area, we would obtain a commitment, for example,

from a host government to provide facilities, pay staff, hire appropriate personnel, provide for transportation. We would maybe provide some technical assistance, some specialized equipment.

In the second portion of an LOA, we have what we call standard

provisions which give us a number of, make the rules of the road

clear, let’s say, about such matters as privileges and immunities of

people participating in this duty free entry, but also committing the

host government to retaining personnel that have received assistance and training for 2 years in related positions, for guaranteeing

that personnel receiving this kind of assistance have been vetted

on the human rights score. And we’ve worked out language with

the Congress, the so-called Leahy language, that we incorporate

into these LOAs.

And also that the personnel receiving training or participating in

our programs have not been convicted of narcotics offenses.

What are the consequences of not entering into LOAs? We suspended or stopped our program in Turkey last year when they

wouldn’t sign an LOA. We have not gone ahead in Vietnam with

the program.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. So you would discontinue.

I said I would ask Mr. Platts’ question, what is the relationship

between freedom of the media and access to tools like copiers and

internet access and the rule of law? Was that his question, more

or less? The whole concept—it’s the one thing I left out when I gave

you the list to choose from, and I should have put freedom of the

press, because Lord knows, that makes a difference, too. It’s kind

of exciting to think of all the things that make our country work.

And let me say this, if you could respond to the question as you

remember Mr. Platts asking it, also use this as your opportunity

to answer a question I didn’t ask, and I want to be done in 4 minutes. We’ll start with you, Mr. Rosenblum.

Mr. ROSENBLUM. OK. I think the independent media, the question of the role of the media is critical to ensuring rule of law. It’s

a watchdog.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s part of this process when we talk about rule

of law?

Mr. ROSENBLUM. It’s very much part of it. And when the GAO

responded to the question, they noted that they hadn’t looked at

the programs that specifically deal with media. We do have a large

part of our assistance portfolio that works on strengthening independent media. It does that in more general ways in terms of the

viability, sustainability of media as a business and giving incentives to journalists to do certain kinds of investigative journalism.

But it hasn’t been as targeted as perhaps it could be specifically

on the issues of corruption and rule of law. There’s a few examples

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of that, I know there’s a program in Ukraine and perhaps Viviann

can mention, that does focus on anti-corruption at the local level

and involves some aspect of media. But it is a critical component.

Ms. GARY. AID, in this region, particularly, has probably the

largest media program than we have anywhere else in the world.

They are usually anywhere from maybe 10 to 20 percent of our democracy portfolios in any one of these countries, and it is as Dan

was saying, basically building independent media, which we think

is critically important.

Mr. SHAYS. I would think they are the only ones who can basically call the question on the—I don’t want to use your time. Bottom line is, the other parts that don’t work need to be highlighted

by an honest press.

Ms. GARY. Right. One of the other things I’d like to mention as

well is, in terms of effecting the rule of law, because it is fairly

amorphous, other things that the GAO did not end up looking at

is that we have a quite significant program with the legal association for development of NGO’s. We also do a lot of work in rule of

law for commercial in our commercial area. So throughout our portfolio we really do address issues of rule of law as well.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Ms. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, while media is not a central focus

of the Department of Justice’s rule of law training, we of course believe it is very important in helping to establish the kind of honesty

that you refer to in regard to police, prosecutors and the judiciary.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there anything either on media or any last point

that you need to put on the record in literally 1 minute?

Ms. HICKS. Yes, I would just add, because if I let the success

question go by, I won’t be allowed back in my department, having

failed to mention a success. We have managed to create 53, working with other countries, financial intelligence units around the

world. And this is the structure within a government to do the kind

of financial analysis to support money laundering investigations.

Of course, we have this thing to the point that the Justice Department does with Russia’s failure to pass their money laundering

law.

Mr. SHAYS. The interaction between law enforcement agencies I

think is absolutely critical. We’ve seen it in terms of how we deal

with terrorists and our work on that issue.

One last word. I have literally 4 minutes before the machine

could close. Any last comment?

Let me just say I appreciate your all being here. We probably

could go on longer but I don’t want to keep you here and wait if

we just had 10 minutes after that. So we’ll adjourn now.

We may have a few questions we’ll give you in writing, given

that we are ending shorter than I’d like. Thank you all for being

here, and I’m going to run off. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

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