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80–609 PDF 2013

U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE: WHAT OVERSIGHT 

MECHANISMS ARE IN PLACE TO ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 10, 2013 

Serial No. 113–12 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

DOC HASTINGS, Washington 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

KERRY L. BENTIVOLIO, Michigan 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MATTHEW A. CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania 

MARK POCAN, Wisconsin 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

TONY CARDENAS, California 

STEVEN A. HORSFORD, Nevada 

MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico 

VACANCY 

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director 

JOHN D. CUADERES, Deputy Staff Director 

ROBERT BORDEN, General Counsel 

LINDA A. GOOD, Chief Clerk 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 10, 2013 .............................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

Mr. John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 7 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

The Honorable Harold W. Geisel, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Department 

of State 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 21 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 23 

Mr. Michael G. Carroll, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Agency for International Development 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 34 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 36 

The Honorable Kenneth P. Moorefield, Deputy Inspector General for Special 

Plans and Operations, U.S. Department of Defense 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 52 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 54 

Mr. Paul H. Cooksey, Deputy Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 65 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 67 

APPENDIX 

The Honorable Elijah Cummings, a Member of Congress from the State 

of Maryland, Opening Statement ....................................................................... 118 

The Honorable Jason Chaffetz, a Member of Congress from the State of 

Utah, Opening Statement ................................................................................... 120 

The Honorable John F. Tierney, a Member of Congress from the State of 

Massachusetts, Opening Statement ................................................................... 122 

United States Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 

Responses to Questions ....................................................................................... 124 

(1) 

U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE: WHAT OVERSIGHT 

MECHANISMS ARE IN PLACE TO ENSURE 

ACCOUNTABILITY? 

Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:34 a.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Issa, Mica, Turner, Duncan, Jordan, 

Chaffetz, Walberg, Lankford, Amash, Gosar, DesJarlais, Gowdy, 

Farenthold, Lummis, Collins, Meadows, Bentivolio, DeSantis, 

Cummings, Norton, Tierney, Connolly, Speier, Duckworth, Welch, 

Horsford, and Lujan Grisham. 

Staff Present: Alexia Ardolina, Majority Assistant Clerk; Kurt 

Bardella, Majority Senior Policy Advisor; Brien A. Beattie, Majority 

Professional Staff Member; Will L. Boyington, Majority Press Assistant; Molly Boyl, Majority Parliamentarian; Lawrence J. Brady, 

Majority Staff Director; Daniel Butcheli, Majority Assistant Clerk; 

Caitlin Carroll, Majority Deputy Press Secretary; Steve Castor, 

Majority Chief Counsel; John Cuaderes, Majority Deputy Staff Director; Adam P. Fromm, Majority Director of Member Services and 

Committee Operations; Linda Good, Majority Chief Clerk; Christopher Hixon, Majority Deputy Chief Counsel, Oversight; Mitchell 

S. Kominsky, Majority Counsel; Jim Lewis, Majority Senior Policy 

Advisor; Justin LoFranco, Majority Digital Director; Mark D. 

Marin, Majority Director of Oversight; Laura L. Rush, Majority 

Deputy Chief Clerk; Scott Schmidt, Majority Deputy Director of 

Digital Strategy; Rebecca Watkins, Majority Deputy Director of 

Communications; Sang H. Yi, Majority Professional Staff Member; 

Devon Hill, Minority Research Assistant; Jennifer Hoffman, Minority Press Secretary; Peter Kenny, Minority Counsel; Elisa LaNier, 

Minority Deputy Clerk; Dave Rapallo, Minority Staff Director; and 

Carlos Uriarte, Minority Counsel. 

Chairman ISSA. The committee will come to order. 

We exist to secure two fundamental principles: first, Americans 

have a right to know that the money Washington takes from them 

is well spent and, second, Americans deserve an efficient, effective 

Government that works for them. Our duty on the Oversight and 

Government Reform Committee is to protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold Government accountable to taxpayers, 

because taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their 

2 

Government. It is our job to work tirelessly, in partnership with 

citizen watchdogs, to deliver the facts to the American people and 

bring genuine reform to the Federal bureaucracy. 

Today, the American people have a right to be outraged at how 

Government is managing their hard-earned tax dollars. Many 

times we have had hearings and investigations that center at how 

billions of dollars are lost here in the United States due to waste, 

mismanagement, duplication, and the structure of Government. As 

recently as yesterday we did just that. 

But today we are talking about something more serious and 

much more egregious. Right now, billions of American tax dollars 

are being used to fund corruption in Afghanistan. In 2011, Afghanistan was the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid, with more than 40 

percent of the U.S. aid being channeled directly into the Afghan 

government. A government of $2 billion for their own operating 

was playing with $12 billion of the American taxpayers money. 

However, Afghanistan is tied with Somalia, North Korea, North 

Korea, as the most corrupt on the Transparency International Corruption Index and, quite frankly, that is not company anyone 

should want to do business with. 

Unfortunately, also, the Obama Administration has given up the 

fight to hold President Karzai accountable for rapid corruption with 

U.S. tax dollars sent to the Afghan government. I do not hold 

President Obama to be the first to trust this corrupt man, but he 

has in fact trusted someone for four years in which we have had 

example after example of the kind of corruption that says there has 

to be a change. 

The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction has 

testified that the Afghan government does not appear to have the 

capacity to manage the $8 billion pledged by the international community in direct assistance and that oversight is especially problematic because of a pervasive corruption in Afghanistan. And I 

might note corruption that includes immediate members of President Karzai’s family. 

The U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a hospital in Afghanistan to treat wounded soldiers, but doctors don’t show up for 

work and materials and drugs are sold on the black market. 

One point one billion dollars from U.S. taxpayer funded program 

was to go toward petroleum oil and lubricants, a very controversial 

program, for the Afghan National Army. One problem: there are no 

records from 2006 to 2011 of any fuel purchases. Why? Because all 

records were shredded. 

The Afghan government is projected to receive another $1 billion 

in direct U.S. aid. Our Government has an obligation to ensure 

that oversight mechanisms are put in place to hold the Karzai administration accountable for its use of taxpayers funds. 

We have to establish the perfectly reasonable expectation that 

U.S. tax dollars sent to Afghanistan will be protected from corruption and abuse, or at least that all efforts are made to safeguard 

those dollars. U.S. taxpayers are effectively financing corruption 

that harms the people of Afghanistan and our own efforts to destroy Al Qaeda-linked extremists. 

3 

We have a distinguished panel today of inspectors general who 

will testify here today on and about oversight mechanisms needed 

to assure accountability. 

I want to close with one piece of history. I am old enough to remember the corruption we witnessed at the end of the Vietnam 

War; gold bars being flown out. I am old enough to remember 

Imelda Marcos countless number of shoes. All of this was bought 

with taxpayer dollars. This is not new; it is not one administration. 

But, as my ranking member so often says, it is our time; it is our 

watch; it is our responsibility. That is what we are here today to 

discuss. 

With that, I take pleasure in introducing our ranking member for 

his opening statement. 

[Prepared statement of Chairman Issa follows:] 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. You are 

absolutely right, it is our watch. We are in Congress today. We are 

alive today. We are all the policymakers today and the people that 

are sitting in front of us have a lot to do with carrying out that 

policy, and I want to thank you for calling this hearing. 

Let me first welcome John Sopko, the special inspector general 

for Afghanistan reconstruction. Since he was sworn in nine months 

ago, Mr. Sopko has drawn attention to critical issues affecting reconstruction in Afghanistan, leading to multiple appearances before 

our Subcommittee on National Security and improving the oversight and accountability of reconstruction funds. 

I commend President Obama for appointing him, and it is especially nice to welcome Mr. Sopko back, given his previous service 

as the chief counsel for oversight on the House Energy and Commerce Committee under then Chairman John Dingle. We thank 

you for your service. 

I would also like to welcome Paul Cooksey, the deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Over the past decade, his 

office has overseen tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance to Iraq. 

The special inspector general, Stuart Bowen, has testified many 

times before our committee, including on his office’s investigations 

during the previous administration, which identified approximately 

$12 billion in reconstruction funding that was not properly accounted for. 

As the chairman said, this is a situation where we have seen 

problems under Democrat and Republican administrations, and the 

question is how do we make sure that we address it effectively and 

efficiently. 

I would also like to thank the other inspectors general who are 

joining us today from the Department of Defense, Department of 

State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. We appreciate the critical work that you do in this particularly challenging environment like Iraq, environment like Afghanistan. We 

thank you for your service. 

And I would be remiss if I did not mention our ongoing concern 

with the lack of Senate-confirmed IGs at three agencies. At the 

State Department in particular, the chairman and I have expressed 

in a bipartisan way our concerns to the President that he has never 

nominated an IG to fill that post in the five years he has been 

4 

President. Obviously, this problem needs to be addressed and it is 

unacceptable. 

Today we will hear about challenges to delivering foreign assistance efficiently and effectively, and the lessons we need to learn in 

order to deliver that aid more effectively. 

Over the past decade there have been enormous waste and abuse in Iraq, where the United States provided nearly $61 billion in reconstruction funding. For example, when the United States set out 

to repair an oil pipeline over the Tigress River, planners tried to 

bury the pipe under the river, despite an engineering study concluding that the soil was too sandy. According to the IG, tens of 

millions of dollars were wasted on churning sand. The total cost of 

the project was $100 million, more than 20 times the original estimate. 

Last month the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction 

released a very thorough and comprehensive report on the learned 

lessons from the many years conducting oversight of projects like 

this. This report includes key recommendations to help our Country avoid making mistakes of the past. For example, it recommends 

increasing coordination and accountability of reconstruction operations, focusing on small and more manageable programs and 

projects to build host country capacity, and ensuring buy-in from 

the host country for reconstruction activities. It just simply makes 

sense. 

With respect to Afghanistan, there are special challenges with 

overseeing reconstruction funding provided through direct government-to-government assistance. 

The chairman is right, I have my own concerns about President 

Karzai and his administration, and that administration creates 

some real serious problems when we try to address these problems 

and try to get aid to Afghanistan, and I am sure we are going to 

hear a lot about that today. Hopefully we will hear how we can still 

carry out the mission and make sure the money goes where it is 

supposed to go and that there is accountability. High levels of corruption and concerns about the Afghan government’s capacity to 

manage its budget increase the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse. Although the purpose of this assistance is to help the Afghans learn 

how to improve their systems, they are not yet ready to handle the 

billions of dollars in assistance the United States provides without 

enhanced oversight mechanisms. 

For example, concerns have been raised recently over plans to 

provide the Afghan National Power Utility $70 million to install 

and manage hydroelectric turbines at Kajaki Dam. This is especially concerning given reports by the special inspector general that 

the power utility lacks the capacity to properly manage these aid 

funds. 

Finally, in his most recent quarterly report, Mr. Sopko suggests 

seven key questions that decision makers should consider before 

spending foreign aid. And, again, this is not rocket scientist stuff, 

all due respect to you, Mr. Sopko; it just makes sense. These questions cover a range of issues, including our Nation’s strategic objectives, the host country’s needs, the host country’s capacity to sustain the project once it is complete. I mean, that makes sense. In 

other words, you build something, you put all this money into it, 

5 

and then you leave it to the Afghans and it just sits there. I think 

that would make any American who is about to pay, by the way, 

their taxes on Monday very upset. 

As with the examples from Iraq, these are lessons that can improve all foreign assistance programs. As I close, I want to express 

my strong support for the Food for Peace program, through which 

U.S. grown agricultural products have been carried on U.S.-flagged 

vessels to provide humanitarian aid around the world since 1954. 

Together with Duncan Hunter and 28 colleagues of my colleagues 

from both sides of the aisle, I have written to the President urging 

that we continue to support U.S. farms and the domestic sea lift 

capacity on which our military depends, while ensuring we get food 

to those most in need by maintaining this vital program. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank you for your opening statement and we 

now recognize the chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Mr. Chaffetz, for his opening statement. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I share your passion 

here for the idea that we need to root out the waste, fraud, and 

abuse. There is nothing more frustrating to the American taxpayer 

to see their hard-earned dollars taken from their wallet, given the 

U.S. Government, and then given away by the billions of dollars to 

the various countries around this Earth. 

There are legitimate uses for these types of funds in certain 

cases, the disaster in Haiti, for instance, but here we have the single most corrupt nation on the face of the planet, known as Afghanistan, tied with North Korea, and we are giving them billions and 

billions of dollars. 

We did $50 billion in U.S. foreign assistance in fiscal year 2011 

globally. But we are now rounding the corner to have given Afghanistan over $100 billion in U.S. aid. That doesn’t count the 

fighting, the bullets, the food, all the other things we did in the 

war effort. This is just building up Afghanistan, the most corrupt 

nation on the face of the planet. 

What is the USAID suggestion on how we do this better? Let’s 

use USAID Forward, a program introduced in 2010, where we give 

the money directly to them, with less oversight, less accountability. 

How can that be? Their goal is 30 percent just in direct payments. 

Mr. Chairman, we have done extensive hearings, in conjunction 

with Mr. Tierney, who shares this passion as well, on petroleum oil 

and lubricants, where the Department of Defense wants to increase 

the direct payments from $333 million to $555 million, and don’t 

have any receipts. In fact, they shredded the receipts to try to justify the increase in payments. 

We investigated Dawood Hospital, $150 million stolen. The list 

goes on and on. 

We need to have faith in the process. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, you and I very recently had a discussion 

about corruption in Afghanistan and the major impact of the Kabul 

Bank scandal. As you are aware, the Kabul Bank was the largest 

bank in Afghanistan that held a substantial amount of Afghan salaries. The bank’s failures and subsequent bailout itself represented 

approximately 5 to 6 percent of Afghanistan s GDP. It is without 

6 

a doubt a very serious matter, especially as we sit here today, discussing the oversight of U.S. direct assistance. 

According to a report by the Afghan Independent Joint Anti-Cor- ruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, approximately $935 

million had been embezzled. This was a fraudulent bank. It was a 

Ponzi scheme at the very beginning. This report relied heavily on 

a forensic audit conducted by the investigative firm known as 

Kroll. During my travels to Afghanistan last November, I met with 

State Department officials who told me they had seen the Kroll report, but they did not have possession of it. Given the importance 

and gravity of the matter, I was able to use my own contacts and 

recently received a copy of the Kroll report from a non-American 

former senior Afghan Bank official. This official obtained a copy of 

the Kroll report through his role in the investigation into the Kabul 

Bank scandal. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I want to provide you a copy of this report, 

I will give it to you and to the ranking member, in the hope that 

we can begin to get the American people the answers they deserve. 

We are different in this Country. We expose things; we talk about 

them publicly in the effort to have a more open and transparent 

government. It is what we are committed to do. 

Mr. Chairman, I am so frustrated that the USAID, the group 

that is supposed to be out there sharing the wealth of the American people, the generosity of the American people, knowing, knowing that this is one of the most corrupt governments on the face 

of the planet, they want to increase the direct payments. There is 

no suggestion on more oversight, more responsibility. They want to 

increase the direct payments, and that is offensive and it is what 

we need to talk about here today. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. I appreciate that. We did talk about the Kabul 

Bank and I appreciate your gaining access to these reports. In that 

they were received in unclassified form, but they do say Privileged 

and Confidential, we will treat them that way. 

I would ask the witnesses, would you be willing to accept a copy 

of this today? Then I would ask the staff to make copies for each 

of our witnesses. I must admit you will not scan through this during your idle time during this hearing, so we will have to follow up 

with additional work on the results of this rather thorough audit. 

I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman ISSA. Yes. The gentleman is recognized. 

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

Tierney, who is the chairman of the subcommittee, is delayed at 

another hearing, but we would ask that his statement be entered 

into the record. As you know, Mr. Chairman, he and Mr. Chaffetz 

have approached these issues on a bipartisan way and I have been 

very impressed with that. Unfortunately, like I said, he could not 

be here, but I will enter his statement for the record. 

Chairman ISSA. Without objection, his statement will be placed 

in the record. 

Chairman ISSA. Also, all members will have seven days to submit 

opening statements and extraneous material for the record. 

7 

I want to echo that and thank Mr. Tierney and Mr. Chaffetz. 

They have traveled to the region, they have worked together, and 

I think they really make a difference on this kind of a bipartisan 

issue. 

Chairman ISSA. With that, we now will recognize our panel of 

witnesses. 

The Honorable John Sopko is the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction; Ambassador Harold Geisel is the Department of State deputy inspector general. Already noted that you are 

the absolute best we have got and we appreciate all you do. 

Mr. Michael Carroll is the U.S. Agency for International Development deputy inspector general; Ambassador Kenneth Moorefield is 

the Department of Defense deputy inspector general for special 

plans and operations; and Mr. Paul Cooksey, the giver of this wonderful book today, is the deputy special inspector general for Iraq 

reconstruction. 

Pursuant to our rules, I would ask that you all rise, raise your 

rights hands to take the oath. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to 

give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? 

[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.] 

Chairman ISSA. Let the record indicate that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Please be seated. 

Yesterday we had one witness. I told him to take as much time 

as he wanted. Today we have five. Please try, recognizing your entire opening statements will all be in the record, to use the five 

minutes to summarize that opening statement and to add additional input as you see fit. I always recognize that there is a degree 

of scripting when you serve as career people the way you do, but 

I would only ask that you use that time to the greatest extent over 

and above your opening statements. 

With that, you are recognized, Mr. Sopko. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN F. SOPKO 

Mr. SOPKO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Cummings, and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here 

today to discuss the challenges affecting U.S. foreign assistance to 

Afghanistan, particularly the use of direct assistance. 

The impending end of the U.S. combat mission has led some to 

erroneously believe that the Afghan reconstruction effort is also 

waning. On the contrary. Given the $70 billion that the international community estimates Afghanistan will need through 2024, 

Afghanistan will remain the largest recipient of American foreign 

assistance for years to come. 

In 2012 alone, the United States provided more than $16 billion 

for Afghan reconstruction. That is twice the amount available to 

the next four top foreign assistance beneficiaries combined. 

Additionally, a significant portion of the funds already provided 

by Congress have yet to be obligated or spent. Roughly $20 billion 

of the more than $90 billion appropriated have yet to be spent. 

On my last trip to Afghanistan, senior USAID and DOD officials 

told me the U.S. Government will distribute a significant portion 

of the unspent funds through direct assistance, and have comVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
8 

mitted to provide over 50 percent of those funds in the future, all 

funds through direct assistance. 

Now, despite its potential benefits, I have significant concerns 

about the use of direct assistance in Afghanistan, mainly for two 

reasons. First, the Afghan government may not have the capacity 

to manage and account for the billions of dollars pledged by the 

international community; and, secondly, pervasive corruption may 

pervert its intended use. 

Now, these concerns have only been heightened recently by our 

discovery that USAID completed capability assessments of all 13 

Afghan ministries scheduled to receive direct assistance. Now, after 

some difficulty in obtaining the copies of these assessments, we 

have done a preliminary review and that review has raised red 

flags about the Afghan government’s ability to handle direct assistance in each of the 13 ministries. 

For example, one of the assessed ministries had questionable 

costs that exceeded the ministry’s entire budget. Its staff lacked 

minimal procurement training and it had no specific mechanism to 

check for ties to terrorists. 

In another ministry the assessment found that the computers 

were vulnerable to hacking; that salaries were paid in cash, which 

could expose the ministry to the risk of theft; and then it had no 

way to verify the background of outside employees. 

Now, SIGAR intends to continue its audit of these assessments 

to determine whether the Afghan ministries are capable to accept 

U.S. taxpayer dollars, and we are going to determine what, if anything, USAID is going to do with these shortcomings. 

Now, corruption, as I said, is another serious risk that must be 

considered when providing direct assistance. Corruption threatens 

the entire reconstruction effort. We have found Afghan officials are 

still reluctant to prosecute corrupt officials, especially if high ranking or well connected. Corruption also erodes the hopes of honest 

Afghans and their loyalty to the central government. For example, 

Afghan businesswomen recently warned Secretary of State Kerry 

that they feel they will be marginalized by corruption. One of them 

told the New York Times that contracts will go only to the few people who are really connected to the government. 

Accordingly, it is clear to me that direct assistance must be accompanied by strict mechanisms established by the United States 

and the international donors to protect funds and provide vigorous 

oversight in order to ensure that the monies given to the Afghan 

ministries go to the most qualified contractors, and not to the corrupt cronies of politicians in Afghanistan. 

Funding should also be conditioned not on just meeting measurable outcomes, but on providing the United States and the international donors unfettered and timely access to the books, employees, records, and, most importantly, to the projects and programs 

financed by U.S. assistance. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I am often asked what is going to 

happen after the drawdown of our coalition forces. Now, I cannot 

opine, today, on whether or not the Afghan military will stand up 

to their mission. But, based on my over 35 years as a prosecutor 

and an investigator, I can definitely assure you that without adequate security for the U.S. officials to manage and oversee our reVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
9 

construction budget, we run the risk of wasting billions of taxpayers dollars and ultimately wasting our hard-won successes on 

the battlefield and in the reconstruction up to date, and that would 

be the cruelest legacy to leave our brave Afghans and our brave 

troops. 

Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Sopko follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Sopko. 

Ambassador Geisel. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HAROLD W. GEISEL 

Mr. GEISEL. Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, and 

members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to discuss 

our perspective on the oversight challenges to U.S. foreign assistance. 

In fiscal year 2011, U.S. foreign assistance totaled $32 billion, 

much of which was devoted to peace and security programs in Iraq, 

Afghanistan, and Pakistan, global HIV/AIDS programs and democracy promotion activities. However, foreign assistance coordination 

among agencies and department bureaus remains inadequate, including duplication among agency programs and staffing. 

The oversight of government-to-government assistance in Southwest Asia is coordinated by the Southwest Asia Joint Planning 

Group, a coalition to eliminate redundant oversight of U.S. 

projects. In November 2011, OIGs for the Department of Defense, 

AID, and the State Department joined the special inspector general 

for Afghanistan reconstruction to convene the Joint Strategic Planning Subgroup for Oversight of Afghanistan reconstruction. 

According to the Subgroup s October 2012 report, the State Department was responsible for only 3 percent of U.S. Government 

funds spent on Afghanistan reconstruction in 2012. 

The International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program, operated by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law 

Enforcement, received $324 million in fiscal year 2012, 68 percent 

of the Department s total appropriation for Afghanistan reconstruction. 

In December 2009, OIG reported on oversight impediments and 

the Afghan government’s weak judicial system, internal corruption, 

economic uncertainty, financial fraud, religious conflicts, unstable 

security, and uncontrolled borders. This year we will review the 

Good Performers Initiative, a program designed to incentivize provincial governors counternarcotics activities in Afghanistan. 

In fiscal year 2011, Congress appropriated $65 million to the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration for the Migration and 

Refugee Assistance program. In July 2011, our Middle East Region 

Operations Directorate reported that PRMs partnership with 

UNHCR and other NGOs had successfully provided assistance to 

returning Afghan refugees. However, the Afghan government’s land 

allocation scheme to award land to returning refugees was mismanaged. UNHCR withdrew funding and supplanted reconstruction with infrastructure and revenue generating projects. Land disputes and security concerns imperil humanitarian aid, further complicating oversight. 

In a 2011 compliance follow-up review of Embassy Kabul, we 

found that the coordinating director for development and economic 

affairs provided extensive oversight of an enormous assistance program and a complex civilian military process, the director’s 

strength and discipline in the program and embodied our vision for 

chiefs of mission to serve as CEOs. 

In May 2012, compliance follow-up review of Embassy 

Islamabad, OIG found that the U.S. mission in Pakistan annually 

22 

funds more than $2 billion for development and security, but is 

challenged by insufficient capacity and pervasive corruption in government institutions. The mission decreased government-to-government programming in favor of Pakistani institutions with proven 

implementation records and trusted NGOs, civil society organizations, and public-private partnerships. 

In late 2009, Embassy Islamabad created a position to monitor 

all assistance which oversees aid and the refugee affairs office. 

During fiscal years 2011 through 2013, we completed 20 investigations related to fraudulent Afghan reconstruction, recovering 

$7.6 million of a total of $26.9 million in mismanaged funds, and 

we processed 32 of 81 suspensions and debarments. 

Since 2008, it has been my privilege to lead an organization of 

dedicated oversight professionals. Our work has resulted in senior 

officials leaving posts; has identified waste in Kabul, Baghdad, and 

Islamabad; and has identified close to $1 billion in monetary benefits. Corruption and complex development networks still plague foreign assistance, but I am confident that with sustained congressional support we are well prepared to attack these challenges. 

Thank you, Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, and 

members of the committee for the opportunity to speak today. I 

would be pleased to take your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Geisel follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Carroll. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL G. CARROLL 

Mr. CARROLL. Thank you, Chairman Issa, Ranking Member 

Cummings, distinguished members of the committee. I appreciate 

the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the outstanding work of the dedicated men and women of the USAID and 

to answer the committee s question of what oversight mechanisms 

are in place to ensure accountability of U.S. foreign assistance. 

In addition to having the responsibility for overseeing the activities of USAID, we are also responsible for overseeing the foreign 

assistance activities in Millennium Challenge Corporation, the U.S. 

African Development Foundation, and the Inter-American Foundation. Collectively, in fiscal year 2012, those activities totaled $23 

billion and were implemented in 97 countries around the world. So 

it is a large portfolio and a geographically diverse portfolio. 

We employ 248 U.S. and foreign national employees assigned 

around the world at our 10 oversees offices and the headquarters 

in Washington, D.C. 

The mechanisms we use to oversee that portfolio are the traditional OIG mechanisms. They include performance audits of agency 

programs; they include financial audits of the implementers of 

agency programs, whether they are U.S.-based or locally based in 

the countries that USAID does business in; and I think of interest 

to the committee, we also have oversight over the G-to-G work that 

USAID is implementing. 

In addition to that, we have law enforcement responsibilities for 

those organizations and, again, I think that what the committee is 

going to be particularly interested in is jurisdiction. When the 

agency is using, I am not going to say traditional, but when the 

agency uses U.S.-based contractors and grantees, they operate 

under the authority of U.S. law and they are subjected to the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement and judicial enforcement. 

When you deal with local implementers, when you deal with local 

governments on G-to-G, the one concern, the primary concern that 

I have in my ability to do my job and our ability to do our job collectively here is holding local citizens and local grantees and companies accountable when we find fraud. We are able to do the investigations, but, as I mentioned earlier, when you are dealing with 

97 different countries, you are dealing with 97 different judicial 

systems, 97 different law enforcement systems, and 97 different degrees of political will in those governments to hold their people and 

their commercial entities and their own government employees accountable. 

So that is the complexity that I think that everybody needs to 

consider as we are moving forward with direct assistance. 

Now, that is not to say that direct assistance is inherently corrupt. As Mr. Sopko talked about, the agency is implementing what 

I think is a thoughtful pre-award assessment process. I agree with 

him that the critical aspect of that is going to be that when these 

assessments identify shortcomings, identify vulnerabilities, that the 

agency takes the time to work with those ministries to mitigate 

35 

those vulnerabilities and not make political decisions that sort of 

circumvent that process or move that process along and take a risk. 

We do have oversight of the G-to-G programs, when it is appropriate and when it is practical, using the supreme audit institutions of those countries; and where we cannot use the supreme 

audit institutions for a number of reasons, we ensure that the 

agency inserts audit clauses in the G-to-G agreements so we can 

utilize local audit firms, local accounting firms, or regional accounting firms that we certify and train and supervise to conduct that 

financial oversight. 

So I appreciate the committee’s interest in our work and your 

support of our work, and I look forward to taking any questions 

that the members might have. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Carroll follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Ambassador Moorefield? 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE KENNETH P. MOOREFIELD 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings, and distinguished members of the Committee on 

Oversight and Government Reform. Thank you for this opportunity 

today to discuss our oversight efforts concerning DOD direct financial assistance to the government of Afghanistan. 

The DOD IG has provided a substantial body of oversight work 

focused on DOD programs and operations in Afghanistan, particularly with respect to the $50 billion appropriated since 2006 for the 

Afghan National Security Forces Fund used to mobilize, train, and 

equip the Afghan Army and police. Our oversight emphasis has 

been to enable the NATO training command, NTA-–Alpha, to 

strengthen its own internal accountability systems concerning this 

funding, as well as to build the capacity of the Afghan security 

forces to manage responsibly and effectively these DOD-provided 

fiscal resources. 

Most of the expenditures have been for FMS equipment purchases, contracting to build facilities and provide training and advisory services, and for salaries. Starting from a small base several 

years ago, however, CSTC–A has increasingly provided direct funding support to the Ministries of Defense and Interior, beginning 

with funds for local contracting for uniforms and foods, it has expanded to construction materials and is expected to include other 

classes of supplies such as POL in 2013. 

In addition, the United States has donated significant funding to 

the International Law and Order Trust Fund, LOTFA. NTM–Alpha’s financial controls over direct contributions include LOTFA, 

which it subjects to periodic Command financial reviews. 

DOD IG has recognized that the Command s efforts to build capacity to manage fiscal resources was and is essential to establishing independent sustainable Afghan security forces, a key objective of U.S. policy. This observation is consistent with our own reporting on the NTM–Alpha’s/CSTC–As metrics used to track MOD 

and MOI development. These metrics reflect that, although the 

ministries have progressively improved over the past two years, 

more capacity building still needs to be accomplished. NTM–Alpha 

has taken a number of initiatives to build MOD and MOI capacity 

to effectively manage the fiscal resources. 

Lack of qualified Afghan personnel has been a major obstacle to 

ministerial institutional development. Recently, the Command stated that it partnered with the Ministry of Finance to provide MOD 

and MOI professional training in the areas of budget, planning and 

programming, and the acquisition, procurement and contracting to 

execute budgets. 

NTM–Alpha has indicated it is committed to development of the 

Afghan security ministries and forces enduring financial resource 

management capacity. This is particularly important concerning direct funding, which is inherently more risky. Success in this endeavor will be essential to enable these forces to responsibly manage and protect the financial support received from DOD and the 

53 

U.S. Government, and sustain an independent operational capability in the future. 

In closing, let me say that conducting oversight in Afghanistan 

will become increasingly challenging as U.S. forces withdraw. 

Nonetheless, in coordination with our oversight partners, SIGAR, 

Department of State, and USAID, and consistent with the Command’s ability to provide support, DOD IG intends to maintain its 

commitment to provide appropriate and necessary oversight. 

Thank you again, and I would be very pleased to take your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Moorefield follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. I always like it when a witness says he is going 

to be pleased to be here or pleased to take our questions. It is a 

good attitude. 

Mr. Cooksey. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL COOKSEY 

Mr. COOKSEY. Chairman Issa, Mr. Cummings, other distinguished members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity for 

SIGIR to testify today at your hearing. 

As SIGIR nears the completion of its mission, I am grateful for 

this opportunity to present our views on the oversight mechanism 

necessary to ensure accountability in the use of foreign assistance 

and to offer lessons learned from Iraq that might lead to their 

strengthening. 

It is particularly good for me to be here today. I spent three 

years living and working in Iraq, and met several times with members of this committee, Mr. Issa, Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Tierney, when 

they came to visit Baghdad, and calling your personal attention to 

what was going on in Iraq was particularly important. 

Every government manager has oversight responsibilities. The 

U.S. government’s Code of Ethics charges all persons in Federal 

service to ‘‘seek to find and employ more efficient and economical 

ways of getting tasks accomplished and to expose corruption wherever it is discovered.’’ 

In the same vein, the United States must plan foreign assistance 

programs to ensure their efficient and economical administration 

and oversight by program managers, oversight agencies, and the 

Congress. That was not achieved in the Iraq program, and it is not 

all that clear that the United States has systems in place now to 

ensure that it would be achieved in future stabilization and reconstruction operations. 

Matter of fact, yesterday we participated in a morning conference 

at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where Ambassador Bill Taylor, who 

has responsibility in the Middle East, testified that IGs often look 

backwards, and it is important to take the lessons learned and to 

move forward with them. This is all part of the planning process. 

In Iraq, the U.S. Government employed five principal funds to 

provide direct assistance to the Iraqis. Let me underscore one important consideration for oversight that is engendered by the fact 

that our programs consisted of gifts of buildings, equipment, and 

services. At the same time we lacked leverage over Iraq. We could 

withhold aid for a particular object, but once money was spent, it 

was spent. Very little was required of Iraq. We had great difficulty 

enforcing the few conditions we tried to impose on the use of our 

aid. For these reasons, spending time tracking Iraqi performance 

was hardly something U.S. officials saw as worth the effort. 

Aside from SIGIR, no U.S. agency made it a practice to go out 

and check on the status of a project after it was turned over to 

Iraqi control. The attempts in recent years to get Iraq to make financial contributions and match our aid, or, indeed, to even contribute financially in some meaningful way, were feeble at best. 

There were three major funds that provided for this kind of direct aid. There was the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or 

IRR, which obligated $20 billion; there was the Commander’s 

66 

Emergency Response Fund, CERP, which contributed another $3.7 

billion; and then there was the Iraq Security Forces Fund, or ISFF, 

which contributed nearly $20 billion in obligations. 

All of these funds were fraught with management problems. 

They were new programs undertaken in a war zone with limited 

established support. They were largely not created pursuant to authorization provisions but, rather, came into being through relatively brief passages contained in appropriations measures. 

There was a total lack of planning before we went into Iraq. John 

Nagl, who is the Minerva professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, 

said at yesterday s USIP presentation that following the Vietnam 

War, after we got out, everyone in the U.S. Government said we 

were never going to do that again. And when it became time to go 

into Iraq, we were not prepared. We hadn t planned and we went 

in there without a plan and we started spending money through an 

ad hoc process. And as SIGIR has pointed out in the most recent 

publication, there is at least $8 billion of wasted taxpayers dollars. 

In addition, there is hundreds of millions of dollars that was stolen 

by U.S. contractors and members of the military. 

Corruption in Iraq is sophisticated and it has almost been art. 

Our past reporting notes Iraqi officials views of the scale of corruption, money laundering, and looting of government assets derived 

from the sale of Iraq s petroleum wealth. This is consistent with 

the familiar oil curse that seems to daunt every government that 

exclusively manages oil and gas resources. 

A significant degree of corruption is part of the everyday life in 

Iraq. First of all, there is weak attachment to rule of law. People 

seem relatively willing to convert government assets to private use. 

Equipment provided for a $30 million business development project 

funded by CERP at the Baghdad Airport was taken soon after the 

project was turned over to the Iraqis. Given what we were learning 

in Iraq, we need to improve management oversight mechanisms to 

ensure that our efforts could be sustained. This is not being done. 

In addition, our contracts are not being adhered to. Our inspectors found countless examples of work not being completed to specification. There was little oversight and little demands that it be 

done well. 

Mr. Chairman, again, thank you for this opportunity, and I welcome your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Cooksey follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. I love it when they say that. Thank you. 

I will now recognize myself for a round of questions; and they 

will be brief questions, brief answers initially. 

Mr. Cooksey, you and I, we have 10 years of Iraq. I have been 

here for a little over 12 years. I have had more than a decade of 

going to Iraq and Afghanistan. When I view Iraq, it view it through 

a prism of $143 billion GDP. Nearly a third of that flows directly 

through the government in oil revenues. The government has a lot 

of money. You and I have been to Iraq long enough to know that 

Iraqi reconstruction, some of it actually was reconstructing a country, right? A lot of it is putting it back. Mr. Sopko, Afghanistan is a little different: $20 billion, if you are 

kind, in GDP, much of it generated by the money we spend there; 

about $2 billion in revenue, most of it not through any—just sort 

of the accident of importation taxes and so on; but, as was previously testified, $50 billion in military activity, $10 billion in direct military assistance, $2 billion to $3 billion in economic aid. Basically, we are paying everything that that country runs on. It is 

$2 billion of theoretical revenue doesn’t go anywhere. Is that a 

rough statement? 

Mr. SOPKO. You are absolutely correct. It is about $2 billion for 

revenue collected by the Afghan government. That is their revenue. 

It is at least $4 billion, $4 billion to $6 billion, depending how you 

look at it, to just cover the Afghan National security forces. Then 

to pay for the rest of the government is way beyond it. 

Chairman ISSA. So the government doesn’t have enough money, 

doesn’t collect enough. But also—and I want to be as unkind as appropriate in this case. Iraqi reconstruction is an oxymoron, isn’t it? 

We are not reconstructing a country, we are constructing a country 

that never was. Isn’t that pretty much true? 

Mr. SOPKO. You mean Afghanistan reconstruction. 

Chairman ISSA. Afghanistan. I am sorry. Iraqi reconstruction is, 

to a certain extent, reconstruction. When I flew in the first time 

and flew over those dirt and rock buildings with no roofs, because 

they come and go and take the roofs, I saw Afghanistan as it is. 

When I went into the so-called palace, I thought of a middle class 

home in Cleveland, Ohio as the king’s palace. This was never much 

of a country; it doesn’t have much revenue and, in fact, we are 

funding this country in multiples of what they could possibly do 

themselves every day, isn’t that true? 

Mr. SOPKO. That is true, Mr. Chairman, but, as you know, since 

I come from Cleveland, I have to defend Cleveland, some of the 

houses where I lived in. 

Chairman ISSA. What I am saying is you have been to the king 

s mansion. If you have been to Shaker Heights, you have seen better homes owned by individuals, and they were upper middle class. 

Mr. SOPKO. And I lived on the west side, Mr. Chairman. I wasn’t 

in Shaker Heights. 

Chairman ISSA. You have my sympathies. 

Mr. SOPKO. I was near Triskett and West 144th. 

Chairman ISSA. I have been there. You should have been in 

Shaker or Cleveland Heights. 

This is clearly a Cleveland thing, folks; you don’t have to participate. 

77 

Mr. SOPKO. That is where my brother lives; he is the doctor. 

Chairman ISSA. He is the doctor. He is probably in Beachwood. 

But let’s go through a little bit of that. Two billion dollars if what 

they really have of their own money. In the case of Kabul Bank, 

at least $1 billion was lost. That is a big amount of money. That 

was their largest bank, is that correct? 

Mr. SOPKO. That is correct, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. And with that $2 billion of their own money and 

$50 billion or so of our money floating around, is there any likelihood that some of that money lost wasn’t U.S. funds? Isn’t it inevitable that some of that was our money flowing through that bank 

that was lost? 

Mr. SOPKO. I am not certain of that, sir. We have never looked 

at it. But it was a major impact on the Afghan economy; it caused 

almost a crash of the economy when it fell. And obviously we had 

to put money back in. By we I mean it was the Afghan Central 

Bank, and that money had to come from somewhere, and that was 

probably U.S. money or international money. 

Chairman ISSA. So ultimately a Ponzi scheme that included highranking people that are closely associated with the ruling folks of 

the country, including the president, takes out a bunch of money, 

spends it on luxury homes in Dubai and so on, goes bust; the Central Bank ‘‘bails it out,’’ but we bail out the Central Bank, really. 

So ultimately the money really is our money flowing through their 

country. Ultimately, we bailed out the Kabul Bank; we ate that 

loss of that corruption. 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Chairman, we haven’t looked into that, but that 

is a logical assumption, that the recapitalization of the bank, which 

is required by the international banking community, did have some 

impact or could have had some impact on our reconstruction. The 

money had to come from somewhere and, since we were supplying 

most of the money to the Afghan economy, I think it is a logical 

assumption to make. 

Chairman ISSA. Given that, and given Mr. Carroll’s statement 

broadly about direct aid, do you have any confidence in one penny 

of direct aid to the country of Afghanistan’s government? In other 

words, do you have any belief that you can in fact trust writing a 

check, transferring money to this government, and expecting it not 

to be all or part stolen through corruption? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Chairman, I may be accused of being the eternal 

optimist. 

Chairman ISSA. Look, I am a Christian; I believe in the redemption of souls. I just haven’t personally witnessed it yet in Afghanistan. 

Mr. SOPKO. But, Mr. Chairman, I believe if you put in enough 

mechanisms on oversight, and that is our concern, make certain 

that you put it in and you hold their feet to the fire, they promised 

to clean up their act before we put money in. If you do that and 

you ensure that the AID officials, the State Department officials 

can get out there to look at the sites, I think it was a good point 

that the IG from SIGIR mentioned, that the SIGIR was the only 

oversight mechanism actually going out to see if the site was actually built. Was the school built, was the road built? Well, that is 

78 

what we are doing and that is what my compatriots here are doing 

in Afghanistan. 

But if we don’t have the security, we can’t get out to look at the 

sites. We can’t go out and see if the schools are built, the railroads 

are built, or whatever is spent. That is why it is so important that 

we don’t negotiate this away as we are negotiating this money. So 

if we do have the oversight mechanisms in place and we hold their 

feet to the fire, I am optimistic the money will be spent appropriately, but it is a challenge. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, my time has expired. What I would like to 

ask all of you to do, we have the Kroll report now; it is being provided to all of you. This was a report that, from what I can tell, 

was deliberately not provided to you, was deliberately not provided 

to the U.S. Government; was done, apparently, where ultimately 

there had to be an investigation, but the government in Afghanistan didn’t want your forensic audit and your oversight. So I would 

ask you to look at it and come back to us with your comments. We 

will arrange both a public and/or private dialogue. I know this material is pretty thick. 

We are very concerned that this is exactly the audit, Mr. Sopko, 

that you are saying we need to have, that in the case of Kabul 

Bank we never got. And I share with you that exact concern, that 

if we cannot have it and have it effortlessly each and every time 

our billions are out there, we have no business putting more billions from the American taxpayer. 

With that, I go to the ranking member. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Sopko, I was listening to you very carefully. Tell me something. What is holding feet to fire? What does that mean and how 

do you—and then I am going to come to you in a minute, Mr. 

Cooksey. I am sitting here and I am listening to all this, and I 

agree with you, we have to hold their feet to the fire. The question 

is is after the fire, where is the hammer? So tell me, help me with 

that. Because President Karzai and his administration seems to 

not always do things the way we would hope they would do them, 

putting it lightly. So I am just wondering where is the hammer? 

There has to be a hammer behind all that. 

And, Mr. Cooksey, be prepared, because I am coming right back 

at you. 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Cummings, I think holding the feet to the fire 

is actually preconditioning giving the money to the Afghan government in a particular program, and we have to be strong enough to 

say no, we are not giving you the money. And I can site at least 

a couple cases of that. When we referred to the Kabul Bank, initially there were supposed to be some stringent requirements on 

audits. They didn’t do it and we stopped—we held back money from 

the Central Bank and all of a sudden they did the audit. 

Now, the audit wasn’t given, apparently, to the U.S. Government, but at least an audit was done. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So I got you. So, in other words, these would be 

what I would call more surgical types of things. In other words, you 

are dealing with project by project, putting in accountability markers and making sure that everything is kind of lined up so that 

there can be a check here, a check there, and I guess as you go 

79 

down the line of development of whatever is, or presentation of 

funds, that there are ways that you can make sure that the dollars 

are being spent the way they were supposed to be spent. Is that 

right? 

Mr. SOPKO. Absolutely, sir. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Cooksey, I would like to ask you about the comprehensive report your office just issued, which is a culmination of what the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction has overseen during 

the past decade. This report is impressive in its scope and its insight, and I believe this committee can learn a great deal from its 

finding, and hopefully it might even help us with Afghanistan. As 

the report explains, it provides countless details about the use of 

more than $60 billion in taxpayer dollars to support reconstruction 

programs in projects in Iraq. Your office performed 390 audits and 

inspections, and conducted more than 600 investigations of Iraq reconstruction projects since 2003. 

The introduction to your report says your primary job was to answer a very basic question: What happened to the billions of U.S. 

taxpayer dollars spent to rebuilt Iraq? And your report provides a 

very troubling answer. It finds that 15 percent of reconstruction 

funds were subject to waste. And I am assuming that that is not 

only waste, but some fraud there too. You will comment on that in 

a minute. And that is billions and billions of hard-earned taxpayer 

dollars. 

Mr. Cooksey, based on your experience, what was the single biggest factor leading to that waste? Was it a lack of adequate planning ahead of time? I think you mentioned that. A failure to monitor projects after they began? In your view, what was the number 

one reason taxpayer funds were put at risk in Iraq? And do you 

see a parallel with regard to Afghanistan? 

If you were giving advice to folks dealing with Afghanistan based 

upon your experiences—and I know we don’t have the same thing, 

I got that, but you learned some things—what would you say? Because we don’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over 

and over again, and wasting taxpayer dollars. And the thing I am 

most concerned about is that when we have situations like this, 

problems that you have talked about and Mr. Sopko is talking 

about, we paint a picture as if foreign aid is something really, really bad, when in fact it is just the opposite. And in many instances, 

because these are such big projects, all of the many projects that 

need to be funded to accomplish our goals, then they take a hit. 

But go ahead. 

Is your mic on? I want to hear you. 

Mr. COOKSEY. Yes, sir. It all starts with planning, and for the 

U.S. Government to have an integrated effort among all the participants from the U.S. Government in bringing foreign aid to a particular country. And there was no integrated effort; there was no 

planning. We weren t ready. We hit the ground initially with $2 

billion for the retired general, Jay Garner, who was there, and then 

that was replaced by the CPA with another $18 billion. But there 

was no plan to spend it and they just started handing money out. 

Another major problem was we did not consult with and get the 

buy-in from Iraqi government officials. We were giving them 

80 

projects they did not want, they did not ask for, they could not sustain, they could not manage it. 

Third, we tried to build large projects during the time of very unstable environment, where there was much fighting going on. 

Fallujah wastewater treatment plant ended up being $100 million 

project. First started plan in 2003, and when I visited it in 2010 

it was completed, but not one house was hooked up to it. So the 

price had gone from $35 million to $100 million, it was serving onethird the number of people, and it took three times as long to build. 

A number of Iraqis and U.S. were injured and killed during the 

fighting that was going on around this construction project. 

So there were a number of different mistakes, and we continued 

to perform the same mistakes, continued the mistakes of not consulting, not planning, not getting Iraqi buy-in, up until—well, 

when I left in early 2012, it was continuing. One example would 

be the police development program that was being worked on for 

about three years. It was going to be a billion dollar a year program for the Iraqis; it was not to train the street cops, but to work 

with the senior management. I heard through staff comments, 

while I was there, that the Iraqis didn’t want the program, but we 

were moving ahead. And when, then, the deputy IG and I met with 

Adnan al-Asadi, the minister of interior, I was floored when he said 

to us we don’t want the project, we didn’t ask for the project. Why 

don’t you use that $1 billion you are going to spend this year for 

something that benefits the American public? That was in late 

2011. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. In fairness to my colleagues, I see my time has 

run out. I have used the same amount of time as the chairman. 

But you never did answer my question what lessons can we—because that is the most important thing. But perhaps you will answer it another time. But if we have learned things from Iraq that 

can be applied to Afghanistan, we need to know that, all right? 

That is what I am most concerned about. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. [Presiding.] Thank you. 

I now yield myself five minutes. 

Mr. Sopko, your quarterly report January 30th, 2011, there is a 

section in there talking about how the government of Afghanistan 

had approached the U.S. Government for funding and assistance in 

procuring forensic audits of not only the Kabul Bank, but also the 

Azizi Bank. They had put some parameters on the U.S. Treasury, 

and following a run on the Kabul Bank you had written here that 

the government of Afghanistan had changed its position. Do you 

care to comment on the disposition of what happened there? 

Mr. SOPKO. My understanding about that particular request was 

that they decided to do the audit, but they did the audit; they 

didn’t give it to us. I don’t have that report in front of me, but I 

think that was the ultimate outcome. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. One of the deep concerns here is that the salaries 

for hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces, civilian servants were distributed through the Kabul Bank. Do you know how 

much money, Mr. Sopko, the U.S. Government has provided in support of the salary of the Afghan security forces and civil servants? 

Mr. SOPKO. I don’t have that number handy, sir. 

81 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And I recognize you will have to take time to go 

through this Kroll report. We look forward to your returning to this 

committee or the subcommittee and sharing that with us. Is it true 

that U.S. contractors KPMG and Deloitte assisted in the development of the bank? 

I see your head shaking there, Ambassador. Mr. Ambassador, go 

ahead, comment. Ambassador Geisel. 

Mr. GEISEL. I believe that is correct, sir. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Sopko, sorry, did you care to add something 

to that? 

Mr. SOPKO. I said I didn’t know exactly, sir. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. How closely has the U.S. monitored the Afghan 

banking system? Mr. Sopko? 

Mr. SOPKO. We did an audit, Audit Report 11–13, back in July 

of 2011, where we found that there were serious weaknesses in the 

coordination of the U.S. Government’s efforts. That is the last time 

we looked at it. So our oversight of the banking system we thought 

was inadequate at that time. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Ambassador Geisel, do you care to comment on 

that? 

Mr. GEISEL. We are really getting outside of my realm, but I will 

say that, as has come out very clearly from this panel, is the name 

of the game is planning for your oversight from the beginning, and 

I don’t think that was done in the case of the Kabul Bank. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Why is this outside of your spectrum here? If we 

are talking about billions of dollars and an ongoing effort that are 

going to flow through these entities, why would that be? 

Mr. GEISEL. I don’t want to get into the way of the special IGs 

who are directly responsible for it, but I do agree with you, sir, the 

ambassador is the chief of mission and he is the President’s senior 

person in every country, and we check out those ambassadors from 

you right to ask me. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I have to keep going in the essence of time. 

Thank you, thank you. 

Mr. Carroll, did you care to comment? 

Mr. CARROLL. The primary responsibility, the primary U.S. Government entity that was responsible for overseeing the activities of 

the Kabul Bank was the Department of Treasury. The U.S. Agency 

for International Development also had a contract, if you will, with 

Deloitte to have capacity building and monitoring inside the bank. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Okay. 

Mr. CARROLL. And that is what AID’s role was. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Sopko, real quickly, I want to talk about the 

petroleum oil and lubricants, where the Department of Defense is 

accelerating the direct payments into the Afghan government. 

What assurances or what mechanisms are in place to ensure that 

this increasing amount of money directly to the Afghan government 

is not going to the Iranian government to purchasing of Iranian 

fuel? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Chairman, you raise a very good point. The 

mechanisms are weak. We are going to re-look at the issue. We 

have been told that they don’t have the funding and they don’t 

have the capability to follow up. 

82 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. That is wonderful news to hear. Thank you. This 

is the deep concern. Here we are dealing with Iran and the very 

petroleum sanctions act that we put in place to make sure that the 

Iranians are not able to sell their fuel, we may be funding that by 

the U.S. taxpayers themselves. It is of deep concern. 

Last question, real quickly. Mr. Sopko, on September 18th, 2012, 

you sent me a letter, as well as Mr. Tierney, with concerns about 

contractors. Let me read this. These companies and individuals 

have directly or indirectly sought or obtained contracts with the 

U.S. Government, or may be expected to seek such contracts in the 

future. All of them have been identified by the United States as affiliated with the Haqqani network, the Taliban, and/or Al Qaeda, 

and it goes on. 

The suspension and debarment of people that are known terrorists is totally unacceptable. What are we doing to ensure that the 

U.S. taxpayer money is not given in the form of contracts to the 

very terrorists we are there trying to fight? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Chairman, we have similar concerns. We proposed the debarment of those individuals and entities. Every one 

of those proposals was denied by the U.S. Army. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Why? 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, you will have to ask them. They apparently did 

not read, did not take the time to walk 150 feet to a classified skiff 

to read the classified appendices. If you had read the appendices— 

I took the time; I went to the skiff; I read them—it was remarkable 

that any U.S. official would not have denied these individuals to 

right to contract with the U.S. Government. But apparently the 

Army office didn’t read the classified documents. So it is probably 

easier to use a drone strike than it is to stop somebody from contracting with the U.S. Government. So, Mr. Chairman, we are very 

concerned about that. 

Now, we asked for the authority to set up a debarment mechanism for either ourselves or for the field commanders, who have the 

most interest in stopping these people from being contractors with 

the U.S. Government. It is our understanding that the Secretary of 

Defense has denied that request. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I have gone well past my time. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 

Connolly, for five minutes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome to our panel. 

I want to just clear up a number, Mr. Sopko. Mr. Chaffetz talked 

about $100 billion going to Afghanistan since 2001. Is that an accurate figure? 

Mr. SOPKO. It is approximately that figure if you include also the 

request for the latest year. So $90 to $100 billion. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Okay, roughly right. 

Mr. SOPKO. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. But, to be precise, not all of that is AID. In fact, 

a small percentage of that is AID, is that not correct? 

Mr. SOPKO. Actually, over 50 percent is going to what we call the 

Afghan national security forces. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Right. 

83 

Mr. SOPKO. So the way we define reconstruction in Afghanistan, 

we also include the training, the housing. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Right. But you cited $16 billion. I assume you meant that was a subset, that was the AID subset of that $100 billion? 

Mr. SOPKO. Sixteen? 

Mr. CONNOLLY. You cited $16 billion, in terms of USAID s portion of that 100, I thought. Isn’t it? 

Mr. SOPKO. I don’t believe. If I did, I may have misspoken. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Carroll, what is the accurate percentage of the $100 billion that is attributable to funds managed by AID? 

Mr. CARROLL. What I have in front of me is 2010 through 2014. Just to give you a snapshot, 2010 was $2.13 billion; 2011 was 

$2.18; 2012 was $1.84; 2013 is $1.85. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Okay. My only point is there are problems in the 

management of AID programs, but the lion s share of the money 

going to Afghanistan was on the security side. Is that not correct? 

Mr. SOPKO. Absolutely. And our concerns are not limited just to 

AID. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. No, no. Right. And that was my point, Mr. Sopko. 

Mr. Sopko, you testified that, if I heard you correctly, that the 

13 ministries who are about to receive direct U.S. aid are, frankly, 

not capable of absorbing that direct aid any way you measure it, 

in terms of corruption, in terms of accountability, in terms of auditing, in terms of programming capability. Did we hear you correctly? 

Mr. SOPKO. Our preliminary assessment raises serious concerns 

about all 13. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In light of that fact, why would we give them direct aid, knowing in advance they are not capable of absorbing it? 

Mr. SOPKO. That is the question we are going to be asking AID, 

as well as we are going to be asking DOD about their assistance 

to Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. From an economic point of view, one of the 

things, listening to all of you and having followed this for a while, 

what strikes one is that, maybe both in Iraq and Afghanistan, we 

have attempted to provide enormous sums of money relative to the 

economy, the GDP, and they are not capable of absorbing it; and 

we are not capable of managing it. And it is distorting virtually 

every aspect of economic life, especially in Afghanistan, but also 

Iraq. 

I wonder, Mr. Sopko and Mr. Cooksey, if you would comment. 

Mr. SOPKO. I think you have hit a good point, and one thing I 

think it should be clear is that our criticism is not just on direct 

assistance. If the testimony that was alluded to by Chairman 

Chaffetz when I came in and testified about the petroleum oil and 

lubricants earlier this year, it had nothing to do with direct assistance; the main focus was that CSTC–A destroyed the records; 

CSTC–A was incapable of actually doing the right thing in processing. And now we are going to direct assistance, so there is added 

concerns because we are worried about it directly in place. 

So I think you are raising a very good point. And we are not the 

only ones who have problems with direct assistance. It is being reported in the Afghan and Kabul press, this week and last week, 

that the Afghan parliament is upset that their own ministries don’t 

84 

have the capability of spending their own money; and that has just 

been reported. So this is a particular problem. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Cooksey, what about Iraq? Mr. Cooksey, you 

have to turn on your microphone. 

Mr. COOKSEY. Obviously, it was a little different situation in 

Iraq; you had institutions in place and you had the basic structure 

of a government there, but much of the money went to areas that 

they did not support. But where it was successful and where it did 

have a big impact on the economy was with, like in the oil industry, where the U.S. Government was able to reestablish the oil 

pipeline and actually expand its oil deliveries, which is now supporting the Iraqi government with a budget of around $130 billion 

a year. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add one last question. I appreciate the indulgence, Mr. Chair. 

One of the things that we haven’t talked about in this hearing, 

and that has concerned me since my visit to Afghanistan and Iraq, 

is CERP funding. It is cash; it is not programs. The military is not 

an expert in development assistance. And you ask yourself what 

could go wrong with this program. It started out modest, but it 

grew very rapidly. And I was deeply concerned, when I was there, 

about that program. 

Real briefly, Mr. Sopko, Mr. Cooksey, if you could comment on 

how well did CERP go and do we have reason to be concerned? 

And I thank the chair for his indulgence. 

Mr. SOPKO. We have looked at the CERP program. We have 

some ongoing work in that area and we share your concerns. It 

wasn’t well controlled; money did disappear. More importantly, I 

think our concern, going back to some of the issues we raised in 

our quarterly, is the lack of coordination. A unit would also come 

in, a commander would decide to do something; the next commander would come in, say I don’t want to do that, move on. So 

there was a lot of loss of money involved with the CERP program. 

Mr. COOKSEY. Well, CERP was a new program. It did not have 

any controls. It was a cash program. When the program stayed 

small, say, under $60,000 for a project, it seemed to work well; it 

gave the battlefield commanders an opportunity to work with the 

communities. When the projects got too large, it failed. When we 

met with General Odierno, General Austin, the last two commanding generals in Iraq, they agreed that CERP had a very useful purpose on the battlefield when it was kept small, but building 

electricity plants, hospitals, the $350 million spent on Sons of Iraq 

program, some of that can be called into question. So I think it 

would be used differently as it goes forward in the future. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica, for 

five minutes. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, the more I hear about the 

waste and fraud and abuse in Afghanistan, the more these hearings have exposed an incredible level of just abuse of taxpayer dollars, the more depressing it gets. 

It seems like, Mr. Sopko, that this is a black hole, a money pit, 

and it appears that not a whole lot of progress has been made in 

the two major areas. Everyone cited, one, that Afghans can’t manVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
85 

age it and, two, the level of corruption. Do you see that? I mean, 

it doesn’t appear there is much hope. Maybe some small project, 

but in a general sense it is pretty much a money pit, isn’t it? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Mica, those are two of the major concerns that 

we have. 

Mr. MICA. But it is repeated over and over, in every area, whether it is the Bank of Kabul, whether it is a fuel program, a food program, a small reconstruction program. And then did I hear you say 

that this is going to take $70 billion by 2024, estimated, to get out 

of this? Was that you or Geisel? 

Mr. SOPKO. I think that was me, and that is The World Bank estimate of how much money will have to go to support the Afghan 

government. 

Mr. MICA. It is astounding. Then, to put this in perspective— 

now, I know my colleague from Virginia tried to say there wasn’t 

much non-military money going into this venture, but I calculate 

it is about $5 billion U.S. We take little pieces of it, AID, then some 

State, some training for police, some narcotics. But nonmilitary you 

are looking about $5 billion. Then, when I was there, we were contributing most of the U.N. money that was going in, or is it NATO 

money, that is going into that for economic aid, and it was a total 

between $8 billion and $10 billion a year. Is that correct? I mean 

ballpark figure, Mr. Sopko. 

Mr. SOPKO. I can give you the ballpark figures. As of December 

2012, Congress appropriated approximately $90 billion for reconstruction. Fifty-one billion, or 58 percent, went to security. And we 

are not talking about the war fight. 

Mr. MICA. But there is a huge amount of money going to nonsecurity. 

Mr. SOPKO. That is correct. 

Mr. MICA. And we are also financing other activities to get the 

money in there. 

Mr. SOPKO. That is correct. 

Mr. MICA. Then again, this country, I have been told, I heard 

somebody say their annual budget is around $2 billion to $3 billion, 

and someone else told me it was $4 billion to $5 billion. Maybe 

Karzai. I asked him that question when I was there. 

So the amount of money is astronomical in relationship to the 

normal amount of money that is in even their budget. 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Mica, their revenue I think I referred to as $2 

billion. It will cost at least $4 billion a year to support their national security forces, even more. 

Mr. MICA. Well, our revenue is also less than our expenditures. 

Mr. SOPKO. Significantly less in Afghanistan. 

Mr. MICA. Well, just a couple of quick questions, follow-up. Mr. 

Chaffetz had some questions on contractors. 

Mr. Geisel, State, according to your testimony, 20 contractor suspensions during 2011. That is correct? 

Mr. GEISEL. That is correct. That was just in Afghanistan, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Yes. And does that include AID, too? 

Mr. GEISEL. No. 

Mr. MICA. AID, did you have any? Yes or no? 

Mr. CARROLL. The agency had 37 suspensions and debarments. 

86 

Mr. MICA. Okay, I want a list of each of the suspensions and 

debarments that have taken place, and then supply to the committee. Also, I want a list of those that are continuing to do business. 

Mr. Moorefield, we have AID, we have State. What about Defense? You are the guys that didn’t read the classified reports. Defense, do you have a list of those? Can you provide the committee? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. I can provide, Mr. Congressman, a list of the 

suspensions. 

Mr. MICA. Would you estimate? Do you have an estimate of how 

many suspensions? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. I don’t have an exact number at this point. 

Mr. MICA. Get that to the committee. And I want to know the 

ones that were suspended or stopped, and then any that are continuing to do business. And I say that as a friend of Mr. Moorefield, 

who helped me over 20 years ago, when I was in the private sector, 

take a corrupt tender in South America away from some people 

who didn’t deserve it for a U.S. firm. He has a long history of good 

work. 

Some quick things. AID. The committee went over to Cyprus; we 

went to Turkey; we went to Morocco just to look at post-Benghazi 

security. Cyprus, AID, as a program, I want a report on. We asked 

the AID people what they do there. Almost every penny spent on 

conferences. Isn’t that a possibility for a sequester? It is not much, 

it is only in the millions, but AID, their conferences, paying for conferences. I investigate conferences with GSA with people in hot 

tubs. I want to see the hot tubs that are at these conferences with 

our Cyprus money. 

And the final one, Mr. Chairman—and they went over with Mr. 

Connolly, so I am not getting too much more. 

Then security. And I guess that is back to State Department, security. In Morocco we saw—of course, this is post-Benghazi, and 

our trip was geared on that. We saw the State Department installing, at the last minute, after Benghazi, approval of a security barrier that had been waiting for four or five years, I believe, in Morocco—I want you to check it—into a facility that was leased, and 

there is only about six to ten months left on the lease. They were 

rushing forward to move forward in spending that money that 

hadn’t been spent. 

Can you get a report to the committee on what the resolution? 

Why would we have to spend money like that, at that time, when 

we are hurting so badly on a project that would evolve back to the 

property owner and not the United States taxpayer? 

Mr. GEISEL. Mr. Mica, I would love to. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I thank the gentleman. 

I now recognize the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Speier, for 

five minutes. 

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

And to all of our inspector generals who are here, and special inspector generals. This document is enough to elevate anyone’s 

blood pressure, and I think that each of us, as members of this 

committee, have got to take responsibility for what is in here, because the American people, frankly, would read any one of these 

vignettes and be so disgusted. And they are not going to look at 

87 

the Department of Defense for answers; they are going to look right 

here. And if we don’t do something seriously to address this, it will 

continue ad infinitum. 

It is a huge black eye. I just flipped through a couple of the pages 

and it was unbelievable. This Anhem contract for PVC piping that 

was charged to the U.S. Government at $80 an elbow, and it costs 

$1.41. Now, this company, you would think, once we discovered 

this, would be debarred, right? My understanding is that the GAO 

looked at it and said that its past performance was ‘‘supremely unreasonable.’’ And guess what happened? The following month the 

DLA reconfirmed another contract for this company. 

So the real problem here is, as much good work as all of you do, 

if you don’t have the clout to force the Department of Defense to 

take action, then where are we, really? We are spinning our collective wheels. And I would think each of you would be so frustrated 

by the fact that you put out these very detailed documents, with 

scandal after scandal, and that nothing changes. 

Now, I think Mr. Mica spent some time talking about this whole 

debarment issue. Mr. Geisel, you mentioned in your testimony that 

you uncovered $200 million in questionable costs, recovered $16 

million, and suspended 20 contractors in 2011. My question is, how 

long were those suspensions? Were there illegal acts uncovered? 

Were any of the contractors debarred? And how many of those contractors have been debarred in the last five years? 

At some point every one of us has got to take responsibility for 

the fact that people can continue to rip off our taxpayers, whether 

they are defense contractors here in the United States or in foreign 

countries, and we continue to let them rip us off. 

Mr. Geisel. 

Mr. GEISEL. Thank you very much. Actually, the Department has 

gotten some religion, I think thanks to us. From 2008 to 2010 there 

were two debarments. From fiscal year 2011 to the present there 

were 81 suspensions and debarments. 

Ms. SPEIER. But suspension is not a debarment. 

Mr. GEISEL. Well, I was just coming to that. I think that it is all 

a matter of time. I don’t know of any instance where a company 

that has been suspended has not been debarred or in some other 

way closed down. But I will get you that for the record. 

Ms. SPEIER. Would any of the others of you like to comment on 

the lack of responsiveness by the Department of Defense? Ambassador Moorefield? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Yes. Thank you, Madam Congresswoman. I 

was just referring to our written statement for the record, and our 

defense criminal investigative service, their work resulted in, and 

this includes Iraq and Afghanistan, 216 debarments and 307 suspensions of DOD contractors, subcontractors, and contracting personnel. 

Ms. SPEIER. But what is that as a percentage of the number of 

contractors? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Ma am, I don’t know the answer; I can try to 

get it to you. 

Mr. SOPKO. Representative, if I could interject. By the time we 

get into suspension and debarment, we have lost the money. We 

face a situation, this is just one arrow in our quiver, and it is not 

88 

a very effective one. Really, the first line of defense for the taxpayer are the contracting officers. And what we find is that they 

are just pumping the money out willy-nilly, and that is where you 

really have a problem. We can come in later and try to recommend 

for suspension and debarment. 

We just had a case, I was quoted as saying the taxpayer just got mugged, and it had to do with a $75 million contract by DynCorp 

Corporation with the Army Corps of Engineers, where the facility 

it built was falling apart; it didn’t meet specs, it was a total disaster. We couldn’t find a justification for the Army paying it. And 

not only did they pay it, they then waived any of our abilities to 

collect on it or to even seek remuneration. 

So we asked the Army Corps to explain. They came back and 

said, you are absolutely correct, it violated all of our internal rules, 

but we decided to do it anyway. So I mean, yes, we are frustrated, 

and I basically was quoted as saying the taxpayer got mugged. 

There is no justification. But by the time we get in, with our limited capabilities, the money is gone. 

The real people you should be bringing up here and asking questions of are those people who we oversee. You have to hold their 

feet to the fire. What are you doing about contracting? What are 

you doing about getting the best value for the dollar? 

I spoke to a three star general just the other day, and I am not 

going to mention him by name, but he talked about lessons 

learned. He says, I have been in Haiti, I have been in Bosnia, I 

have been around. We write great lessons learned reports. The 

problem is we don’t apply any of them. 

Ms. SPEIER. That is right. 

Mr. SOPKO. And we went to Afghanistan, madam, he said, we 

didn’t apply any of them. So all we learned in that report was ignored, and that is because what is the motivation? The people running those CERP programs was to stop Afghans from shooting our 

soldiers. That is what it comes down to. We want to win the hearts 

and minds if they stop shooting at our boys and girls. 

So they didn’t care if they built the bridge right. Their objective 

was to protect our soldiers. And, unfortunately, everyone gets promoted and everyone gets their bonuses based on pumping the 

money out. And if you talk to any of the contracting officers, and 

I am certain my colleagues have done that, too, they will admit 

that. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you for your candor. 

I yield back. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentlewoman. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 

Meadows, for five minutes. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you for your testimony. I must confess that, as an 

American taxpayer and going back to my district this last couple 

of weeks, to hear this kind of testimony is just sickening. If we 

can’t change the way that we do business, we have no business 

doing business. And I appreciate your efforts in trying to highlight 

that. 

I want to pick up a little bit on what you said, Mr. Sopko. You 

said we don’t have any arrows in our quiver, and you mentioned 

89 

earlier about contracting and the issues with contracting, and you 

went further to talk about motivation. What specific bipartisan initiatives can we address to hopefully address this problem where we 

get to the people that are underneath you before the money is 

gone? 

Mr. SOPKO. I appreciate that request. I think the seven questions 

I put in here in December, these are simple questions that should 

be required in every appropriations bill, and every appropriations 

bill should have those. You have to answer them in the affirmative. 

Did it meet our objectives? Did this contract, was it coordinated? 

The same issues that I raised are the same issues in Iraq, but you 

have to put it in the appropriations language. 

The other thing is you need to incentivize doing good. So the 

whole personnel system is upside down here. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So what you are saying is not giving bonuses and 

raises and promotions that are not based on a performance matrix. 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, a proper performance matrix. There is a performance matrix. 

Mr. MEADOWS. You mean just showing up. 

Mr. SOPKO. That is, shove the money out the door. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Yes. All right. Well, let me go a little bit further, 

because you mentioned poor quality earlier and about the motivation is just to spend the money and get it out there to provide, I 

guess, protection for our men and women serving over there, and 

they didn’t care whether they got a bill. 

But in your testimony you talk about poor quality services being 

a major problem in Afghanistan, and that basically we are looking 

at infrastructure that we are having to pay for twice; and your 

group right now, I think, is conducting, what, 17 inspections of 

U.S.-funded projects to ensure that the contracts, those requirements are being met. 

If we find out that they are not being met, what do we do, pay 

for it again? I mean, what is the answer? 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman, that is the frustration. We found a 

contract where there was abysmal performance. We brought it to 

the attention of the Army Corps of Engineers and they said, you 

are right, but we paid it anyway. That was the answer. You may 

want to ask the Army Corps what is the incentive. 

Here is a question. Has anyone been fired for all of the projects 

we identified, that SIGIR identified, that DOD IG identified? Very 

rarely. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So you are not aware of any terminations because 

of poor performance in those groups. 

Mr. SOPKO. Not that I know of. The only ones that get terminated are the ones I indict and convict. But other than that, other 

than going to a federal penitentiary, I can’t get anybody terminated. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So do we address this through contract changing 

and the way that we contract, where there is penalties and severe 

penalties with that? 

Mr. SOPKO. I believe you need to do that and you need to do a 

top-bottom review. Now, I remember here, when President Reagan 

imposed over DOD, because of the expenditures we were making 

under his tenure and the problems that came out under contracting 

90 

at that time. I was working for Sam Nunn at the time, and they 

tried to institute a career procurement corps, a procurement corps 

where you could advance and you could do a lot better, and you 

had trained and it was motivated. I am not saying it was perfect, 

but at least we did that. 

Now, we have just gone through Iraq. We are going through Afghanistan. We have spent billions. And this applies not just to 

DOD; it also applies to AID. I don’t think there is much of a procurement corps anymore. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And is this not correct, that we have one group 

handling one part of that process and another group that is actually doing the purchasing? So you have one group that bids it, the 

other one that actually acquires it? 

Mr. SOPKO. I think you are absolutely correct. And neither of 

them are in Afghanistan. Sometimes we are talking about contracting officers here in the United States who have never seen the 

facility they are building. And I think the point our colleague from 

Iraq said, no one ever goes out and sees if the building is still 

there. 

Now, I add to that the extra concern is my people won’t be able 

to get out there, nor will my colleagues people be able to get out 

there to check those sites, unless we have the security. So that is 

something you have to consider. Are we going to spend billions of 

dollars on facilities that, right now, no U.S. Government official 

will be able to check? If you feel we should, then continue the way 

we are going. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I think it is unanimous that we shouldn’t. 

Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman. 

Now recognize the gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. Duckworth, 

for five minutes. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

So, Mr. Sopko, I am just absolutely disgusted by what I am hearing today in terms of the lack of accountability, the lack of disbarment, the lack of acknowledgment and follow-through on each of 

the IG’s recommendations to the various branches in the Government. I want to sort of drill down a little bit. I am on Armed Services. I am going to be talking with the new secretary of defense this 

week, and I will ask him about why have we never fired a single 

military officer over some of these issues. But I want to look at the 

contractor piece of things right now. 

Mr. Sopko, you talked about an Afghan contractor who was referred for debarment who failed to install grates to cover roadside 

drain pipes to prevent insurgents from planting IEDs. I go to Walter Reed on a regular basis to visit amputees. There are three quad 

amputees there right now. I want to be able to look those young 

men in the eye to say I am doing something about it to try to make 

this better. 

Let’s talk about not the Afghan contractors, not the Iraqi contractors, but let’s talk about the American contractors. When I 

served in Iraq in 2004, we were held hostage, the troops were held 

hostage by KBR, who had overcharged the United States Army 

more for food that they never gave in the dining hall contract for 

91 

the troops; they were charging the Army for meals they never 

served. And the Army went after them for that and refused to pay 

the bill. They held the soldiers hostage. We were not fed for literally weeks. We were given what we called rainbow meat. And we 

all know what rainbow meat is. And we were not fed. They held 

the troops hostage, just like DynCorp held the Corps of Engineers 

hostage and mugged the taxpayers. 

Why can’t we go after the U.S. contractors? How many times, cumulatively, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and, Mr. Cooksey and Mr. 

Sopko, if you could both answer this, has KBR, for example, or 

DynCorp, been recommended for suspension or debarment? Do we 

not have an accumulation of all of the cases against them? Because 

why are we still paying KBR money to do this when they have, 

time and time and time and time again, jipped the taxpayers? 

Mr. SOPKO. Representative, I can start to respond, and I will let 

some of my colleagues join. 

I can’t speak for the individual contractor, KBR or DynCorp or 

whatever company, on why they haven’t happened, on disbarment. 

I can just tell you we have a particular problem which General 

Carroll referred to in Afghanistan, and that is we instituted a policy of Afghan-first. So most of our primes, and almost all of our 

subs, are Afghan or non-U.S. contractors. And the reason I mentioned this and General Carroll referred to that is how do you prosecute them? I can’t prosecute them in U.S. court. I have to deal in 

Afghan court. 

Now, those of you who are lawyers, if you ever practice in Afghan 

court, it is unbelievable. Money is the rule. Now, just so you know, 

we are trying to prosecute people. The two contractors who were 

involved in the negligence that led to the death of those American 

troops were prosecuted. We actually convinced an Afghan prosecutor to arrest them. So we are doing it, but it is extremely difficult because of the Afghan-first policy. It is an unintended consequence. 

Now, we back up. Where we find people to disbar, we will do it. 

But as I told you, we even found 43 of them who were tied to the 

Al Qaeda, who were tied to terrorists, and it wasn’t my colleague 

who is in the IG s office who didn’t handle this, there is an office, 

a very small office, which didn’t think it was important to go and 

review the classified files. So it is frustrating. 

I can’t speak for if there is a case against XYZ Company. If there 

is, we will pursue it, and I am certain my colleagues will. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Before your colleagues respond, I am just going 

to follow up on that with Afghan. So you talk about let’s stop this 

before the money goes out the door. Do we have a system in place 

to look at all of the Afghani potential primes, to make sure that 

they are not all relatives of President Karzai and his family members? As my colleague from Utah said, this is the most corrupt 

country. 

Mr. SOPKO. I am so glad you asked that question, because we 

don’t have a list of all the contractors in Afghanistan. We definitely 

don’t have a list of all the subs. And it was only last week, or was 

it two weeks ago, I finally threw up my arms and said we are sending a request, and it was the request from hell to each one of these 

government agencies operating, give me a list of every prime and 

92 

every sub. We don’t have that list. AID comes the closest, but they 

have a list of the primes. 

So we couldn’t even, even if there was a sub that hurt you in 

your camp, then went to another camp, then went to another camp, 

there was no central database to link Abdul Inc. or Host Trucking, 

or whatever the name of the company is. I allude to Mr. Tierney 

about his interest in that. We didn’t have the list. The people in 

Afghanistan didn’t have that list. So we are going to try to finally 

get a list. 

GAO has been screaming about this for years. We don’t know 

who we are even contracting with in Afghanistan. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. I am out of time. 

Mr. Chairman, would you indulge me to just let the others answer the question about the U.S. contractors? Is there a list of all 

of the times that KBR or Haliburton or DynCorp, any one of these 

folks, have been found to have mismanaged or misused or overcharged contracts? And why do we not know what that amount is? 

Mr. COOKSEY. There are obviously different accounts that are 

paying for these contracts, which makes it difficult for, like us, 

SIGIR to be able to go from reconstruction money that we had jurisdiction over to operations and maintenance funds, which we are 

not permitted to review; that is a DOD function, to look at. 

But it all comes back to accountability, contracting officers accountability. If you wanted to have a hearing here and find out 

who was accountable for the wasteful spending in Iraq, Afghanistan, you couldn’t call a witness up here, hold anyone accountable. 

We have projects where $40 million, $50 million were wasted and 

there were 12, 13, 14 contracting officers serving on a project. We 

couldn’t even find all of the contracting officers. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I think we need to move on, given the time. But 

certainly if we could get back to this committee and to Representative Duckworth, that would be most appropriate. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Walberg, for 

five minutes. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate this 

hearing more than I thought I ever would, though I came primed 

for this after hearing some reports from a constituent last week 

who has a product that allegedly works very well in allowing more 

of our military to remain safe, and could not even get a hearing 

from the procurement process unless he would hire a lobby firm of 

generals that require $1 million on an annual basis, and what he 

would get for that would be access to the people to look at this 

product that military personnel, when they receive it and now request it, and commanders in the field request it, and he supplies 

them free of charge, does impact their longevity in this life. 

So I came a bit primed for this. But I would certainly recommend 

that we follow Mr. Sopko’s advice of getting to the people that they 

work with and ask these questions of them as well. 

We sit here trying to justify and improve the issue of direct financial aid to Afghanistan and Iraq, and asking questions about 

that on an issue that I certainly was very supportive of, of going 

after Osama Bin Laden and going after Saddam Hussein; and we 

achieved that success with them, and rightfully so, in context with 

the liberty, freedom of our Country, as well as other freedom-loving 

93 

peoples. I continued in support of these efforts due to the fact of 

an intention to honor the sacrifice of our troops and their families 

who put themselves in harm’s way and served with distinction and 

sacrifice, like our colleague, Ms. Duckworth, Duncan Hunter, and 

others who we gratefully honor for their service. 

But I have come to a 180 degree turn in my perspective on 

whether we should continue this effort and spend the resources, 

more importantly, spend the blood and sacrifice in a cesspool, couple cesspools in the world right now, not only of Afghani, Iraqi 

making, but of our own making in what I hear today. I have come 

to a point in seeing no need to continue to waste one more thin 

penny with contractors, national or our own contractors, in Afghanistan or Iraq, or working with government leaders in Afghanistan 

or Iraq, except for the occasional drone strike on a terrorist Taliban 

or Afghani leader. And then, beyond that, open our arms to Iraqis 

or Afghani citizens who flee from these two hell holes in the world 

with no end in sight of any significant benefit to those Iraqis or 

Afghanis who get no religious freedom, who get no personal liberty 

freedom; and yet we continue to dump money without even being 

able to check out what is going on. 

So I guess what I was saying, I say this as a minister, I want 

to see people liberated. I don’t think it is happening with our efforts right now, and the corruption, the efforts that we put in place 

for contracting, which provides great amount of dollars for people 

who abuse it, in many cases that we are hearing today. So I guess 

I would ask any of you at the witness table, starting with Mr. 

Sopko and Mr. Cooksey, would any of you be able to disabuse me 

of this change in position with what has gone on and continues to 

go on? 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman, if you want me to start, that is obviously a personal metamorphosis. I may have a similar metamorphosis. I know I was a bit surprised, the first time I went there, 

but when I was appointed by the President, I was given a mission, 

and the mission is not to do policy. This is a policy call. My mission, and I think my colleagues missions as IGs, is we don’t do policy; we don’t do aid policy, we don’t do foreign policy or military 

policy. We do processes. 

Mr. WALBERG. I appreciate that. Let me break in, maybe alter 

that quickly. Are we succeeding and is there a reasonable chance 

for success in Afghanistan or Iraq with present policies in place? 

And this Government is too big and bureaucratic to expect much 

to change, sadly. 

Mr. SOPKO. Depends how you define succeeding. The way I define it is I take what the Administration’s goals are, and that is 

to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorist 

organizations. It appears we are succeeding. Could we do it better? 

Could we save the taxpayers money? Yes. And that is why I think 

we are all here collectively giving our suggestions and advice on 

that. 

Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Chairman, I thank you, and I will end the 

questioning here because I think I have the answer. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. Thank you. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Tierney, 

for five minutes. 

94 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank all of you gentlemen for being here today. Look, this is 

nothing new. One of my predecessors who sat in my district seat 

back in the 1980s was discovering $600 hammers that were being 

purchased by the military on that, so this is an ongoing situation 

and one that this committee, in particular our subcommittee, Mr. 

Chaffetz and, before him, Mr. Flake and I have been addressing 

every time we go. Mr. Waxman was doing it before Mr. Issa was 

doing it. 

The fact of the matter is that we are not really discussing just 

aid, we are talking about military contracting as well, how the Department of Defense, probably the worst bureaucracy in existence, 

one that has not passed an audit, while we demand every other department in this Country, and we go around. And I hope these 

hearings disabuse people of this notion that you can’t cut the military budget because otherwise you are weak on defense. What total 

nonsense. Anybody listening to this here today, anybody looking at 

a myriad of reports we have had, and we had them when I was 

chair, before Jason was, where people come in here across the 

board, from Cato Institute, from the Center for American Progress, 

telling us that waste and fraud and abuse is in the military budget. 

And now we turn around, the Stimson Senate report that just came 

out, funded by Peter G. Peters—he is not a raving liberal by any 

stretch of the imagination—done by former generals and admirals 

and other policy experts, indicating there is about $400 billion 

worth of efficiency losses in the Department of Defense, and we are 

talking about that just here today. We all revere our troops; we all 

respect that they are there. But they are not being well served. 

They are not being well served when this kind of nonsense is 

going on, when we have a trucking contract, the report that Mr. 

Flake and I did on Warlords Inc., indicating we had eight trucking 

contractors, none of them who ever owned a truck or a driver, but 

all who had pretty good relations with some of the people in the 

Afghan government. And they were the ones who were responsible 

for security, so rather than have security and rather than us face 

the tough policy question of are we going to put our troops out 

there to secure those supply lines, they are paying off warlords 

and, in some instances, Taliban with money that is then used 

against our troops. And you go on down the line. Mr. Chaffetz and 

I have looked at the food contracts of over-billing of $750 billion; 

we have looked at the oil contracts; we have looked right across the 

board. 

Time and time again it all comes back to, A, we don’t hold anybody accountable and disbar them permanently and get them out 

of the way; on the front end we are not contracting properly, we 

don’t have insight into the subcontracts and the sub-subcontracts, 

and we are not making the decisions on that basis. So we have a 

problem whether we contract and have partners and do it that 

way, or whether we try to do it directly and the problems of whether or not the very departments in the governments that we are directly funding are capable of spending the money on that basis. 

We have some serious issues and I trust that the subcommittee, 

with Mr. Chaffetz, is going to start looking at these very issues 

95 

that we have here, starting with the contracting officers on that 

basis. 

Let me try to just narrow this down a little bit here. We have 

a situation where, no matter how we do it, if we have contracting 

going on or if we give direct aid, we have to somehow have accountability. As we pull our troops out of Afghanistan, how are we going 

to accomplish that in a safe way for the people that we expect to 

go over there and inspect these projects on that? 

Now, I know that we have talked about setting up the new process for assessments going in and accountings, audits, and all that 

basis, but when we try to determine whether or not the project is 

being built or managed, and whether it is being done properly on 

that, how do we get that answer? 

Now, Mr. Sopko, I will start with you because you have done a 

good job of bringing this to our attention of late. What are we going 

to do? How do we secure that? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Tierney, as I mentioned, I am a former prosecutor and I have been a Hill investigator and investigator for 

quite a few years. The gold standard is always a U.S. Government 

employee kicking the tires. You have to have somebody put eyes on 

the project. That means, number one, we have to have security. 

When I travel, when my people travel, when any of the IGs here 

travel, we have to have security. 

Mr. TIERNEY. So if I can just interrupt, so that means we have 

to determine whether or not we have confidence in the Afghan National Security Forces to secure our personnel going to inspect 

whether or not our money is being well spent. 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Tierney, we have no confidence. I would not 

place the life of one of my people under ANSF, nor would anybody 

else at this table. Nor would anybody use the security firms that 

are now reporting to the Afghan ministries to protect our people. 

Nor can we. Because we all fall under chief of mission rules, and 

chief of mission rules says you can’t. So what that means, we either 

have to have U.S. troops or international troops, and that is being 

cut back, or we have to build up the RSO, regional security office, 

capability, which you all know about. 

So when we are doing our audit on planning for the drawdown, 

what we are looking at is have we considered the security implications of the drawdown in U.S. troops. So that is a key point. If we 

don’t have the RSO budget big enough to support oversight, then 

the question comes down to do you want to spend the money for 

a building, for a school, for a clinic, for anything, and you will 

never have an American citizen see it. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

My understanding is the RSO budgets in Afghanistan are being 

cut, so the assets and the resources there in Afghanistan for the 

RSO is diminished. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Maybe we can use some of the wasted money that 

we are talking about here to do something. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Amen. Amen. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, 

for five minutes. 

Mr. COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

96 

For two days I have sat in this chair, and yesterday on a report 

from the GAO discussing waste from everything of catfish inspections to everything else, to today hearing about monies that is 

wasted. And many times what I have been hearing—I am a freshman here coming from the State of Georgia and seeing what is 

going on here—it is very frustrating. And there are so many articles done by people inside the Beltway on why is America frustrated. You see it here today. You saw it yesterday. They do not 

understand why this cannot be stopped. 

Mr. Sopko, you made a comment earlier about the Kabul Bank 

audit and that issue, and you made a comment after the question 

that said that the money had to come from somewhere. You said 

it had to come from somewhere and probably did. I will tell you 

where it came from. It came from right here. It came from everybody in the U.S. who pay their taxes. That is where the money 

came from. And for us to continue this process is just insanity. 

But we have to also find how do we fix it. We can rant about it 

all day long, and we have done a pretty good job of that today, but 

let’s go to this issue. You take contract officers. The issue of the 

contract officers—and feel free on any of this—are we lacking training here? Because this is one of the things we saw yesterday, 

where an agency just didn’t want to do it because it was too hard. 

We can’t accept that it is too hard. We have got to do a better job 

of training. 

How do we train the officers and how do we get across that these 

are things, instead of just pushing the money out the door, that 

there is a stewardship factor here? Can you address that for just 

a moment? And anyone who wants to jump in on that. 

Mr. SOPKO. I am going to defer to my colleagues who have more 

direct experience with the contracting officers in each of our agencies, and then I can comment. 

Mr. COLLINS. Okay. Whoever wants to go. 

Mr. GEISEL. I will comment a bit. Part of the procurement process, from the time that you let the contract to the time that it is 

built to the time that you pay the bill, a very important part is a 

person called the contracting officer representative. The contracting 

officer representative is the person on the ground who goes back 

and assures the contracting officer that the work has been done 

satisfactorily. 

Now, in many circumstances—I can’t speak for other agencies in 

State, but I know in State we found that contracting officer representatives get this as part of additional duties; it is not a fulltime job. Some areas are getting better. Diplomatic security is now, 

in the bigger post, having a full-time contracting officer representative. 

But if you can believe this, you can let the best contract in the 

world, and most contracting officers are pretty well trained to write 

good contracts. But unless there is follow-through and see that the 

work is done satisfactorily by the contractor, it doesn’t do any good. 

I have seen cases where a contractor will come in to a contracting 

officer representative in Afghanistan with a CD–Rom or actually, 

in this case, two CD–Roms, full of bills, and it was our understanding that in that particular case the contracting officer repVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00100 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
97 

resentative rubber-stamped them without even running the CD– 

Rom to see what was in it. 

Mr. COLLINS. Let me interrupt you right here. This is where I 

was wanting to get to at this point. When we see this kind of action—you made the statement earlier that we have rarely seen a 

firing here, and you brought this up being a prosecutor. Do we 

need more indictments? I mean, is it just a simple sense of we are 

misrepresenting money here and using it the wrong way? And I am 

not taking away these contract officers who do a diligent good job; 

that is not what I am trying to say here. But when we find wrong, 

like the Corps of Engineers, which is one of the reasons I started 

a Corps caucus for the Congress, because we have problems all 

across the board here. What can we do to fix this? I don’t want to 

sit here for my time, whatever the good people of the 9th let me 

be here, and simply say I had great hearings; we kicked the can 

down the road and nothing got done. 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman, I understand your frustration, and as 

a former federal prosecutor I do too. But being stupid or lazy is not 

a criminal offense. 

Mr. COLLINS. But it is fireable. 

Mr. SOPKO. It is fireable. 

Mr. COLLINS. And that is where the training comes in with supervisors. They have to know how to say no. 

Mr. SOPKO. You have to clean house. 

Mr. COLLINS. For those who sign the back of the check, they need 

to understand that. 

Mr. SOPKO. You are absolutely correct. 

Mr. COLLINS. When you sign the front of the check you understand that, and that is what we don’t have. 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Yes, thank you, Congressman. Let me just add 

a few additional thoughts to the issue of contracting officers in 

Corps. I have met with a number of contracting officers in Corps 

across Afghanistan. I think it is important to recognize that, frankly, we started these two contingency operations, Iraq and Afghanistan, with a substantially diminished capability to do oversight of 

contracts. 

I think the extent, the scope of the contracting that we actually 

ended up engaging in was even beyond what might have been a robust capability. The training, we didn’t have nearly enough contracting officers in Corps who usually, as has been mentioned, have 

this as a secondary or tertiary responsibility after their war-fighting and other responsibilities, have not, frankly, always been professional enough to know what to look for and what action to take. 

And we have a high turnover of personnel. 

So when you combine all this in the middle of this war zone, or 

two war zones, there are many possibilities for slippage and less 

than full execution of the responsibilities. 

Mr. COLLINS. As being one who has been in that war zone, I understand those capabilities. I appreciate you being here. 

I want solutions. That is all I am asking for, how do we move 

forward on this. And supporting those who are doing it right and 

getting rid of those who are doing it wrong. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. 

98 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Welch, 

for five minutes. 

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to 

thank the chairman and Mr. Tierney for the work they have been 

doing over the years and for the members of the committee who 

have been working on this, my trip to Afghanistan with my colleague from Wyoming. 

And I want to thank you, because you are trying to look out for 

the taxpayer dollars and we have just given you a policy that 

makes no sense. It is absurd and bottom line is it is time to pull 

the plug. I mean, we don’t trust the Afghans; the Afghans don’t 

trust us. If we are out there and have to do the basic, put eyes on 

the project, you are going to get killed. Our soldiers are getting 

killed by Afghan soldiers. 

So there is a certain point where the best of intentions make no 

sense because, on a practical level, it can’t be implemented. And 

that is not your fault; that is our fault. That is the commander-inchief and it is the Congress of the United States that has given a 

pretty dumb policy for execution to people like Tammy Duckworth, 

who just went out there and did whatever had to be done and paid 

whatever price had to be paid. And I am pretty appalled by it and 

I think the fundamental question for us is it is time to pull the 

plug on this operation. It just doesn’t make any sense, no matter 

how much oversight we have done. 

But I do thank you. And your predecessor, Mr. Bowen, is kind 

of a voice of integrity and accountability in a swamp, so thank you. 

I will get to you in just a second. But I do want to let you make 

a comment and ask one question, then yield to my friend, Mr. 

Tierney. 

Mr. Sopko, we have a lot of NGOs that are doing good work and 

they are doing the work in Afghanistan. They strongly believe in 

many of the ideas behind direct assistance, which, incidentally, I 

think can be helpful under the right circumstances; and I hope the 

lesson here isn’t that we don’t do direct assistance, but we some realistic assessment of when and where it makes some sense to do 

it. But those NGOs do believe in a lot of those things like local control and capacity building. Is there anything we can learn from 

them about how to do this right? 

Mr. SOPKO. Thank you for that question. I actually met with a 

number of small NGOs just a week or two ago, and I was really 

impressed with how they operate for two reasons. Number one, 

they have been on the ground; many of them were on the ground 

even when the Taliban operated. They operated with a very small 

footprint, very low-key. And I think I was talking to either Catholic 

Charities or Mercy Corps; they spent a total of $10,000 on security 

because they are built into the community, they are part of the 

community and protected by the community. So one thing we 

should consider the next time we do one of these things is maybe 

rely more upon smaller organizations that work with the community. 

But all of them did raise one issue, and that is if we do go to 

direct assistance, don’t do it quickly; think about it. And they cited 

a number of examples where AID decided to do something in an 

educational area and it destroyed the program because, apparently, 

99 

they wanted to get so much money onto direct assistance, so they 

decided to do it. And they wrote a very interesting white paper on 

it that dealt with the partnership for advancing community education in Afghanistan, where they didn’t know why it had to go on 

direct assistance, but, as a result of it, it was destroyed. 

Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much. 

I wanted Mr. Cooksey to be able to get a response in, but first 

I want to yield the balance of my time to Mr. Tierney. But please 

let Mr. Cooksey make his point. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Will do. Thank you. 

Mr. Sopko, I just had a quick follow-up on that. You had indicated that USAID has conducted evaluations of the various Afghan 

ministries to determine their capacity to manage programs, correct? 

Mr. SOPKO. That is correct. 

Mr. TIERNEY. You said you had copies of those assessments and 

they raised some serious red flags? 

Mr. SOPKO. That is correct. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Would you be willing to provide those evaluations 

to this committee? 

Mr. SOPKO. I would be willing to, but I was instructed by AID 

not to provide them to you. 

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. Are they classified documents? 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, retroactively, after we found them, they classified them SBU. But, as far as we can tell, there is nothing classified in them. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Carroll, do you know anything about this? 

Mr. CARROLL. I do, actually. I ran into the legal counsel yesterday in the hall and she had said that John had asked her for the 

documents, and they did give them the documents. I don’t know 

about not providing them to Congress. I thought that you all had 

an agreement with the agency that they would provide IPR documents to you under certain conditionalities, so I am surprised that 

they have said that, but I don’t know that for sure. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I suggest, Mr. Chairman, we have some work 

to do here. There should be something we can work out with the 

Administration so this committee can continue to do its work and 

have access to those documents. 

Mr. SOPKO. If I can add, Mr. Tierney, I was told by a senior AID 

official when I was in Afghanistan, when I discovered these things, 

that they were sensitive, but they were mainly embarrassing, so 

they were going to let the Afghan ministries redact them before 

they gave them to me. And I went through the roof. I told them 

if the documents weren t on my desk by the time the wheels landed, I would be sending a letter to Congress and the administrator 

on this. They also then told me that that was the type of redaction 

that was being done by a nameless, faceless Afghan bureaucrat before they turned them over to you. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, unfortunately, this is not an uncommon practice, and embarrassment isn’t one of the criteria for classification. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I assume we will work together on that. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Absolutely. 

Mr. TIERNEY. And I have an obligation to Mr. Welch to recognize 

Mr. Cooksey for his comments, if the chair will allow. 

100 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Brief, if you could, please. 

Mr. COOKSEY. Just one thing I wanted to comment on, because 

Mr. Collins brought this up and Mr. Welch brought this up, as to 

what the committee should do going forward, and at a hearing 

about four years ago, Senator Lieberman asked a very similar 

question and one thing that would be helpful is for the committee 

to step back and take a broad look at how our foreign aid is managed overseas in stabilization and reconstruction projects. Everything here we talk about is all very ad hoc, and you really need 

to have an integrated, well planned operation. 

Now, in response to Senator Lieberman and other questions, we 

prepared several proposals for them. We have one included in the 

latest report that we believe would respond to the questions that 

you have asked here and have been asked in a number of the other 

oversight committees, but it would be major change. It is a heavy 

lift, but personally I really think you have to step back from this 

contracting officer is doing, what this is doing and really set the 

tone for the future of what we are going to do next year. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank you. 

We now recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. 

Gowdy, for five minutes. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to ask this 

panel of witnesses, Mr. Chairman, whether or not we give financial 

aid to countries that have codified religious persecution through 

blasphemy laws and, if so, why we do that. And I was going ask, 

Mr. Chairman, this panel of witnesses whether or not we give aid 

to countries that deny access to education or court systems on the 

basis of gender and, if so, why this great democracy would give aid 

to countries that deny women access to education or court systems. 

But I have been advised that perhaps this is not the best panel for 

me to posit those questions, so given your work, Mr. Chairman, on 

waste, fraud, and abuse—and no one in Congress has worked harder on it than you have—I would yield my time to you in hopes that 

perhaps any future setting I would be able to ask my questions 

with respect to religious persecution and denying women access to 

education. I yield to the chairman. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman. Absolutely. This is something the committee and the subcommittee will be pursuing; it is 

a panel that we need to establish, these being essentially the auditors. But your passion and commitment to this issue is admirable 

and we will absolutely be pursuing that in future committee hearings. 

With that said, let me go back to what Mr. Welch and Mr. 

Tierney brought up. I am not understanding, Mr. Carroll, have you 

seen these assessments of these different agencies? 

Mr. CARROLL. As a matter of fact, chairman, we are in the process of doing a global assessment, 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Specific to Afghanistan. You mentioned that they 

would, with conditions, be given to the United States Congress. 

Why would there be conditions? 

101 

Mr. CARROLL. No. Well, what I was talking about was I thought 

that the agency had an agreement with the committee that the 

committee would come to AID or to some reading room kind of arrangement. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. No, no, no, no. That is not the way the United 

States Congress works. You are not going to tell me what assigned 

time I can come down to USAID and have a look around, with 

somebody watching me what I look at. You have these reports, do 

you or do you not, the un-redacted, unchanged reports? 

Mr. CARROLL. I can certainly get them. We don’t have them, per 

se. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You have not seen them? You personally, you 

have not seen them? 

Mr. CARROLL. Personally, I have not seen them, no. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Has your group seen them? Is there somebody 

within your group that has seen them? 

Mr. CARROLL. Yes. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. But you are aware that they are there. 

Mr. CARROLL. Oh, yes, absolutely. Right. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. That prohibits you from getting those reports? 

Mr. CARROLL. Nothing. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So you can get them today if you ask for them. 

Mr. CARROLL. I could. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And you could deliver them to the United States 

Congress, my office, today. 

Mr. CARROLL. That is my responsibility. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Is that something that you can do by the end of 

this day? 

Mr. CARROLL. Yes. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You have the authority; you have the opportunity; 

you know that they are there. Will you deliver them to my office 

by the end of the day? 

Mr. CARROLL. I will. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I would hope that we would see the 

copy that has not been edited by somebody who finds them to be 

terribly embarrassing. 

Mr. CARROLL. We wouldn’t accept redacted copies. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

Mr. Sopko? 

Mr. SOPKO. Mr. Chairman, I can add we also have the copies. We 

are reviewing them and we are happy to give them to you, and 

they are not redacted. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And that will happen by the end of this day? 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, why don’t you have him do it by the end of the 

day. I can give them to you if you don’t get them by the end of the 

day. They are rather extensive. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Let us clarify that they should come to the committee, not my personal office, so that both sides of the aisle, that 

we can both see them. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, yield? 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Very briefly. I just wanted to make sure it is 

clear to the witnesses that, on our side, we fully support the reVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00105 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
102 

quest that was just made and we look forward to getting those documents immediately. 

Mr. CARROLL. Is Mr. Sopko going to do it or am I going to do it? 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You are going to do it. 

Mr. CARROLL. Yes. Thank you. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. Thank you. 

I would like to ask Inspector Geisel here, one of the big accounts 

that happens there in Afghanistan is the International Narcotics 

Control and Law Enforcement Affairs, INCLE, for lack of a better 

acronym. As of December 31st, 2012, the total cumulative funding 

for INCLE amounted to nearly $4 billion, at least it was approaching $4 billion. What oversight mechanisms do you have in place, 

because it is one of the biggest accounts going into Afghanistan? 

What oversight mechanisms are in place to make sure that this is 

held accountable? 

Mr. GEISEL. We have conducted audits over their programs. And 

because of the fact that, as you pointed out, although in the bigger 

Afghan picture it is not big, it is the biggest for State, we have 

done two audits on those. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And I guess I am more concerned about not looking back, but what mechanisms are in place moving forward, because they are still going to continue to get funding. 

Mr. GEISEL. If they get funding, we will do audits. And I should 

add we also do inspections, and it is obvious, because it is big, we 

are going to do it. We go where the money is at. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. All right, we will follow up on that, because I am 

very interested in what safeguards the State Department is putting 

in place so it is realtime, or in advance, not just retroactive and 

say, whoops, we made the mistake again and again and again. 

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding. We will 

now recognize the gentlewoman, Ms. Norton, for five minutes. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It has really 

been hard to sit here and hear this testimony. As the United States 

withdraws from Afghanistan, we have seen what happens when 

are there in light of corruption, corruption that occurs right under 

our nose. We heard about the corruption with the contracts with 

our so-called partners. I want to focus for a moment on the host 

country, because as we draw, I presume that whatever oversight 

has occurred is going to withdraw, at least gradually, as well. Support for this war melted and now we are going to see very little 

support for whatever we are doing in the country vanish. My question really goes to the relationship that, throughout these wars, 

successive administrations have drawn between development in the 

country and defense. 

Now, the poster child for the host country, corruption has been 

one that this committee, through one of its subcommittees, has had 

hearings on—Ambassador Moorefield, I am sure, remembers the 

hearings on the Dawood Military Hospital. What makes me wonder 

about what appears to be a haven of corruption now, what it will 

look like if Dawood is an example. Here you had 100 percent funded hospital that took care of Afghan police and military, and DOD 

trainers right on site essentially to help them to be able to do all 

of this by themselves. 

103 

Now, right under their very noses you had notorious corruption 

of the worse kind. For example, counterfeit morphine was reported; 

pharmaceuticals that came in and then went out; and a criminal 

network to be sold on the black market absolutely diverted right 

there, side-by-side with DOD personnel. 

I hate to say this because the whole notion of construction and 

defense, construction making countries secure and defense going 

hand-in-hand, certainly made sense on paper and abstractly, but I 

have to ask, particularly in light of Mr. Sopko’s testimony that corruption in Afghanistan was so endemic that it threatens the reconstruction effort, if we pull out, there will be nobody to report to except the Afghans. 

You have had a recent report of the Afghan attorney general, and 

they looked at what he had done for an entire quarter. No significant anti-corruption indictments. I am trying to figure out the forecast for what happens if we leave money and construction or even 

for something as vital as medicine and pharmaceuticals, how we 

can expect this corruption to do anything but spread. 

So first let me ask perhaps Mr. Sopko and Mr. Cooksey what is 

your forecast for how the host country, which will be responsible 

now by itself, will respond if they are now in charge of ferreting 

out corruption. 

Mr. SOPKO. We are very, very concerned. You have hit the point 

on the head. And I can only cite you a recent example; I can’t go 

into the detail because it is under seal. But we have tried to push 

the envelope where we can to work with Afghan Ministry of Justice. We are probably one of the few agencies that do that on a regular basis, but we can only push it so far. The prosecutors we talk 

to and the cops, who are Afghan cops, know we can’t go any further. 

Ms. NORTON. Because? 

Mr. SOPKO. They can’t go any further because they are hitting 

too close to power; they are getting too close to the politicians. And 

we had an interesting case. We are the first law enforcement agency, in our belief, to have a U.S. law enforcement officer testify in 

a court; and he just did that two weeks ago and, as a result, a sentence was increased. And this had to do with somebody who stole 

money from our fuel depot. 

Now, we have another case that is under seal. We were the first 

agency to actually get an in rem action. We identified approximately $50 million stole from the U.S. Government which was in 

a Kabul Bank. We got a court order; it is under seal, so I can’t describe the particulars, but we had it served on the Afghan government to seize that money. It was supposed to be frozen. For six 

months we have been negotiating with the attorney general’s office 

in Afghanistan and, lo and behold, last weekend, mysteriously the 

money was unfrozen and it is gone. This, I fear, is the future in 

Afghanistan. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Sopko, we are dealing with a country that has 

not had the rule of law, nothing close to it. Sometimes I remember, 

when countries were given their independence, we would send over 

people to work specifically on justice system and rule of law. Are 

there people in the country working to acquaint, to bring the rule 

of law to a country which, over thousands of years, has never had 

104 

it; where, it seems to me, in light of this testimony, will get worse 

if we continue to leave money there? 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman Norton, I think you are right. And I 

don’t want to denigrate there are some brave Afghans who are trying to do this, and I think the Chairman referred to the MEC, 

which is a joint Afghan and international organization which has 

been looking at corruption; and they are the ones who have basically done the most work identifying the problems in the Kabul 

Bank, and you have to give them credit. But we have to try to help 

these people, and we definitely have to try to help those people who 

are Afghans fighting corruption. But my fear is it is going to be extremely difficult and I am not optimistic. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I thank the gentlewoman. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. 

Bentivolio, for five minutes. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief. Real 

quickly, but as I sit here every day, listening to testimony upon testimony, questions, I am sitting here thinking I wonder what Joseph 

Heller would write about 60 years later; would it change or would 

it be pretty much the same. 

But real quick question is regarding there is a theme that seems 

to run through all the testimony I have heard since I have been 

on this committee, and that is we have to incentivize integrity, 

honesty in our system. And the question I have is what are your 

suggestions, if any. What exactly are you talking about. Because it 

certainly seems like we look for ways to punish, but we are not 

doing that. Maybe to incentivize gives somebody an incentive, 

maybe a percentage of the corruption that they expose and correct. 

We would probably have billionaires out there overnight. Any suggestions, sir? 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, we do have programs set up that whistle-blowers can collect funds. We have used whistle-blowers. That actually 

is an incentive, and it goes back to a statute that was passed in 

the 1860s in response to Civil War corruption. So statutes like that 

can help and we use it. I think there are other incentives that 

maybe my colleagues could also add. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. What about your authority? Can we give you 

some more bite? I mean, it says acting inspector general. How long 

is your term, sir? 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, actually, my term is written into the statute. 

We go out of existence six months after the amount of reconstruction money falls below $250 million not yet spent. So since we are 

in the $30 billion range, we will be around for a while. But I personally like the fact that we are a temporary agency. I think this 

was a wonderful assignment given to me by the President, but I 

think this was a wonderful statute passed by Congress. Don’t create another organization that never goes away. You should create 

it for the emergency. The emergency was what was going on in Afghanistan, and when our time is right to shut down, we will shut 

down. I will be happy to turn the lights off. So, no, I don’t need 

to be permanent. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Okay, sunset clause. 

Mr. SOPKO. Yes. 

105 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. What about other incentives besides the statute 

that came from President Lincoln, I think it was? 

Mr. SOPKO. I will defer to my colleagues. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Any other suggestions how we can incentivize 

cost-saving measures and integrity and honesty in our system? 

Mr. CARROLL. Well, it is disappointing to hear that you feel that 

we need to incentivize good behavior. I don’t think that is the case. 

I don’t think that there is so endemic corruption in the American 

system that we need to do something like that. I agree with John 

that there are systems in place, qui tam and whistle-blower and 

things like that, where people can be remunerated for exposing corruption and that sort of thing, but it is all of our responsibility in 

the Federal Government to conduct ourselves lawfully and ethically. 

So the carrot is good, but I think you are looking at the hammer 

right here at the table. We have full law enforcement authority to 

investigate and prosecute and that sort of thing. Our audits disclose corruption and we act on that. So I think you have the tools 

in place. I am not here to argue for more money, but when you 

think about the money spent on oversight vis-a-vis the portfolios 

that we oversee, you could double and triple our budgets, and we 

could double and triple our staff and still probably not feel comfortable with the amount of oversight we are providing over our 

agencies. So it is a question of what is the commitment to oversight. 

Mr. GEISEL. I would like to mention for just a moment the whole 

issue of accountability, which we have spoken about here, and officers who waste money throwing it away or who don’t properly 

check invoices and see that services were actually delivered. And 

it is very, very difficult to get rid of a person who has been proven 

incompetent if he or she is an employee of the U.S. Government, 

and I would suggest that it is about time we looked at Federal personnel regulations and see how we can better hold people accountable. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. An excellent observation. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from Nevada, Mr. 

Horsford, for five minutes. 

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

I want to start my questioning where the ranking member started this hearing today, which is to Mr. Cooksey about the fact that 

in your report it says that the primary job was to answer the basic 

question what happened to the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars 

spent to rebuild Iraq. And as the report concludes, the troubling 

answer is that it finds that 15 percent of reconstruction funds were 

subject to waste. 

Now, that is billions and billions of dollars. To the American public, and my constituents in particular, that is completely unacceptable. So my question is now that that has been identified, what is 

being done to ensure that the same levels of waste are no longer 

occurring in any other rebuilding efforts anywhere? And what can 

106 

be done to re-purpose those dollars which did not go to their intended purpose to other areas of need? 

For example, I just met with the Veterans Advisory Council in 

my district and several of our veterans raised a number of issues 

concerning services that they need upon their return from Iraq and 

Afghanistan. Among those issues, of course, is the whole backlog 

issue, which we have heard about, and I hope that we will continue 

to address. 

But there is one thing in particular, and I want to ask you specifically, about some of the serious health issues that they were exposed to while in active duty, and one in particular is the open pit 

burning issue in Iraq and Afghanistan. So my question is to what 

extent have any of you examined this issue of the burning pits and 

is there any coordination with the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and do 

we know of the extent of the exposure to U.S. troops who were 

serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and any overall impact of the burning pit issue? 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman, that is a very good question. We actually will be releasing a report on one of those issues dealing with 

burning pits within the next month, and what we discovered is, you 

realize, Congress saw that as a problem and appropriated funds to 

build sophisticated incinerators in each one of the military bases. 

What we have discovered, unfortunately, is poor procurement, and 

most of those incinerators don’t work or have never been used. And 

we are going to be highlighting one at the Forward Operating Base, 

Solerno, where we lost over $5 million on building an incinerator 

that doesn’t work, and now we are going to have to pay for money 

to destroy it. 

Now, as a result, they are using the burn pits, and you still have 

the same health problems. We think that is endemic to all of the 

incinerators built in Afghanistan. 

Mr. HORSFORD. Okay. So I get the impact to the investment of 

a facility, but I sat in a room with a vet who now has respiratory 

disorders because of the exposure, and he can’t get his claim approved. And when I hear that 15 percent of the money that was 

supposed to be used for these type of rebuilding efforts were wasted 

or not done according to specs, that is not a good enough answer 

for that constituent of mine, who can’t now even get his claim processed. 

So I guess, secondly, Mr. Chairman, what I see here is really a 

need to have a discussion about how these dollars that were supposed to be used to rebuild projects, that if they were not done or 

were wasted, that that money needs to get re-purposed to our veterans and that, as an example, people who were exposed because 

contractors failed to build a facility, and our vets are now exposed, 

they need to get their claim approved; and not at 10 percent or 20 

percent, but at 100 percent. And I hope that we can work together 

in a bipartisan manner to make that possible. 

So when will this report be issued and can we get a copy? 

Mr. SOPKO. It will be issued the end of this money and we are 

happy to come up and brief you, as well as brief any of the committees, including this one of jurisdiction, as well as the veterans committees. I think it is an important expose on, again, another great 

107 

program that was poorly, poorly planned and handled in Afghanistan, amounting in millions of dollars of waste. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

I thank the gentleman. 

Now recognize the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar, for five 

minutes. 

Mr. GOSAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am a health care provider, and you make a diagnosis, which is 

kind of like what you are doing or what we are doing, I guess, in 

foreign countries, and you prescribe a procedure. Diagnosis; procedure. And when the procedure does not work on a diagnosis, you 

change, you revamp and change and retool it. And everything that 

has been said here today is applicable. I mean, I am disgusted. I 

am absolutely disgusted. 

We pointed to whistle-blowers and in this committee we heard 

about whistle-blowers. In fact, we have a problem right now in 

Benghazi coming forward because of what happened with Fast and 

Furious whistle-blowers, the retaliation from within our own Justice Department. So how are you expecting something to happen 

across the world when your own Justice Department does not exonerate or support and withdraw whistle-blowers? 

Number two is when you look at madness here, a comment was 

made along this panel, I do not exactly know which one, that our 

mission is to make sure that terrorism does not exist, or minimize 

terrorism in Afghanistan, in rebuilding. And somebody said that 

we are doing that. Are you kidding me? What we did is we took 

a shotgun, a shotgun approach and we shot money at it and hoped 

some of the money stuck. And I think if you talk to any vote person, any taxpayer, any business person, anybody watching television, what they see going on in Afghanistan is an atrocity. Iraq 

the same way. It is horrible. 

So let us go back and retrace this, because I am also one of those 

problem-solvers. This has got to come to an end. Somebody said, 

and I think it was Mr. Cooksey made a comment that if we are 

going to reform this, it is smaller increments of money making sure 

that things have oversight. 

Is that not true, Mr. Cooksey? 

Mr. COOKSEY. That is correct. 

Mr. GOSAR. So small investments with caps on them, and then 

re-certification, so rewarding good behavior. Okay? I could go along 

with that. And I also think maybe could you agree also with flexibility? It seems to me that the NGOs actually work pretty well. Do 

they not, Mr. Cooksey? 

Mr. COOKSEY. In some cases. We found good success and in a few 

we found some problems. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. But, for the most part, they do work. 

Mr. COOKSEY. That is correct. 

Mr. GOSAR. And part of their magic is they lack bureaucracy, 

right? 

Mr. COOKSEY. Possibly, yes. 

Mr. GOSAR. I have been here, now, three years, and one of the 

things I see about Congress and I see about this Federal Government is bureaucracy. It is an endemic pandemic. 

[Laughter.] 

108 

Mr. GOSAR. It is horrific. In dentistry we have this theory, it is 

called the KISS theory; it is called Keep It Simple, Stupid. And 

that is what we have to get back to, because this is just egregious. 

We are throwing money out the window. My colleague from 

Vermont said it; my colleague from California said it. It belongs 

here. If we are going to have ownership here, I applaud the chairman for having those reports at the end of today, or getting those 

reports to make sure that people are held accountable. I want to 

make sure our Justice Department is holding people accountable. 

We ought to have the workplace, the Federal employees that do 

their job be held accountable and be fired for that. 

From what I have seen, look in the State Department, look in 

Benghazi; I mean, we just had retooling of chairs. Where is the accountability? When I was in private practice, the buck stopped with 

me. No matter if my hygienist, my dental assistant, my front office, 

my wife, my kids, my landscaper got into a problem; the buck 

stopped with me. And that is what America sees as dysfunctional 

here. 

If you could actually look at a foreign aid bill, and, by the way, 

I am actually putting it out this week, exactly what you are talking 

about, is that there is no flexibility. You have some flexibility in 

small amounts of cash and you have to come back and report, there 

are caps on it and it has to have justification. But you start looking 

at religious prosecution and rewarding good behavior with those 

grants. 

And then stop and ask. When you, as a patient, come into my 

office, I do not just start pulling teeth. Sometimes I would like to; 

I might get the right tooth. But if I do not ask you what hurts, how 

can I help you, and not infer what our legacy is, but work with the 

legacies and historical predications built on those countries, you 

are going to find a whole different set of answers. 

So I hope that people will look at this bill, because what it does 

is put caps on there, makes accountability. It comes back to Congress, where the due diligence belongs. Okay? And then also put 

standards in forecast to hold people responsible for their actions, 

because I am going to go back and look at the logs in the military. 

I mean, that is just absurd to me that somebody would bypass not 

even reviewing a ledger. That is just absolutely ridiculous to me. 

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield back. Thank 

you. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman. 

We now recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lankford, 

for five minutes. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

Thanks to all of you being here. This is a long day of conversation. It is a long day for all of us and it is difficult to be able to 

go through all this information. The challenge of it is we begin with 

foreign aid and how we do this is the current budget realities that 

we deal with and also the strategy of what we are trying to accomplish. I am struck by the fact that we still do not have a clear strategy for what we are trying to accomplish with our foreign aid, and 

all of you gentlemen have given us some great information on the 

accountability on the other side of it, what is being done on the 

ground with it, so I am very pleased to be able to hear that. 

109 

But you have no idea how difficult it is to be able to explain to 

someone who is a civilian DOD worker who is about to be laid off 

up to 14 days of furlough time, who sees all the fraud and waste 

that happens around their base and is trying to figure out why am 

I being furloughed when this kind of stuff is happening. It is very 

difficult to explain to someone who is a Social Security recipient or 

a Medicare recipient, they see all the fraud and the waste, and 

then they hear about this kind of stuff happening overseas with the 

dollars. You have done a great service to our Nation of pulling 

some things out and of highlighting them and saying these are the 

issues that we have to deal with. 

Mr. Carroll, specifically in your report, as I walked through it, 

I am amazed at some of the things in Afghanistan when I was 

there two years ago to get a chance to visit with some of the folks 

on the ground, including USAID. I am amazed at some of the 

things that we are involved in, and it is tough to be able to see; 

how we have Pakistani farmers, for some reason, didn’t want our 

energy-efficient irrigation pumps, they wanted to use their own. 

But we were forcing those on folks to be able to have that; how 

we are doing sustainability projects that they can’t maintain on the 

ground, like $73 million in an IT system in Iraq that they can’t 

keep up with; building schools in the West Bank in Gaza that they 

don’t know how to maintain those facilities; that we are building 

roads in South Sudan that they can’t maintain the road. In fact, 

the road has actually led to a higher number of traffic fatalities 

now that they can go a higher speed on it. That we have $92 million in the South Sudan, as well, that has 

gone to an office complex that is not actually being used for what 

we designed it for; that we give USAID aid to the Jordanian government, they have actually transferred it over to military spending. In Afghanistan, for whatever reason now, 50 percent of our development aid we are going to send directly to the government, 

when it has been clearly reported here that 13 of these different 

agencies absolutely should not get direct cash aid from us because 

they have no accountability, no structure, no process, and yet we 

are building hospitals they don’t have staff to operate; we are 

building power plants they don’t have the technology and the capability to be able to operate. We have 43 different companies that 

may have terrorist affiliations that we have contracts with through 

the Federal Government that we are spending American taxpayer 

dollars to. 

This is quite enlightening to go through the process, and we appreciate very much what you are bringing to the American people 

in doing the work that you are trying to do with it. The challenge 

goes on what Mr. Gosar was saying, as well; it is the how do we 

fix it. I am going to tell you the first option that I hear a lot is 

the first way we fix this is to do a lot less foreign aid. 

Mr. Carroll, you said you could give us three times more financial support to do oversight and it still wouldn t be enough. There 

is a way to solve that: we do less foreign aid. Then you have less 

to do in the oversight. And we are actually more efficient in saving 

some of those dollars. We are putting so much money out the door 

that we cannot oversee. The first step of that is we don’t put money 

out the door we can’t oversee. So we either have oversight in the 

110 

process or we don’t send it out the door. So step one for us is to 

send less out the door right now. And then at some point we can 

build up and have better oversight, we have that. 

What would you recommend is the step two? If we are going to 

do step one is we put less foreign aid out the door until we can get 

to a process we can oversee it, what is step two? 

Mr. CARROLL. First, let me make clear that we are providing 

oversight. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Correct. 

Mr. CARROLL. It is a large portfolio. I would like to provide more 

oversight, but there is oversight being done. So I don’t want you 

to think that there is a huge portfolio out there not being looked 

at. We do a risk-based analysis and we prioritize our resources. 

I am not here to defend direct foreign assistance or USAID Forward or IPR, or anything like that. I am not here to defend that. 

But, theoretically, the agency has come up with a well thought out 

process in making decisions. You know, for example, we have 

talked about the 13 ministries. They have not all gotten money. 

The agency is trying to be thoughtful about if there are red flags, 

they try to mitigate the red flags. If they can’t mitigate the red 

flags, I don’t think they are going to give the money. So it is not 

as if we identify these dysfunctional agencies and we are going to 

continue to give them money, regardless. I don’t think that is going 

to be the case. If it is, we will expose it, Mr. Sopko will expose it 

and we will stop it. 

It is a question of actually executing on the systems that the 

agency is putting in place to do the pre-award assessments. I think 

they need to do a much better job in, like Mr. Sopko said, getting 

out into the field and actually looking at the work being done. For 

many years the agency relied on the implementers to give them 

performance data. So it is really all about accountability. Like we 

said earlier, we don’t talk about the philosophy, the political decisions about the kind of programs that the agency is implementing. 

Our job is to make sure they are being implemented correctly and 

efficiently and there isn’t corruption, and we will continue to do 

that. 

So it is a question of us doing our job, holding the agency accountable, but the agency holding themselves accountable and 

doing the performance kind of reviews that they should be doing 

to ensure that the projects are being done correctly. And if they are 

not, to either stop the project, redesign the project—and that is 

what we do, too, in our performance audits, we make recommendations as the projects are going on so they can make mid-course corrections to try and receive their ultimate goals. 

Mr. LANKFORD. But right now we are not being strategic in what 

we are building that can actually be maintained and what we are 

building actually meets our national security interests, or what we 

are actually putting into the dollars actually we get an achievement back out of it other than someone siphoning off the dollars. 

So that is the challenge we have right now. Based on what you all 

have brought to us, which we are very grateful for, it is very clear 

we are putting too many dollars out there unaccounted for, no oversight on it on the ground, and we are hoping things are turning 

out well, and they are not. So that we have to fix. 

111 

So, with that, I appreciate that and I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. [Presiding.] I thank the gentleman. 

We now go to the gentlelady from Wyoming, Mrs. Lummis. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too want to thank the 

gentlemen and women who have worked on this report and are 

here today to discuss it with us. And I want to ask some questions 

about who else knows about it, so I will start with Ambassador 

Moorefield. 

Has Secretary Hagel read this report? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Madam Congresswoman, I do not know if he 

has read it or not. We recently received it. We have certainly read 

it in the Department of Defense IG s office and certainly have 

taken the lessons learned shared there to heart, but as far as the 

Secretary, who is relatively new, I do not know if it has been 

brought to his attention. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. And who would be responsible for bringing it to his 

attention? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Well, I would say that SIGIR certainly has the 

capability, and I think the access, to bring it directly to his attention. It could be brought to his attention by this committee. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. 

Ambassador Geisel, did I pronounce that right? 

Mr. GEISEL. You did. Thank you. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. Does Secretary Kerry know about this report? 

Mr. GEISEL. I don’t know. I believe that SIGIR was scheduled to 

brief Deputy Secretary Burns on the report at the beginning of 

April. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. 

Mr. Sopko, who in the White House knows about this report? 

You are a presidential appointee. 

Mr. SOPKO. You are talking about the SIGIR report? 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Yes. 

Mr. SOPKO. I wouldn t know. If you are talking about the SIGIR 

report, I don’t know. I think they have the same reporting process 

that I do, but everything I print our publish, it goes to SEC. Def., 

SEC. State, and it goes to all the appropriate congressional committees. So I assume it goes there. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. So regarding your report, who in the White House 

knows about your report? Your work. 

Mr. SOPKO. I will be honest with you, I don’t know who. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. That concerns me a little bit, just because there is 

an executive branch response, as well as a legislative response that 

is appropriate here. So it would seem that the White House should 

be very aware of your work. 

Mr. SOPKO. I am assuming they are because we reported and we 

brief senior officials at State, AID, and DOD. So I am assuming 

they are briefing the White House. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Would you provide us the names of the people you 

have briefed? 

Mr. SOPKO. Absolutely. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. That would be very helpful. 

Ambassador Geisel, the same? 

Mr. GEISEL. Briefed on that? We don’t have a report like that. 

112 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Well, I will then go just to the SIGIR report. 

Mr. GEISEL. Oh, absolutely. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. And would that be an appropriate question for 

Ambassador Moorefield or Mr. Cooksey, regarding who has been 

briefed about the SIGIR report? 

Mr. COOKSEY. We can provide you with the names of the people 

we brief, such as Deputy Secretary Burns at the State Department 

and others. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. That would be really helpful. Also, has 

anyone been briefed at the House Appropriations Committee, either 

staff or members of Congress? 

Mr. COOKSEY. Yes. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. And, Mr. Cooksey, could you tell me who that is? 

Mr. COOKSEY. Well, on both subcommittees on the appropriations 

committee, the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee; on the 

House side, the Majority staff. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. No one from the Minority staff? 

Mr. COOKSEY. They weren’t in the—I know he has a copy of the 

report. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. It was mentioned during the course of your 

testimony that there are ways to attach riders to the appropriations bills that would provide impetus for implementation of these 

reports. Could you go back and tell me what those were? 

Mr. SOPKO. Actually, if I can find it on my desk, there actually 

was language inserted in the appropriations bill, and I am happy 

to provide you a copy of it. Public Law 112–74, Section 7031 actually dealt with direct government-to-government assistance, and in 

that approps language they put in a requirement, specific requirement—this is something you could follow up on—on before doing 

direct assistance there had to be a review of the recipient agency 

and to determine how well or capable they are. So I would be 

happy to provide that to you. 

The question then is you put it in there; did anybody follow up. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Exactly. And, furthermore, does it need to be annually reinserted, because it is a one-year budget, or does it transcend? 

Mr. SOPKO. I think it would have to be reinserted. My understanding—I am not an expert on this, but since it is two-year 

money in appropriations language, I would think it would have to 

be reinserted every approps bill. 

Mr. CARROLL. I am not saying that that is not a good idea, but 

AID is incorporating this into their business practices. So it is not 

as if you need to encourage them to do this; they are going to do 

this as a matter of course. Now, whether they do it effectively, 

whether they do it efficiently, whether they do it all the time, 

whether they make the right decisions based on what they find, 

those are all important questions that we will have to ask as we 

go along, but this is being incorporated into business practices. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. Question for the chairman. When this committee has a hearing like this and receives information that would 

be helpful to appropriators, is there a mechanism whereby you 

communicate directly with the appropriations chairman about 

these types of revelations? 

Chairman ISSA. If the gentlelady would yield. 

113 

Mrs. LUMMIS. I will yield. 

Chairman ISSA. Yes, there is, and as a former appropriator who 

came over here, I appreciate your coming here with your vast 

knowledge and, yes, we will pass on some portions of that, including the rider request. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. 

Again, with my thanks to the panel and to all the people who 

worked on these reports and this information. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentlelady. 

I get to close and you get to leave. This is how the smiles. You 

see, you stretch, you feel better. 

I just have a couple things. First of all, Mr. Carroll, I want to 

thank you for agreeing to provide the documents that both sides 

have been asking for for a while. Ultimately, we live with the ability to get documents of that sort. 

I don’t know if it was mentioned, but we very much would like 

them in electronic format, to the greatest extent possible, PDF, if 

nothing else. But if they exist in some electronically readable, it is 

really a lot better for us. 

I once had the Secretary of Energy here, and I had to explain to 

him that they had to actually change a setting in order to not 

Bates stamp the papers they sent over to us. And if the Department of Energy could not figure out a high tech way to send us 

tends of thousands, actually, hundreds of thousands of pages other 

than in Xeroxed, non-Bates stamped form, that I would ask them 

to then send over the amount of staff necessary to go chink-chink, 

chink-chink to Bates stamp. He agreed electronic would be better. 

I have just a couple quick questions. And, Mr. Carroll, I know 

you have had a tough day. We put you in the center so that people 

on both sides would say you need to do better. But this concern 

that I have—I am leaving for foreign affairs—that going to 30 percent direct aid as a goal, and then having a policy that countries, 

to receive this direct aid, are supposed to meet a level of testing 

that clearly Afghanistan doesn’t meet, Iraq doesn’t meet—to be 

honest, it is sort of a strange thing; the Palestinians probably beat 

it better than 99 percent of the countries we provide aid to—knowing that in fact they are supposed to meet this, but then knowing 

that there have already been examples where they clearly fail, and 

for ideological or some policy reasons they get the money anyway, 

how am I to be confident that I am not essentially paying money 

for something you want somebody to do, which is not what aid is 

for? 

And I will phrase it shorter. If we know they are corrupt, we 

know that they are not going to deliver the money in totality as 

agreed, but we are doing it because we want certain other behavior, isn’t that a bribe at a government level? You don’t have to answer. I have four other people here. 

Mr. CARROLL. Oh, I was hoping that was rhetorical. I am not 

going to answer that. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. 

Mr. CARROLL. Sounds like a foreign policy decision. 

Chairman ISSA. But in the case of Afghanistan, they are certainly not, by any policy, legitimately entitled to direct aid. They 

114 

are in fact skimming it off; they are not accounting for it properly; 

it does end up in corrupt activities in many cases. But we want certain behavior. Isn’t that why we continue giving them direct aid? 

And I use Afghanistan not because they should be the poster child. 

To be honest, I think the poster child would be the countries we 

are not talking about, smaller countries, smaller amounts, ones 

that the focus of the public is not on. But Afghanistan certainly has 

been well discussed today. 

Mr. SOPKO. Well, part of foreign assistance is obviously to give 

an incentive to countries to do what we would like them to do, 

whether it is to improve education, improve women s health care, 

or allow our military to have bases. So obviously there is more to 

aid than just building buildings. So I can understand. And that is 

why, in my report, when I talk about the seven questions to ask, 

I am very clear that even though you answer every one of those 

questions in the negative, so, therefore, the program is likely to 

fail, it still may be worth the risk for other reasons. But you should 

articulate what those reasons are to Congress and to the American 

taxpayer. 

Chairman ISSA. Additional question along the same line, and, 

Mr. Cooksey, I will use you as my best example because you have 

been very good. Your whole organization, since it was formed, has 

been very good at answering this question. Isn’t Congress entitled 

to know the good, the bad, and the ugly, including a current and 

up-to-date report on a regular basis of, in fact, how corrupt some 

group is that we are providing direct aid to; how good their human 

rights are; how good—and I know that Mr. Gowdy had specific 

questions—how good their religious freedom rights are? Isn’t that 

an essential element that without that the motives, in fact, can be 

very well disguised? 

Mr. COOKSEY. Well, clearly that is an essential element of oversight, would be to be provided this information from whichever government agency is thinking about—wants to provide the money. 

There should be a justification up front and there should be a report afterwards as to what happened to—what was the outcome, 

what happened to the money. 

Chairman ISSA. Closing last question, and my ranking member 

is here, so he may have the last word, for my two ambassadors. 

The title of ambassador is granted once and worn always, but one 

thing that ambassadors have to deal with is speaking to a foreign 

government or, in some cases, other entities and telling them that 

their hands are tied by U.S. law. You have done it. Practically you 

can’t get through your first month. Isn’t in fact U.S. law and the 

intent of U.S. law something that should tie the behavior of those 

we provide aid to just as strongly as Mr. Cummings and I would 

insist that the corrupt practices law be enforced against companies 

doing business? Isn’t the standard, at least in the law, and, thus, 

what you have to tell your counterparts on the other side is part 

of the package with America? Isn’t that empowering to you as ambassadors? 

Mr. GEISEL. Absolutely yes, and you used the right word, empowering. I loved telling crooks that we weren’t going to play their 

game. 

Chairman ISSA. Ambassador? 

115 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had the 

honor of serving in two countries, and it was certainly very sobering to be able to explain what U.S. law was and what the limitations and requirements were. So it was very empowering, yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, I am an old foreign affairs guy who has 

been off the committee for a number of years now, and I have 

watched all the good work we did in Egypt go the wrong direction, 

and several other countries. So I do share with you that empowering our diplomats by having us stand for the right things, us say 

that we will not make monies available if in fact you don’t meet 

standards that the American taxpayer would expect, and my hope 

is that, working with the Foreign Affairs Committee as the authorizers and the appropriators, we continue to do that. 

With that, we have been rejoined by the ranking member, who 

is now recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Picking up on where the chairman left off, Mr. 

Sopko, how confident are you that we can do that? I asked you earlier about how to have these accountability standards and making 

sure that, as money is distributed, we are making sure that the 

dollars are being used for what they are supposed to be used for. 

But going back to what the chairman was saying, I have listened 

to a lot of what you all have said and it makes you feel like this 

is just too big to control, and I am just wondering—give me some 

good news. Really, this is the United States of America. This is the 

Country that sent folks to the moon. And you mean we can’t control our own dollars? We are not doing the stuff that we did, where 

we sent all the millions of dollars over to Iraq a few years ago with 

no controls; they are not doing those kind of things, I am sure, but 

it sounds like we are not too far from it. 

Mr. SOPKO. Congressman, I am, like I said, the eternal optimist, 

but we have done a lot. We have helped the Afghan people. Many 

of the programs work. We are highlighting problems. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. 

Mr. SOPKO. And they are serious problems, and we are highlighting concerns. And we are particularly concerned now as the security issue changes. And I think that is why we are here raising 

these concerns so vociferously, because if the security situation deteriorates, then we can’t do our job, AID can’t do its job, DOD can’t 

do its job to let out those contracts. And if we don’t replace the U.S. 

military with appropriate security provided by the State Department, none of our auditors or investigators are going to be able to 

leave the Kabul bubble. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So I assume that if the President called you right 

now and said, look, I just saw you, Sopko, on C–SPAN. Come and 

tell me, give me your best advice, what would you say, that what 

you just said? 

Mr. SOPKO. I would say that and make certain we are properly 

planning and properly coordinating with our allies. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Every step of the way. 

Mr. SOPKO. Every step. And coordinating, where we can, with the 

honest Afghan citizens who care. And there are numbers of them, 

and we can’t forget them, because, like I said in my opening statement, that would be the cruelest joke, is after 30 years of the Afghans fighting the Russians, the Taliban, and all of that, we pour 

116 

the money in, we upset the whole apple cart there, and then we 

say bye, it is all yours, see you next decade. That would be the cruelest joke and the cruelest joke to our citizens, who have paid for 

it in their blood and their treasury. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I often say we should not be so concerned about 

who we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for, because 

sometimes I think they get lost. We get so caught up in the fighting against, but what we are fighting for. What is it that we are 

fighting for? Because I think we can get so hung up. 

And President Karzai is one thing, but you take us back to what 

the bottom line is, and it goes back to what I said at the very beginning, Mr. Cooksey, about how I wanted to make sure that if we 

look at what we are fighting for, that we keep our eye on that prize 

and not allow the other things to kill it. Am I right? Does that 

make sense? 

Mr. SOPKO. It makes absolute sense. And, Congressman, that 

was one of the reasons why I was so upset when the AID official, 

who oversees programs where we are trying to teach rule of law 

to the Afghans, pulled on me that, oh, we can’t give Congress material, we can’t give you material because it is embarrassing. And I 

was thinking we are trying to teach rule of law to the Afghans and 

we are not even applying rule of law to our legislators and our taxpayers. I mean, this is taxpayer money that paid for these programs, taxpayer money that paid for those audits. And, actually, 

those audits came about because Mr. Carroll uncovered the fact 

that the internal audits, the internal assessments done by AID 

were worthless. So he told them they had to go out and get these 

outside audits. So our taxpayers paid for them twice. And then we 

were going to turn them over to nameless, faceless Afghan bureaucrats to X it out. 

Now, maybe I am really upset because I worked on the Hill, as 

you know, for John Dingle, and I just couldn’t believe this. You are 

applying FOIA. One of the objections the general counsel told me 

is, oh, there could be FOIA involved. I said, have you ever looked 

at the FOIA statute? Congress is exempt from FOIA. So what are 

you saying we can’t turn it over to FOIA because it is potential 

FOIA? And then they classify it after the fact. 

So I understand where you are coming from. I think we have to 

live up to our law and live up to our beliefs. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. My last comment. I was thinking about what Mr. 

Collins had raised an issue and I get the impression that Mr. Collins has not been to countries that do not have a fully developed 

judicial system. I have and I know the chairman has. And a lot of 

people just assume that the judicial systems are as sophisticated 

as the one we have in our Country. And they have another thought 

coming. And when you were talking about, well, how do you enforce this and enforce that and you were talking about the courts, 

you are absolutely right; if you don’t have a system—and, again, 

we assume that every place is like the United States or perhaps 

England, but they are not. So it becomes very complicated to get, 

I am sure, certain—I guess maybe it was you. One of you all was 

talking about that. Was it you, Mr. Carroll? Yes, that is a real 

problem. A lot of people can’t even comprehend that you can have 

a court system like what you said, it is about who has the connecVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:39 May 03, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00120 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\80609.TXT APRIL
117 

tions, who has the money. They don’t even comprehend that because they have never seen it. So you have quite a few challenges. 

Did you want to say something, Mr. Carroll? 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And then I am finished. 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. Just to give a ray of light here. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you. Your mic is on? Because I want to 

hear this. 

Mr. MOOREFIELD. It sure looks like it this time. 

Let me just say that against formidable challenges we have 

helped build a force of 350,000 Army and police there. The one 

thing I will say, as a former infantryman, I frankly am confident 

that they are fighters, they are willing to fight, they will fight; and 

mostly they will fight for their country. 

So notwithstanding the fact that the enemy still has a vote in 

this equation, I think they are going to probably end up being good 

enough. Now, the question is, and the challenge, can we help build 

sufficient governance, institutional capacity to support them in 

their ministries. That is the critical issue. Can we help suppress 

corruption? Can they believe that their leaders are going to support 

them in their willingness to put down their lives for their country? 

That is still a challenge. 

Mr. CARROLL. You are absolutely right, Congressman, it is a complex universe out there for us. Ninety-seven different countries that 

we do business in, and with direct aid we are going to be chasing 

the bad guys in 97 of those countries, and it is different in almost 

every single country. We are seeing that now with Afghanistan. Believe it or not, in Pakistan and Afghanistan we have had some decent success; and there are other countries where just hit a roadblock in getting cooperation with local law enforcement. They don’t 

even have the capabilities or the will or anything. So it is a caseby-case basis across the board. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I want to thank all of you for your testimony. It 

has been very helpful. And hopefully it will help us to get to where 

we have to go, and that is trying to make sure that our folks tax 

dollars, our constituents tax dollars are not wasted. And we can do 

better, and I am sure we will. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

And although we would not talk about it today, Mr. Sopko, Mr. 

Cooksey, we are going to continue to look at the drawdown of military that has already occurred in Iraq and that is going to occur 

in Afghanistan, and the backfill for sufficiency through State Department assets. It is an area that, post-Benghazi, I think we all 

understand that if a country cannot be relied on to provide that, 

that in fact our foreign service personnel, both State Department 

and others, deserve to know that we have a plan and that that 

plan has both initial protection and contingency. And that is something this committee, as the committee of broad jurisdiction of all 

the parties involved, intends to continue with. 

So I want to thank you for being here today on this subject, and 

we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:49 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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