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40–714 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–98]

STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

OPERATIONS: LEARNING FROM THE

PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAM

(PRT) EXPERIENCE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

OCTOBER 30, 2007

(II)

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JEFF MILLER, Florida

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

SUZANNE MCKENNA, Professional Staff Member

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member

ROGER ZAKHEIM, Professional Staff Member

SASHA ROGERS, Staff Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2007

Page

HEARING:

Tuesday, October 30, 2007, Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations:

Learning from the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Experience ........... 1

APPENDIX:

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 ...................................................................................... 45

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2007

STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OPERATIONS: LEARNING

FROM THE PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAM (PRT) EXPERIENCE

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 3

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1

WITNESSES

Christoff, Joseph A., Director, International Affairs and Trade, U.S. Government Accountability Office .................................................................................. 9

Herbst, Ambassador John E., Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, U.S. Department of State ........................................................................... 4

St. Laurent, Janet A., Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, U.S.

Government Accountability Office ...................................................................... 7

Ward, Celeste, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations

Capabilities, Department of Defense .................................................................. 6

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 51

Christoff, Joseph A. joint with Janet A. St. Laurent ..................................... 66

Herbst, Ambassador John E. ........................................................................... 54

Snyder, Dr. Vic ................................................................................................. 49

Ward, Celeste .................................................................................................... 63

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Ms. Davis ........................................................................................................... 105

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 93

(1)

STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OPERATIONS:

LEARNING FROM THE PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAM (PRT) EXPERIENCE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE,

Washington, DC, Tuesday, October 30, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Dr. SNYDER. The subcommittee will come to order. Good morning. We appreciate our witnesses being here this morning and all

other folks in attendance.

This is the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation’s hearing on stabilization and reconstruction operations, learning from

the provincial reconstruction team experience.

This subcommittee has conducted a series of hearings and briefings on the PRT problems and challenges in Afghanistan and Iraq

to get a getter understanding of what the PRTs are, what they do,

and the contribution that they are making in stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq.

Every witness and every PRT veteran we heard from, both at our

public meetings and our private briefings, told the subcommittee

that PRTs are a vital tool and are critical to the success of our operations.

We have heard that much of what any given PRT does is determined by the team on the ground based on local or provincial needs

and the security conditions in the area in which it is serving.

In Afghanistan, we know the PRT’s job is to extend the reach of

the Afghan central government out to the provinces. In Iraq, some

PRTs are there to help develop provincial government capacity,

while others are there to assist and advise the brigade combat

team commanders in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations

at the local level.

But beyond that, we have heard that the PRT mission statements are vague, that they need clearly defined objectives, and

that there is no concrete means to assess their effectiveness.

One witness boiled the situation down into a single phrase, ‘‘Improvisation is not a concept of operations.’’ That witness, Robert

Perito, of the United States Institute of Peace, argued that guidVerDate 22-MAR-2001 07:42 Sep 08, 2008 Jkt 040714 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-98\303160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
2

ance needs to come from Washington and that that guidance needs

to be from a very senior level.

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, testified that the U.S. experience with PRTs has been ad hoc

and that we need a more effective interagency approach and structure for stabilization and reconstruction operations.

Throughout the discussions this committee has had and the testimony that we have heard, given these challenges, we have been

very, very impressed with the personnel from the varied agencies

that participate in PRTs. They are some of the most remarkable

Americans and we commend them for the work that they do.

Our concern is that perhaps we in Washington are not doing everything we ought to do to help them in their efforts.

We chose the PRT topic several months ago now because PRTs

are critical to our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We also chose

to examine them because they represent a case study on how the

interagency process works or does not work in Washington and in

the field, which brings us to this hearing today.

We have witnesses today from both the State Department and

the Department of Defense who are working on improving interagency planning, resourcing, management and oversight of future

stabilization and reconstruction operations, and one of them, Ambassador Herbst—is it Herbst?

Ambassador HERBST. Herbst.

Dr. SNYDER. We have great expectations for you today, because

there have been a lot of people bragging on you over the last several weeks from folks we have heard. We very much appreciate

your efforts.

We also have Government Accountability Office (GAO) witnesses

who have been examining the interagency efforts that our two executive branch witnesses are responsible for.

We also want to thank Mr. Shays, who allowed Mr. Akin and I

to sign on as a co-requestor for the GAO report that has been prepared on the DOD efforts.

Our panel of witnesses today includes Ambassador John Herbst,

the State Department’s coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization; Ms. Celeste Ward, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations capabilities; Ms. Janet St. Laurent,

the director of the Defense Capabilities and Management, United

States Government Accountability Office; and, Mr. Joseph

Christoff, director of international affairs and trade team, also from

GAO.

And I want to say, for our committee members, for those of you

who have read or who have not read the statements today, I

thought a lot of what we read in these reports today was some of

the biggest [expletive] gobbly-gook I have read in a long, long time.

That was the biggest [expletive] gobbly-gook, Dr. Gingrey.

The challenge for us is it important gobbly-gook, and we need to

sort that out with the help of our witnesses here today, because at

some point, it is having direct impact on very brave men and

women we have in Iraq and Afghanistan today, and we will talk

more about that later.

Now, I would like to yield to Mr. Akin for any opening statement

he would like to make.

3

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 49.]

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Dr. Snyder. And thank you all for taking

time to be with us this morning. The fact that you have this many

people on a subcommittee hearing means that you have interest.

Usually, there is the chairman and maybe the ranking person.

This particular public hearing on provincial reconstruction

teams, it is not our first, but we want to take a look at the policy

framework for dealing with stabilization and reconstruction operations.

While we have studied the PRT concept, how an interagency

team comprised of civilian and military personnel works to extend

the reach of government into regional provinces and local areas, we

have not investigated how the PRT experience is affecting how policy-makers in Washington plan for future stabilization contingencies.

While we may not be engaged in the future in a nation building

operation equal to the scale of what we are currently doing in Iraq

and Afghanistan, I think it is fair to say that the United States

will likely be engaged in similar contingencies in the coming decades.

We were conducting similar operations in Bosnia and Haiti in

the 1990’s. September 11 has only reinforced the importance of

these missions.

Even those skeptical of nation building understand that stable

states are less likely to have ungoverned spaces where terrorists

find safe harbor.

The focus of today’s hearing, therefore, is to learn how the Defense and State Departments are ensuring that we are translating

lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan in a 21st century interagency apparatus that has the resources, the capabilities, and

plans to run seamless interagency stabilization operations.

This is the goal of the national security Presidential directive

NSPD–44. Today our witnesses will tell us how these are progressing.

I am curious how the State Department, particularly, the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization understands its role as

lead agency for reconstruction and stabilization under the new directive. This subcommittee is certainly interested in learning more

about how your office is building three distinct corps of civilian

agency personnel for these types of missions. And this is a welcomed initiative.

I am particularly interested in what tools the civilian reserve

corps will need to be successful. Such success will hinge, in large

part, in determining the role of the Department of Defense in future stabilization operations.

The directive makes stabilization operations a core mission for

Defense Department on par with combat operations. When I think

this catches up DOD policy with the reality that has been true in

the department for almost two decades, I am interested in how we

4

are going doing on policy execution, whether our combatant commanders are planning for these missions and whether the services

are budgeting and building the capabilities for this mission.

I would like our witnesses to comment on how they think the Department of Defense is progressing in terms of implementing this

directive. If there are any hurdles, please identify what they are.

Again, thank you all for joining us this morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for pursuing, I think, a very interesting line of questions for oversight.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the Appendix on page 51.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

We have had requests from some members who are not a member of the Armed Services Committee nor this subcommittee to join

us. So I will ask unanimous consent that they be allowed to participate, if they arrive.

We are going to go in the order that I—I think just right down

the line here.

Ambassador Herbst, I want to begin with you, because you have

the overall responsibility for some of the things we are talking

about, and then we will hear from the other witnesses.

We will have Suzanne put the five-minute clock on you. So you

will get a green light, then a yellow light, and then a red light. But

in contrast to our members here, I will not rap the gavel on you.

If the red light goes on, but you still have some things to share

with us, you feel free to go ahead. It is just to give you a sense of

where the time is.

So we will begin with you, Ambassador Herbst.

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR JOHN E. HERBST, COORDINATOR FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND STABILIZATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Ambassador HERBST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of

the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify.

Weak and failed states pose a serious security challenge for the

United States and the international community. They can become

breeding grounds for terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, trafficking in humans and narcotics, as well as organized

crime.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been engaged in or contributed significant resources to more than 17 reconstruction and stabilization operations. The challenge persists and

will persist well into the future.

If the U.S. Government is going to meet these threats, we must

adapt our national security resources appropriately. State Department/Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization

(S/CRS) was established in 2004 to do just that. Starting with just

a handful of staff, the office has grown to over 80.

My office is charged with two tasks. The first is to ensure that

the entire U.S. Government is organized to deal with reconstruction and stabilization crises affecting our national interests. That

includes harmonizing civilian and military activities, making sure

that civilians operate as one team.

5

Our second task is to enable the civilian capacity to staff these

missions when called upon to respond. These tasks are easy to describe, not so easy to achieve.

They require nothing less than revolution in the way that the civilian part of the U.S. Government operates, something similar to

the reforms in the military in the 1980’s with the Goldwater-Nichols legislation.

In December 2005, President Bush issued National Security

Presidential Directive 44 to improve the management of reconstruction and stabilization operations. The directive states that the

secretary of state is responsible for this and that S/CRS is her executive arm for doing this.

We have made significant progress on implementing the National

Security Presidential Document-44 (NSPD–44) and the pace has

moved very quickly over the past eight months. Specifically, on

task one, how we organize the Federal Government, we have created the interagency management system.

It has been approved by the National Security Council (NSC). It

involves the following structures. There will be a policy group, a

country reconstruction and stabilization group that will manage

the policy for senior policymakers.

Under this, there will be a secretariat run by my office. All members of the interagency who have a role in the crisis are a part of

the secretariat. Most importantly, the secretariat will draft a civilian plan of operations, ensuring that all parts of our government

operate as one team and that this is linked up with the military.

To ensure linkage to the military even more strongly, we will create an integration planning cell. This is an interagency group led

by S/CRS that would deploy to the relevant combatant commander

if military forces are involved in the stabilization operation, if the

U.N. military force they deploy to the U.N. military headquarters.

The purpose is to make sure that military and civilian plans are

completely linked up.

The last institution that will be created in the interagency management system is the advance civilian teams. This is actually our

phrase for PRTs. These will be an interagency team, probably, in

most cases, led by S/CRS, but involving all members of the interagency that will deploy to the country in crisis.

If there is an American embassy in place, the ambassador will

have control over this mission. If not, this will be the senior U.S.

civilian’s authority in that country.

That is what we have done to achieve our first objective.

To achieve our second objective, building civilian capacity to respond, to actually go into the field, we have created three pools of

people. The inner corps is what we call the active response corps.

These are people who will sit in the government whose full-time job

is to train and be ready to deploy to a country in crisis.

My office right now has ten such active response corps members.

If you take, for example, the Lugar-Biden legislation that has been

submitted to authorize this activity, they talk about 250 active response corps members seated throughout the Federal bureaucracy.

The second pool of people are the standby response corps. These

are people sitting, again, in the civilian interagency. They have

6

full-time day jobs, but they will train for two to three weeks a year

so that they could deploy in a crisis.

The Lugar-Biden legislation talks about 2,000 such members.

Right now, we have, in the State Department, about almost 100.

The idea is that these folks would be ready to go when you have

a crisis and within 45 days of a decision, they get deployed to the

field.

The last corps is the civilian reserve corps. This functions much

like our civilian armed military reserves. These are civilians who

would sign up for four years. In this four-year period, they would

be training two or three weeks a year. They would have an obligation to deploy for up to one year in this four-year period.

If we develop all of these corps, we would have the ability to put

hundreds of people, maybe even 1,000 or more, on the ground in

a crisis, civilians with the necessary skills, within 60 days of a decision.

Thank you very much. Under five minutes.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Herbst can be found in

the Appendix on page 54.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

Ms. Ward.

STATEMENT OF CELESTE WARD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR STABILITY OPERATIONS CAPABILITIES, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Ms. WARD. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Akin and distinguished members

of this committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me to discuss such a critical issue for our military and for our government.

I have submitted my written statement, but I thought I would

make a few points of introduction.

As deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations

capabilities, part of my charter is to make recommendations for

how to enhance the capabilities of our military forces to confront

irregular challenges, to include conducting stability operations.

I am also charged with exploring ways that our military forces

can and should work with our interagency colleagues in operations

that require the application of both civilian and military capability.

I have been at this work for a little over two months now. I am

returning to government, where my last post was as the political

advisor to Lieutenant General Chiarelli, the operational commander of our forces in Iraq, in 2006.

This was my second tour in Iraq. During my first tour, I participated in the rebuilding of the Iraqi ministry of defense and other

Iraqi national security institutions.

So I come to my current job with some experience and some perspective about how we might adapt our government institutions to

better prepare for them for the challenges we face now and in the

future.

The Department of Defense has taken significant steps to adapt

the armed forces to better confront irregular challenges and stability operations. Among these steps, in 2005, the department issued

DOD Directive 3000.05, military support to security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations, by which the department was

7

instructed to accord stability operations priority comparable to

major combat operations, as you noted, sir.

Since DOD Directive 3000.05 was signed, the department has

taken steps to implement the directive’s vision by focusing on those

areas most likely to generate systemic change throughout our

armed forces, to include planning, doctrine, training and education,

organization, intelligence, and information sharing.

The Defense Department has also taken major steps in better integrating our planning, training and operational concepts with our

interagency colleagues. My office works closely with Ambassador

Herbst and S/CRS as they build the State Department’s and the

broader interagency’ capabilities.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said recently, ‘‘Our military must be prepared to undertake the full spectrum of operations, including unconventional or irregular campaigns, for the

foreseeable future. The nonmilitary instruments of America’s national power need to be rebuilt, modernized and committed to the

fight.’’

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I genuinely appreciate your interest in these issues and the insightful questions that

you are asking. I look forward to discussing these matters and to

working with you to adapt our institutions to better confront the

challenges facing our nation.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ward can be found in the Appendix on page 63.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Madam Secretary.

I should have let you all know, too, that your written statements

will be made a permanent part of the record.

Now, our two GAO folks, do you have a preference on which of

you goes first?

Ms. ST. LAURENT. I will start out.

Dr. SNYDER. Go ahead, Ms. St. Laurent. I assume you both are

testifying, is that correct? You have different responsibilities.

Ms. ST. LAURENT. Yes. We have one written statement, but we

would like to do separate oral statements.

Dr. SNYDER. That is made a part of the record.

Ms. St. Laurent.

STATEMENT OF JANET A. ST. LAURENT, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE

CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Ms. ST. LAURENT. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you very much for inviting GAO to be here today to discuss

DOD’s efforts to improve its stability operations capabilities.

Today I would like to focus on two issues—first, DOD’s new approach to stability operations and, second, DOD’s challenges in implementing this approach and enhancing its capabilities and plans

and efforts to work in an interagency environment.

My remarks are based on a report we issued in May 2007 on actions needed to improve DOD’s stability operations approach. First,

DOD has taken several positive steps to implement a new approach.

8

In November 2005, as other witnesses have mentioned, DOD

issued a new directive, the elevated stability operations to a core

DOD mission. We believe that this is a very important and positive

step.

The directive assigns responsibility for improving DOD’s capabilities to 18 various DOD organizations, including the services, the

combatant commands, the office of the secretary of defense, and assigned them over 115 tasks.

DOD has also modified its guidance to combatant commanders

for developing routine military contingency plans. Specifically,

DOD’s new guidance places greater emphasis on pre-conflict efforts

to stabilize countries or regions so that conflicts do not develop.

It also emphasizes the need to plan for post-conflict stabilization

and reconstruction activities, when they are necessary, in conjunction with civilian agencies.

Third, DOD has developed a new joint operating concept for stability operations that would address all of the services’ efforts and

involvement.

Finally, each of the services has begun to implement initiatives

to improve their capabilities. For example, both the Army and Marine Corps are taking steps to improve cultural awareness and language training.

Despite these positive steps, we identified four major challenges

that may hinder DOD’s ability to improve its capabilities. First, although DOD’s new directive requires the department to identify

and prioritize needed capabilities, DOD has made limited progress

in this area to date.

Specifically, some officials we spoke to from the services and the

combatant commanders expressed some confusion regarding what

approach or process they are supposed to use to identify capability

gaps.

Moreover, the undersecretary for policy has not yet developed a

list of priority capabilities, as required by the directive. Completing

a capability gap analysis in a systematic way is particularly important, since it can help to focus DOD’s efforts on the highest priority

issues and provide a foundation for resourcing decisions.

Second, DOD has made limited progress to date in developing

measures of effectiveness. DOD’s directive required numerous organizations within DOD to develop measures of effectiveness that

could be used to evaluate progress in meeting the directive’s goals.

However, DOD has not completed this task because, again, significant confusion exists among the services and combatant commanders over how to develop these measures and limited guidance

has been provided by OSC to date.

Third, DOD has not yet determined what mechanisms should

best be used to obtain interagency participation in the development

of military plans. We found that the combatant commands are beginning to establish interagency working groups and reaching out

to embassies. However, coordination with numerous embassies can

be cumbersome for a combatant command and civilian agencies

often do not receive draft military contingency plans until late in

the planning process, if at all.

Several factors currently hinder interagency participation in the

development of DOD’s plans. First, DOD has not yet provided speVerDate 22-MAR-2001 07:42 Sep 08, 2008 Jkt 040714 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-98\303160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
9

cific guidance to combatant commanders on what is the most effective mechanism to use.

Second, DOD’s policy is to not share contingency plans with DOD

agencies unless explicitly authorized by the secretary of defense

and when that is authorized, again, it is usually late in the plan

development process.

Third, DOD and civilian agencies, such as State and United

States Agency International Development (USAID), lack a complete

understanding of each other’s planning processes, cultures and capacities.

In addition, we found that military planners are not consistently

incorporating lessons learned from past operations. DOD routinely

collects lessons learned in numerous databases. However, accessing

and searching these databases is cumbersome and DOD’s plans review process does not always evaluate the extent to which lessons

learned are used.

Our May 2007 report included several recommendations to help

DOD address these challenges. Specifically, we recommended that

the undersecretary for policy establish a clear methodology for

identifying and prioritizing capability gaps for stability operations;

second, distribute better guidance on how to develop measures of

effectiveness.

We also recommended that DOD, in coordination with the State

Department, take efforts to establish mechanisms to involve civilian agencies in the development of combatant command plans, facilitate information sharing, and include civilian agencies in the development and the use of lessons learned.

In conclusion, although DOD has taken a number of positive

steps to improve interagency cooperation, several obstacles must be

overcome before significant results are achieved.

Overcoming these obstacles and implementing our recommendations will require DOD’s sustained leadership and partnership with

other agencies.

Thanks very much.

[The joint prepared statement of Ms. St. Laurent and Mr.

Christoff can be found in the Appendix on page 66.]

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Christoff.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH A. CHRISTOFF, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRADE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Mr. Chairman, thank you again for inviting us.

I am going to address my remarks to the State Department side

of the interagency approach.

Following problems with early reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the

State Department concluded that the United States had relied on

ad hoc processes for planning and executing stability operations in

Iraq.

State also found that the U.S. Government had no civilian capacity to plan and manage these operations.

So in December 2005, the Administration issued NSPD–44 to improve the planning and implementation of stabilization and reconstruction operations. The Secretary of State was assigned to lead

these efforts.

10

My testimony today discusses our preliminary findings, some of

our report that we will issue next week. The report provides our

assessment of State Department’s efforts to develop civilian response corps and an interagency framework to better manage and

plan stability operations.

First, in terms of the interagency framework, we found that the

National Security Council had adopted two elements of the proposed framework, an interagency management system and procedures for using the framework. State is currently rewriting a third

component, the ‘‘Guide for Planning Operations,’’ to address the

interagency concerns.

We believe it is difficult to determine the framework effectiveness, since it has not been fully applied to any reconstruction and

stabilization operation.

While S/CRS has used draft versions of its planning guide to

plan operations in Haiti, Sudan and Kosovo, implementation of the

plans has been limited.

The Administration is using existing processes under NSPD–1

for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As State completes the framework, it must address three key

issues. First, there is inconsistent guidance as to who will plan stabilization and reconstruction operations. S/CRS interprets NSPD–

44 as assigning these roles and responsibilities to itself.

In contrast, the foreign affairs manual assigns these responsibilities to State’s regional bureaus and chiefs of mission.

We have found that this has resulted in confusion and disputes

about who will develop plans and policies for these types of operations.

Second, the framework does not define what constitutes stabilization or reconstruction operations. It does not distinguish these from

traditional development assistance of counterinsurgency or

counterterrorism operations.

As a result, it is not clear when, where or how the Administration would apply this framework.

And, third, officials expressed concern about the framework’s

usefulness. These state staff characterize aspects of the framework

as unrealistic and redundant, because interagency teams had already devised planning processes under NSPD–1.

Others asserted that senior management had shown ambiguous

support for S/CRS by not giving it responsibility for operations in

Lebanon and Somalia.

We intend to recommend that State clarify S/CRS’ authority,

complete the framework, and test it on an actual operation.

Let me turn to the civilian corps. Since 2005, State has been developing three civilian corps to deploy rapidly to international crises. State established two units made up of State employees, an active response corps with active first responders, and deploy immediately to unstable environments to assess a country’s needs and

coordinate a U.S. response.

A standby reserve corps would act as second responders and

would provide additional skills and staff. And State is developing

a third corps, the civilian reserve corps, which would be made up

of civilian police officers, judges, public administrators and civil engineers from outside the Federal Government, and these civilians

11

would become Federal employees and would deploy for up to one

year.

State and other agencies face challenges in establishing these

three civilian corps, including, first, achieving plan staffing levels

and training; second, securing resources for international operations that some agencies do not view as part of their domestic

missions; and, third, ensuring that home units are not understaffed

as a result of overseas deployments.

In addition, State needs congressional authority to establish the

civilian reserve corps and to provide a benefits package that will

attract volunteers.

As part of State’s request to authorize the civilian reserve corps,

we are considering recommending that the department provide

Congress with complete information on the corps’ annual costs,

training needs, types of operations for which it would be used, and

potential obstacles that could affect recruitment and retention.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. Thank you.

[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Christoff and Ms. St.

Laurent can be found in the Appendix on page 66.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all for your testimony. Mr. Akin and I

and all the members of the committee will be on the five-minute

rule, in the order in which they came.

We have been joined by Mr. Sam Farr from California, who is

not a member of this committee, but I will ask unanimous consent

that he be allowed to participate and ask five minutes of questions

at the end of the members.

Go ahead and start the clock, Suzanne.

In my opening statement, I made reference—I think the phrase

I used was a ‘‘bunch of [expletive] gobbly-gook’’ and I hope you

didn’t take offense to that, because I suspect your very proud of

some of that gobbly-gook, but you know what I mean. This is very

complex bureaucratese language.

I want to read a statement that I think is not gobbly-gook and

I am going to quote this, ‘‘The cultural barriers between the military, Department of State and other civilian agencies seem more

striking than those between the United States and Iraqis, to me.

We say the right things about breaking out of stovepipes, but our

comfort level tends to put us right back in the mindset, language

and ways of doing business.’’

That is from a civilian employee in Iraq right now, as we are

talking, multiple tours, has kids back home, working for a U.S.

Government agency, trying to train PRT members to go out, and

that is her perception of where we are at today, that he cultural

barriers between agencies are more striking to her than between

her and her Iraqis.

Now, that seems quite an indictment of what all of us are about

today.

What I was struck, Ambassador Herbst, about your statement,

aside from, I guess, the complexity of the task that you have, is the

timeframes. At one point in your written statement, you say that

there will be two to three years. In another statement, you say that

it may be as long as ten years before we have the kind of setup

that you think will help the folks that are dealing on the ground

with the stovepipes.

12

Talk about the timeframe on this. Where do you see this going

in terms of a timeframe where we will have the kind of structure

that will provide the kind of support from here in Washington that

my friend right now perceives has such striking cultural barriers

with other agencies of the United States government?

Ambassador HERBST. I would like to start by noting that while

we were—and from the very beginning, S/CRS has worked very

closely with the military and I think that we in S/CRS are at the

forefront of change in the State Department to prepare for the complex new world of destabilized countries.

That includes, that preparation includes coming to understand

the military’s culture and adapting the best of the military culture

which fits into this new world for the State Department.

So we have, I think it is safe to say, the best planning capability

right now that exists in the Department of State, because we have

learned a great deal from our friends in the military, although we

have a long way to go to be able to plan with the level of nuance

that they plan. That is coming.

As to your specific question on timelines, we right now have an

approved interagency management system that is ready for use. So

in that sense, ensuring a unified approach, ensuring a whole of

government approach to a crisis is ready.

What we don’t have today is the civilian response capability that

can be used to man that interagency system in a large crisis and

to put people on the ground in large numbers.

For us to get that, we need to have both authorizing legislation

and appropriations.

In the 2007 Iraq-Afghan supplemental that was passed on the springtime, up to $50 million was set aside to create a 500-person

civilian reserve corps. That was a large definite direction of creating the civilian response capability.

But in order to get access to that money and to begin building

this corps, we need to have authorizing legislation.

Dr. SNYDER. But what you are saying there, you are coming

across as if the problem you have is staffing only. That is not the

problem and the greater challenge is a structure of planning and

coordination, is it not? That is what I am hearing from my friend

here in Baghdad today.

She is not saying, ‘‘And by the way, we are short on staff.’’ What

she is saying is there are cultural barriers between agencies that

are not being broken down. That is not a manpower problem.

I will accept that we are all in this together. I said that at the

outset, but I am more concerned about this interagency structure

for planning and where that is going to go and your timeline,

where you say we will have something, you are hoping—your exact

words, ‘‘I have no doubt the U.S. Government will have this capability in the next ten years.’’

We have been in this war a long time. We have been in Afghanistan for five years and we need to have a sense, I think, of trying

to expedite this in a way so that our brave men and women in the

civilian capacity in Iraq will have the kind of support they need,

and I don’t think it is just manpower.

Ambassador HERBST. I agree completely and that is why I have

said we have two tasks. One is to organize effectively. The other

13

is to have civilians who could go out to the field with the proper

training, the proper skills, the proper equipment.

We are at the point where we have a system that can be used

and this system is the command—or can be, should be the command and control for reconstruction and stabilization operations.

This system is the key to breaking down these cultural differences between the agencies. My office sits in the State Department, but my office is very much interagency project. I have people

on detail from other agencies.

As I said at the start of my answer, we have been working very

closely, for example, with the Pentagon to develop the planning capabilities that will suit us for these operations.

We see the interagency management system when it is in action

as completely an interagency structure. It is not a State Department structure. And our plans are for people in this active response corps, the standby response corps and the civilian reserve

corps, to train together, to use the same tools, to operate as a single unit, but bringing into this single unit the specialized skills associated with different agencies of the Federal Government.

Dr. SNYDER. Suzanne got frisky with the clock here and the light

went outs, but my time is up. I will want to hear GAO’s response

to that, but we will do that another time or the opportunity will

probably come along with other members.

Mr. Akin, for five minutes.

Mr. AKIN. It is a little bit tricky. We understand, in an overall

sense, the problems of trying to create this jointness. Exactly how

the structures work is not easy, because some of us aren’t even

that familiar with the differences between State and DOD and

other different things that have to come together.

But ultimately, I think what I heard you saying, Ambassador, is

that what you are starting with, that when you go into a specific

country, you are putting a team together there that has the responsibility of dealing with that particular situation. Is that correct?

Ambassador HERBST. That is right.

Mr. AKIN. And that team is at what level? Is that at the top level

in terms of planning our operations in that country?

Ambassador HERBST. The way it would work is you would develop the plan back in Washington through the secretariat to the

county reconstruction and stabilization group and that plan—if we

already have people in the country in crisis, we would be getting

information from them, recommendations from them that would be

factored into the plan, but the plan would be built in Washington.

The people who go into the field would have the responsibility of

implementing that plan and, again, the people going into the field

would represent all agencies which have skills that could be used

properly in the country in crisis.

Mr. AKIN. So in other words, we develop plans for various countries here ahead of time and then we put those plans into place by

putting personnel into the field.

Ambassador HERBST. That is the ideal situation. That is what we

are aiming toward.

Mr. AKIN. Now, first of all, right at that point, in the process of

developing those plans, is there a lot of pushing and pulling as to

what those plans should be or sort of the philosophy of them or the

14

over-the-top level of management, what we are trying to accomplish? Is there a lot of disagreement there or does that tend—is

that something that you have an organization that people can work

together and actually come up with something practical?

Ambassador HERBST. We have done planning in a few instances

and in those planning processes, we have generally found clearly

different points of view, but a recognition of the goals that we are

seeking to achieve and a recognition that this is a common enterprise.

Mr. AKIN. Okay. So in other words, what you are saying is let

us say we turn the clock back and it is 2000 and we may be going

into Iraq. We haven’t gone in there yet.

What you are saying is you start with a plan for the country to

begin with.

Ambassador HERBST. Right.

Mr. AKIN. Okay. And that plan is going to be developed by—overall, it is under the auspices of State. Is that correct?

Ambassador HERBST. It would be under the auspices of a secretariat which we would share, but this is controlled by the interagency, ultimately under the NSC.

Mr. AKIN. Okay. So that is how it starts. Then you have people

that go into the country. Let us say we have gone into Iraq and

that the war has progressed and all.

Then you have people that go into the country that are directly

executing this plan.

Ambassador HERBST. That is correct.

Mr. AKIN. And DOD is in the loop and they know what the plan

is.

Ambassador HERBST. DOD is part of the secretariat that writes

the plan. We also have, as I mentioned before, this integration

planning cell that is an interagency group that would deploy to the

command headquarters of our military to ensure that civilian and

military planning is completely linked up.

Mr. AKIN. Because one of the things that we are dealing with

here, we have been looking at, in a sense, a lower level. We have

been looking at the reconstruction teams. That is where the rubber

is on the road.

But we are trying to project backwards now and to say, okay,

now, as you move up the line and you are planning, that gives you

the mission for the reconstruction team, because they are executing

the plan.

In a sense, that team that is going into the country is sort of a

high level reconstruction team of itself, is it not?

Ambassador HERBST. Correct.

Mr. AKIN. Okay. I think that is at least, again, a concept of what

you are trying to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will pass on the rest of my time.

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis, for five minutes.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you all being here.

Quite a few of us have been sort of grappling with some of the

concepts, and so I really appreciate that there is something at least

down on paper to respond to now.

15

I want to thank Mr. Farr, as well, and I am interested in how

you see at least the legislation that has been drawn up, that has

been conceptualized, and where you see it really responding to the

needs, and where do you think, in many ways, it is perhaps off

base some way in terms of the reality.

Ambassador HERBST. You have House 1084, which Congressman

Farr introduced, and you have Senate legislation, 613, introduced

by Senators Lugar and Biden, and we think these pieces of legislation are very similar. They present the main elements of what is

necessary and if they were approved, they would enable us to get

cracking.

We are already working, but we need legislation to continue and

speed up our work.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Are you familiar enough to respond in

terms of what you think are—are the bones there that are appropriate, but in the implementation, what problems?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Well, what we are going to probably recommend

next week in our report is that there certainly is a need for having

these civilian corps, no doubt about it, but I want to know what

I am getting for the $50 million, such that I would want to know

more detail than what is being provided and the costs, the annual

costs.

I think there are still concerns about how much this 2,000-person

civilian reserve corps is going to cost, the startup cost, the annual

cost, according to what it is going to be used for. I want to know

how you are going to define stability operations.

So I don’t disagree with the concept, but I just want to know a

little bit more before the Congress approves it. And in doing so and

providing that authorization for these civilian corps, I think you

should ask State to provide you with more details.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Ms. Ward.

Ms. WARD. The Defense Department strongly supports the legislation that would authorize S/CRS to get moving on the civilian response corps. We believe this is a vital capability and that it will

create the civilian partners that our military folks need on the

ground.

So we are very supportive of that legislation.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I noted in prior testimony people had

suggested getting volunteers is not going to be an issue, that people

are going to be interested in doing that.

But I would wonder a little bit about that, as well. Could you respond more how we would go about that in the country and do you

envision—believe that in order to have the kind of leadership that

we see in the military command and control, however you want to

describe it, that you would need to have perhaps a more massive

training?

This isn’t something that takes place over six weeks, that all of

a sudden people get how to do that. I am interested more in how

you really are developing this kind of civilian corps and where you

think primarily it would come from and how early in education and

training we might reach to really do this in a way that we would

all look back 20 years from now and say, yes, this is the way to

do it.

16

Ambassador HERBST. First of all, regarding recruiting, right now,

the appropriations that were made in the spring was for a 500-person civilian reserve corps, not a very large capability, but a substantial one, significant one, nonetheless.

We have had literally scores of phone calls, e-mails and such

from interested civilians after the President referred to a civilian

reserve corps in the ‘‘State of the Union’’ speech in January.

I spend a lot of time talking to professional organizations about

what we are trying to do and there is always a great deal of interest in the crowd.

I believe if we are recruiting a corps of 500, we will be able,

under the legislation that has been proposed, to find skilled people

who we need.

Now, as for the training, you need to look at what we have proposed as a system as a whole and the active response corps, which

would be the inner corps of the civilian response capability, will be

made up of people whose full-time job it is to deploy and to prepare

for deployment.

So these folks, if there is no crisis where they need to be, would

be training constantly and they would provide the backbone of the

system which others would join.

You are certainly right that it would be better, all things considered, if we gave both our standby response corps members, as well

as our civilian reserve corps members more than a few weeks of

training a year.

But you take intelligent people who are committed to the cause,

you train them for a few weeks a year, you have a Web site and

other ways by which, when they are not training or not deployed,

they can get up to speed. You provide them leadership via both this

active response corps, as well as others in the government who are

going to be involved in a operation, and I think they will be able

to perform admirably in crisis.

That is the basic concept.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. One of the things, having been in San

Diego, obviously, in some ways, we do have this and my friend, Mr.

Farr, reminds me we actually saw a quite spontaneous—numbers

far—hundreds of people coming forward who thought to themselves, ‘‘Gee, I am a tour guide. I know how to organize people.

Maybe I could help,’’ and they just came pouring into Qualcomm

Stadium.

So I do think there is a local response, as well, that they were

building on and I think it—I guess what is difficult with all this

is that in every community, we probably could see this and yet

wonder why it has taken us so long to somehow bring this about.

So can you go to the main problems in terms of the culture that

kept us from starting to move this a lot sooner and how we overcome that? Because I think if you talk to people in the State Department, they feel as if they were really the poor stepchild in this.

Number one, they weren’t asked whether we have the capacity

even to begin this kind of an operation at the beginning. They certainly didn’t have the skills or the breadth of expertise that was

required.

17

So have we overcome that? What steps should we take to do

that? Even though we have got all this on paper, which sounds

good, but I am still concerned about getting there.

Ambassador HERBST. I think you are right. The key to this is to

turn a concept into a reality. You are right that we have seen the

problem at least for years and we are where we are today. We

would like to be farther along.

I think the same could be said about the way our military operated in the 1970’s and before, with a recognition that you had to

have the different arms of the military operating jointly together,

but it took a substantial push, including legislation in the mid

1980’s, Goldwater-Nichols, to force a transformation.

As Congressman Snyder mentioned, citing his source from Iraq,

you have different cultures and you have to break that culture. Our

organization, S/CRS, is at the forefront of breaking that culture

within the State Department, forcing within the State Department,

and also within the interagency.

Again, we haven’t moved as fast as we would like, but we have

picked up speed over the past eight or nine months and we now

need to continue that process.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.

Mr. Christoff, in thinking—you obviously took a really hard look

at this over time and you have said you have got to keep asking

those specific questions.

Some of those specific questions I think really amount to how do

you begin to develop the real framework for being able to determine the extent to which we are being successful and what kind

of standards, because in many ways, you have said, well, each one

is different, each PRT is going to have to be different, not just each

country, of course, is different, but each community, each village.

Do you feel that we are beginning to do that? And just one example of where you think we could look back in a few years and determine the extent to which that was a good measure, a good metric,

if you will, a good tool.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Well, I think the concepts are good concepts of

having this interagency framework. I think the concepts are good

concepts in having us building a reserve corps.

But once again, I go back to my comments about the costs. I need

more information about the costs.

Your point about training, I think it is not thought out well in

how we are going to train these civilian and reserve corps and the

standby response corps. We are talking about providing training for

up to 4,000 people by fiscal year 2009.

I am not certain where that training is going to come from, how

long it is going to be. The Canadians and the Germans have comparable reserve corps and our counterparts over at the Congressional Research Service had forum to discuss lessons learned from

their experiences and one of their most important lessons learned

was that you have to thoroughly vet and identify skills of the individuals that are volunteering to make sure that they fit with the

needs of the mission that you are going to send them to.

And you have to make sure that you provide them real world

training, not online training, not a week of training, but training

that would help them work best with oftentimes military advisors

18

and military personnel that they might be working with hand-inhand.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Mr. Chairman, I suspect my time is

gone.

Dr. SNYDER. You have benefited from psychological malfunction.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I see this green light, but I know how

many questions I could ask.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield.

Dr. SNYDER. The co-head of the working group on interagency reform can have all the time she needs. We, frankly, can’t get the

green light off.

Mr. Bartlett, for five minutes. And, Roscoe, you may hear a

gentle tapping at the end of five minutes instead of a red light.

Mr. BARTLETT. Because the light is not working.

Dr. SNYDER. The light works fine, it is just there is no meaning

behind it.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Clearly, we are pretty much plowing new ground in this reconstruction effort. This is not what we have done in the past. We

have been focusing primarily in this hearing on organizing ourselves to do that and that clearly is a bit challenge.

But I am also concerned about the challenge of deciding what we

want to do. I have visited, in my 15 years in the Congress, a lot

of foreign countries and generally we are met at the bottom of the

steps coming from the airplane with the State Department and, depending on the country, you may be whisked off to a secure location where we are briefed.

And being as scientist, I often reflected that the State Department attitude toward the country we were visiting was very much

like the attitude of the sociologist, the animal sociologist who was

watching a troop of chimpanzees.

And it is understandable that we could have that kind of an attitude. We are one person out of 22 in the world and we have a force

of all the good things in the world. We have been enormously successful.

And it is easy to understand how you would conclude that a

country that has a system of government and a culture different

from ours has to be somewhat inferior to ours and I think we fail

to remember that we had several hundred years of cultural history

from the Magna Carta before we decided to strike out on our own

in this country.

So I am concerned that what we want to do may not be consistent with the realities of the country that we are trying to reconstruct.

Let me give you an example. When it comes to agriculture, we

have been really successful there. We now have two percent of our

people which feed all of us and have a lot of stuff to export, but

that may not be the model that, in today’s world, should be pursued in other places.

We brag that we have the most efficient agriculture in the world.

That is because one man sitting on a 150-horsepower tractor can

produce enough food to feed himself and 50 other people and some

to spare to ship overseas.

19

But in an energy deficient world, that may not be the criteria we

ought to be looking at. As a matter of fact, in terms of BTUs in

and calories out, we probably have the least efficient agriculture in

the world. But when oil was $10 a barrel, that hardly with

mattered. With oil at $92 a barrel, that may matter a great deal.

Also, there may not be jobs for people and when they are moving

off the land to the city and turning over their land to—and we kind

of see the John Deere tractor and the big combines as the way agriculture ought to be going and, for much of the world, that probably

is not the way agriculture ought to be going, because it is enormously energy intensive, and with the cost of energy and its lack

of ready availability in the future, that may not be the model we

should be following.

How do we determine what we ought to be doing? Do we have

people who really understand the cultures that we are going to so

that we are helping them to develop the kind of a government, the

kind of a culture, the kind of an economy that will be sustainable

after we leave, with all the money we are pouring in?

How do we do that?

Ms. ST. LAURENT. I don’t have a perfect answer for that, but I

think that your comments illustrate why an interagency approach

is needed, because I think if each agency devised its own strategy,

it may not reflect consideration of all the factors that need to be

weighed in coming up with what the U.S. approach should be.

For example, the military has a lot of resources at its disposal

and engineering battalions and other units that can construct

things and build things and one of the things I think, although

they have those capacities, that needs to be thought through is

what would be the benefit or the outcome.

What outcome would those kinds of construction projects

achieve? And I think that is where input from AID and the State

Department and Agriculture, if it is an agriculture-related project,

need to be joined together with military personnel to decide what

the strategy is.

The example, for example, of building a school. The military can

construct a school, but unless enough thought goes into developing

a comprehensive strategy that provides teachers for the school,

makes sure that students can attend the schools, because they are

not working in agricultural fields or in factories or otherwise occupied, and ensuring books are there and all the other things that

go together with achieving a goal of improving an educational level

within a country have to be thought through.

So I think, again, this idea of an interagency process to work out,

first, at a national level, what the U.S. strategy ought to be and

then have mechanisms where you translate that into the combatant command, country team level, and then further down to tactical capabilities in units like PRTs is very important.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. Johnson, for five minutes. The nightmare may be over. We

may have a clock that works.

Mr. Johnson, for five minutes.

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

20

Ms. Ward and Ambassador Herbst, were both of your offices involved in the run-up for both Operations Enduring Freedom and

Iraqi Freedom? In the run-up for those operations, were your offices involved?

Ambassador HERBST. No.

Ms. WARD. Actually, at that time, sir, my office didn’t exist and

my office actually recently had been created in its current form as

of December of this year. There was a stability operations before.

To my knowledge, they were not involved in the planning and

their task and purpose was a little different from what we do.

One of the things we are trying to do is look at those operations

and derive the lessons from them as we make prescriptions about

capabilities needed in our military forces in the future. But we

weren’t involved in the initial planning process.

Mr. JOHNSON. So you are, both offices, now involved in the provisional reconstruction teams now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ms. WARD. Sir, on my wide, I do not have operational oversight

of those. That is conducted by the regional offices, the Iraq and Afghanistan offices in OSD policy. But we are staying abreast of

events in the PRTs and how they are organized and how it is

going, again, for the lessons learned process, so that we can be

thinking about civil-military teams in the future and make sure we

understand what worked and what didn’t work, as well.

Ambassador HERBST. Our office does not have responsibility for

the PRTs, but we are right now engaged in Afghanistan at the request of General Rodriguez and we have helped a couple of the

PRTs with their planning process and we are now applying that to

the rest of the PRTs in Afghanistan.

Mr. JOHNSON. Is that a formal structure or kind of an informal

process that is taking place within both of your offices?

Ambassador HERBST. Well, we were, you might say, formally

asked to take on this job that we have taken on and we have several people out in the field doing it. But, again, we are not overall

responsible for PRTs in Afghanistan.

Ms. WARD. More informal on our side, sir, but we believe we

have expertise to bring to the question, the stability operations capabilities center of excellence, if you will, in the Pentagon.

So we believe we have something to add, but mostly we are trying to make sure we integrate the lessons from those situations.

Mr. JOHNSON. It would seem that these two opportunities are

great to learn from the activities in Afghanistan and Iraq with respect to future civilian reserve corps operations.

Is there any particular reason why the integration of your offices

with these efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq by the PRTs are not

more formalized?

Ambassador HERBST. Well, S/CRS was created in June of 2004,

when both Iraq and Afghanistan had been going on for some time.

And the resources of our office are relatively modest and the resources going into both Iraq and Afghanistan are substantial. And

the decision was taken at the time by then Secretary Powell and

my predecessor that we would not be engaged in a major way in

either place.

That has pretty much been true since then, although, as Ms.

Ward said, we have been in touch with people coming out of both

21

places for lessons learned purposes and my office is staffed with a

lot of folks who had served in those PRTs and have come to us precisely because they want to devise a better way to do this.

Ms. WARD. On that, sir, I would say that the organizational arrangements for managing those efforts sort of grew up before my

office existed.

At this point, it might merely add a bureaucratic layer, but what

we try to do is contribute the functional expertise and assist in

those efforts where we can.

Mr. JOHNSON. Any response from GAO?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. I would agree with your premise that there is a

lot that one can take from the experiences in the PRTs and to bring

up to the development of the interagency process.

The mere fact that you—the military had to provide a lot of the

personnel for the initial staffing of the PRTs and we are still going

through a three-phase process this year to try to replace some of

the military personnel that were temporarily put in place in the

PRTs with civilian personnel.

So I think the lessons learned from PRTs can bear on how we

develop this interagency process and how we think through from

the very beginning the makeup of these corps at the lowest levels

within a country and who is going to be responsible for what.

Ms. ST. LAURENT. And I would add that I also agree that that

issue is very important and the lessons from the various models of

PRTs need to be looked at very carefully.

The military has a process that it goes through in designing organizations and units and developing capabilities. Their shorthand

is DOT and OPF, but I think it is reflective of the kinds of things

that need to be looked at for the future.

What kind of doctrine for or what are the missions of these organizations, should they be in the future, if PRTs or something similar are going to be used? ‘‘O’’ stands for organization. How should

they be organized? What are the command and control relationships? Who do they report to? What kind of training do they need?

What kind of material and resources and do they need? What kind

of personnel, both in terms of skill levels, where they come from,

the mix of contractor versus DOD versus civilian personnel, and logistics support? What is the concept for providing security force

protection and all other kinds of logistics support?

But I think that kind of a framework would be very useful to

think about in analyzing the various models that have been used

to date and then where we go for the future.

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Gingrey, for five minutes.

Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you. And thank all of our

witnesses.

Some of the testimony and the questions make me reflect back

on Hurricane Katrina, when lots of people wanted to volunteer.

They tried to call and find out where to go and sometimes they got

in automobiles and tried to drive down to the Gulf Coast and some

got there, some didn’t.

You had a lot of people wanting to help, I am sure. As Ms. Davis

was just pointing out, in San Diego, the same situation existed

with that natural disaster. And a lot of times, it just creates mass

confusion.

22

I know after Hurricane Katrina, there was a lot of thought put

into, but I don’t know if any action was ever taken in regard to developing a civilian reserve corps of physicians, where you had a

database and you not only made sure that they were appropriate

to the mission, but that they were vetted very carefully. I think

that is something that needs to be done.

But the bottom line is a lot of people in these emergency situations need to stay home, stay on their job, send money and pray.

They don’t need to show up at the theater of operation.

But I would hope, in regard to the civilian reserve corps, that you

would want to train some physicians. I think all professions were

mentioned except maybe health care, but you would probably want

to have some of them, as well.

And maybe it is the active reserve corps that is full-time responders, if you will, civilian responders should be the ones that do

the training of the civilian reserve corps, and that training, of

course, should be done on a periodic and timely basis, because you

may have 500 that get trained initially and then they don’t get

called for 5 years.

So you have to make sure you continue to have that group

trained and up-to-date.

Now, I do have a question and I am getting to that and this is

probably more for our GAO witnesses.

Given Directive 3000.05, equate stabilization operations with

combat operations, how satisfied are you that DOD really accepts

the critical role that effective interagency coordination and planning must play for success?

And more specifically, as I suspect, the answer would be yes, do

you see resistance akin to the services’ initial rejection of Goldwater-Nichols reforms?

I think that is a big, big issue, a big area of concern here and

I would like to know your opinion on that.

Ms. ST. LAURENT. I would respond by saying that I think DOD’s

intent is in the right place. I think it was a very significant policy

to say that stability operations equate to or are as important as

combat operations.

And I think many folks that we have talked with in the services

and the combatant commands recognize the need to place greater

emphasis on stability operations and reconstruction activities and

work more closely with civilian partners.

But I think, again, the devil is in the details in terms of how the

military moves forward to do that and it may require very, very

significant shifts in the processes that they have had for a long

time.

For example, the military combatant commanders typically

produce a very wide range of plans, theater security cooperation

plans, contingency plans that are very, very detailed, others that

are more concept oriented, and they have a lot of resources to be

able to do that.

They have established coordination groups at each of the combatant commands where they encourage interagency representatives

to attend and work with them. However, their model is that they

want full-time agency representatives and that may not always be

23

possible for some of the civilian agencies that don’t have similar capacity as DOD.

So I think DOD is going to have to work with State, AID, Treasury and other Federal agencies in thinking through if there is a

need to get more interagency input into the development of military plans, how do we go about doing that and understanding that

other organizations——

Dr. GINGREY. Let me interrupt you just——

Ms. ST. LAURENT [continuing]. Don’t have the same structure.

Dr. GINGREY. Ms. St. Laurent, excuse me, I apologize, but my

time is running out. I did want to ask this point.

Do you think that our office corps are getting sufficient training

at command and general staff college or war college level or wherever in regard to preparing them and their mindset for this climate

of interagency cooperation that we seem to be going to, a Goldwater-Nichols type approach to the interagency? Either one of you.

Ms. ST. LAURENT. I think it is changing. I think that military is

moving in that direction. I have seen materials in terms of how

DOD is trying to address some of the curriculum at the senior

schools and a variety of other schools throughout DOD.

But it is taking time to develop those courses and get those initiatives in place, but there are already courses that have been put

in place. It is a matter of expanding on them and moving this

throughout the entire department.

Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, I see my time has expired. On a

second round, maybe Ambassador Herbst and Ms. Ward would like

to comment or if you will permit it——

Dr. SNYDER. If anybody has any comments, go ahead now.

Ms. WARD. I would like to comment on a couple of those, please.

The analogy to the resistance to Goldwater-Nichols I think, in

this case, is not apt. In my experience, the military is very interested in getting help from our interagency partners.

I would say, across the board, there is enthusiasm about integrating with the interagency and helping to build their capabilities

so that they can take on some of the tasks that the military may

have been doing, but maybe is not their core function.

So I would say that they welcome the integration a lot and it still

needs to be worked out, but in terms of their disposition and their

attitude toward that integration, I would say it is very positive,

certainly in my experience.

As far as the training of our officers, I was recently at Fort Leavenworth and talking to them about that training and I think Ms.

St. Laurent is right. We do see the training and education of our

officer corps changing substantially now and some of these—many

of these officers actually have personal experience on the ground.

They are coming from Iraq and Afghanistan and they have a personal understanding of their interagency colleagues that they didn’t

have in times past and they are also learning about their interagency colleagues and trying to break down those cultural barriers

significantly.

There is a lot of steps in that direction. More work to do, but I

think we are going in the right direction on that.

Ambassador HERBST. I would agree with that. My staff spends

a lot of time at the various combatant commands and the various

24

military war colleges and there is a great deal of interest and enthusiasm even for what we are doing.

We have overseen training, as well, for people going out to PRTs

and a lot of officers have taken that and, again, we see the enthusiasm for what we are doing. So I think this is moving in the right

direction.

I would just like to add, Congressman, that if I did not mention

public health workers when I was talking about the people in our

corps, that was my oversight. They are definitely part of the corps.

We have already sent people out with those skills.

Dr. GINGREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Snyder appreciate that acknowledgement, Mr. Herbst.

Mr. Jones, for five minutes.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Mr. Christoff, I really enjoyed watching your body language, particularly as State was speaking and DOD.

Your comment about concept and reality, concept and reality,

and that seems not just from you, but from Ms. St. Laurent, as

well. What is the government—I have been here for 14 years and

any time a program is established, it doesn’t seem like it ever goes

away.

And I certainly am not criticizing the concept. I think the PRTs

have worked extremely well. I think we all, as a nation, have made

mistakes and, first of all, shouldn’t have gone in, I understand

that.

But the point is that it seems like you are saying at GAO that

we need to slow down a little bit. We need to make sure that if

this program is going to be in place and this program is going to

be successful, there needs to be more work done before the $50 million is allocated, because the $50 million will become $100 million

and it will continue to grow and expand.

This nation is in deep, deep financial trouble. We are borrowing

money from foreign governments right now to fight the war in Iraq.

We are borrowing moneys from foreign governments right now to

pay the interest on the public debt.

And I hope that if this program is worthy, and I don’t question

your positions at all, but based on what—I have great respect for

GAO as a whole. I listen to David Walker on a regular basis. I have

tried to read, I have tried to understand what is happening in this

country from the standpoint of expanding government, that the

poor taxpayer can’t even pay their grocery bills back home because

we are getting so large and expansive.

My question to GAO, what would be your suggestions to this

committee or to any committee—and let us take this concept as the

purpose of my question.

What would you say to Congress? How can we have better checks

and balances before—and I know I am not on appropriations, I am

not being critical of appropriations, but this is a great hearing, Mr.

Chairman. This has been a great Oversight Committee that we

never had until a year ago.

But the point is that if we didn’t have this oversight, many of

us, unless we were on the committees of jurisdiction, we would not

even know that this concept is trying to be developed into a reality.

25

What should we be doing to make sure, before the $50 million

is allocated, that this program is ready to get on the ground and

start to be effective?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. If this were the title of a GAO report, it would

say ‘‘Concepts are good, more information needed.’’ And I think

that is what we have been trying to say and that I think you agree

with.

We agree that you need to have better interagency, you need to

have this framework. You want to have civilians that can make a

contribution and that can deploy rapidly to an international crisis.

But when we look at the framework, and, Dr. Snyder, you read

a lot of the details and you saw a jargon, you saw a lot of what

you characterized as gobbly-gook. It is hard to get through a lot of

the details of this interagency framework.

And so our first recommendation is that you clearly define the

roles and responsibilities of S/CRS, because there is disagreement

within State. There are turf battles within State as to whether or

not S/CRS should have the lead or the traditional regional bureaus.

So, one, you have got to clarify the roles of this important office.

And, second, this concept remains a concept. It is a framework.

Parts of have been tested, but the whole framework has not been

implemented and you need to implement the whole framework for

stability operations to see if it is a useful interagency process.

For the civilian corps, again, more information. How much is it

going to cost beyond the initial seed money of $50 million? What

operations would this corps be tasked to do? And you want to understand the complete framework of the civilian corps before you

authorize it.

You have appropriated for it already, the Congress has, but it

hasn’t been authorized yet.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I would hope, because I know my

time is just about over, I would hope that this committee would

write the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction and just say

that we have concerns based on testimony before we move forward

with appropriations, because I don’t know where the money is coming from, to be honest with you.

I yield back.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Davis, for five minutes.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just listening to this debate and having come from the consulting world, dealing with process organization and following this

interagency issue is probably our number one priority related to

national security.

And my office, Dr. Snyder, Mrs. Davis and I have worked very

closely on this. I am concerned that the establishment of the civilian reserve corps simply is responding to a symptom as opposed to

the root cause.

And not to denigrate in any way the issue of having lots of professional resources, but more to the point, you have those folks,

kind of like a political campaign, where you are going to bring a

couple of hundred volunteers in, you have to have an infrastructure

and a process within which they are going to function to have any

level of productivity and not absorb additional costs.

26

And building off of Walter’s comments on establishing this process, I would ask probably a simpler question, and, particularly, I

am going to confess that Congress is a big piece of the problem.

The Armed Services Committee has invested much of its time in

minutia at a technical and a tactical level as opposed to strategy,

which I think is important. The Foreign Affairs Committee has

done the same thing, focusing on a variety of resolutions and programs, but not having an authorization in over a decade.

And here is my question, at probably a crude level. Why not simply reform that process that the military is crying out for? I have

friends I served with in the military who are running entrepreneurial startup programs, ag programs, medical programs, educational programs. None of them have run a business, run a farm

or been a school teacher or worked as a professional educator.

And certainly I commend our military and their ability to stand

up for that, but fundamental problems. The CENTCOMM area of

operations has four State Department bureaus overlapping it,

which immediately is an impediment to efficiency in organization.

There is cost and overhead that is incurred just because of that

inefficiency and rather than say, ‘‘Well, we are going to hire 500

more people,’’ why don’t we say, ‘‘We can fix the process and improve the productivity and the effectiveness of our frontline folks?’’

Now, the turf battle that you talk about in State or in Defense

or here on Capitol Hill, too, because I watched staff earlier this

year actually kill an interagency reform because there was concern

about offending the jurisdiction of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

My question is, why wouldn’t we want to coordinate more closely

with NGOs, for example, in certain areas that have that regional

and that cultural ability? They can do things much more quickly.

But at the end of the day, here is my question. Why not just simply reform the agency process first so you have a workable process

and, second of all, what specific small steps in legislation would

you all ask for that would allow closer coordination, more flexibility

on the budget, for example, in an area so that resources could be

passed to the appropriate agency?

Ambassador HERBST. There is no question that you need to have

an effective interagency structure to use the resources we are asking for and we believe that the interagency management system

does provide that structure.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. I disagree with you and I don’t think

we should provide resources until—there have been no substantive

legislative reforms and that is the thing I am getting to.

We are creating departments, but I am talking to the folks out

on the front lines who are doing this for a living and when you get

personalities that can work well together, it is fine. But I receive

a string of e-mails monthly from the PRT in Karbala who is pointing out exactly the opposite of what you were talking about here.

I am not impugning your integrity, but I am saying it is not

working, because we are wasting a huge amount of money and not

getting the level of productivity that——

Ambassador HERBST. Congressman, we are talking about two different things. You are referring to the system that is—rather, you

are referring to what is currently underway. What is currently underway is not the system that we have created.

27

The system we have created has been devised, is being tested,

but it has not been actually implemented. The idea is to use this

for the next such operation, hopefully, not an operation on that

scale. That is the point.

So when you say it is not working, you are not referring to what

we are discussing today. You are referring to something that exists,

but is not being——

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Just reclaiming my time. I don’t disagree with your point in concept, but I come back to the issue of

treating a symptom.

This is a look back and saying, ‘‘Oh, what do we need different?

We need more bodies,’’ when——

Ambassador HERBST. No, that is—excuse me.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. That is one piece of it. But here is the

question, though, at the end of the day.

What congressional mandated agency reforms do you need, not

done at an executive directive level, because having watched executive directives, where agencies can do what they want to do, again,

the PRT example of standing up in Iraq with the so-called surge,

it ended up coming back to the military, as a close friend of 30

years pointed out what exactly happened, because of internal regulations and a lack of authorization for the appropriate structure.

Ambassador HERBST. I would say most national security experts

who have looked at the current theme see the need to create the

type of capability that we are describing. There are different ways

to do that.

Some people have said, in a sense, what you have just said right

now. What we need is legislation comparable to Goldwater-Nichols

on the civilian side. That is one way to fix this problem.

But given the efforts within the current Administration, within

the Bush Administration, given the National Security Presidential

Directive 44, given all the work we have done over the past 18

months to implement that, we are in a position, even without legislation, to make the necessary interagency changes, the fundamental changes that current international circumstances require.

The resources we are asking for we believe only work within the

framework of a new system, the system we have described.

Now, the GAO is correct that it has not been used in an actual

operation to date. We have used it to do specific things in the real

world. We have done testing for the overall concept. This has to

come.

But the point is we are on the cusp of doing that. As for the resources that we would use, $50 million is to create only a 500-person civilian reserve corps. That will give us an opportunity to test

this capability in the real world.

The GAO said there are no figures for what it would cost to

maintain a corps. Well, in fact, there are. To maintain a civilian

reserve corps of 1,000 people would cost $20 million a year, of 2,000

people, $30 million a year, of 3,000 people, $42 million a year.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. If I could just reclaim my time.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Davis, your time has expired. What we will do,

we will go to Mr. Farr for five minutes. We have votes. We will recess, and then we will come back after that and pursue this more.

We will recognize Mr. Farr for five minutes.

28

Mr. FARR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank

the committee for allowing me to sit in on this hearing.

I think it is the first one I have experienced in all the years that

I have been here dealing with this issue, and what I find in the

questioning and answering is that there is a lot more going on than

you realize, and I really want to compliment your committee and

the Defense Committee, because, frankly, the lead on this post-construction, reconstruction and stability has been led by the Department of Defense rather than by State Department or USAID and

others.

There was a committee commissioned back many years ago,

about a dozen members of this House and the Senate sat on, and

I was asked to sit on it, and out of that came a whole list of recommendations, some of which you are still having before you.

But the IR Committee wouldn’t accept them, thought it was a

great idea, we need to do this, did nothing. The Defense Appropriations Committee looked at it and said this is great, we have got to

get on with it and set up a center in the military at the naval postgraduate school in Monterey, where, for the last four years, three

or four years, this center for stabilization and reconstruction has

been incredibly valuable in what the lessons learned are.

One, first of all, it is not just State Department and military. It

is our military and the extended IMET, which is about 400 different officers around the world that are studying at the naval

postgraduate school. Some of them are in this course.

It is U.N., it is NGOs, it is all the actors who go in to a country

when you need to stabilize. They have never been at the table before. They have never had a piece in it.

They have had several—you would call them war games. They

just call them games on very specific issues, like emergency response in a war zone, with a natural disaster, I mean, throw everything on top of it, and working out the protocols that would be

needed for rescues.

So I just have one question of the panel. And I know that the

ambassador has been to the program. I have spoken with him

there. But I don’t know if any of the other members have been.

Have you visited the center for stabilization at the naval postgraduate school?

Ms. WARD. Sir, I am familiar with it. I have not visited yet in

my tenure. I haven’t visited it.

Mr. FARR. I think I would recommend that you go out and look

at it, because some of the concerns that you raise are already being

addressed there.

What is essential? What do we need to do? We know that we

have trained people in the civilian sector, as well as the military

sector, and we have—once they leave Federal service, we have no

contact with them.

I learned this from astronauts. After you are an astronaut and

you leave NASA, you don’t have any astronaut alumni program.

There is no getting back.

And what concerned me, I learned a language in another country

and when we had 9/11, we had no way to look to see how many

people in this country spoke Arabic. So we started a question of let

us create registries, let people go online, volunteer, say ‘‘I have this

29

language capability, I have this expertise, I would like to come in

and be called if you need me.’’

At least that gives you a starting point of where the talent lies.

This reserve corps is made up of experts. This isn’t training new

people. These are people that are already the linguists. They know

the country. They know the politics. They know the geography.

They know how to get around. They have worked in their careers

with other groups and other people.

That you bring these people back in crisis and say, ‘‘All right, you

all know this stuff. Now, let us go in as an organized team to try

to help with stabilization and reconstruction.’’

That is what is missing. And here is our problem. We have created it on our own. In the military, we have no title for this kind

of work. So even though we offer a master’s degree in the program,

we only have two naval officers, because Admiral Mullen has been

real keen on it and insisted that we send officers out to get this

degree. But guess what? After they get this master’s degree, where

do they go to get assignment, because the Department of Defense

has not yet created positions, other than FAOs, to deal with this.

So in this committee, I think you ought to think about how do

you create people with this special category.

Second of all, the State Department has a lot of these people, but

they have never been authorized to pull all these other groups together and that is what this bill that Biden and Lugar have in the

Senate and Mr. Saxton and I have in this House.

It is essentially to authorize the readiness response corps of civilian experts in the fields of judicial, policing and finance and it establishes the curriculum for use by the Foreign Service Institute,

the Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies, the National Defense University and the United States Army College, and

it specifies how you would go about recruiting and training these

people.

We need to get that legislation passed so we can get on with the

next phase.

And, Mr. Chairman, I really appreciate you allowing me to come

in and speak with this committee.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Farr, we appreciate your very able comments

and participation.

What we are going to do, we have about three minutes left on

the vote. There is going to be three votes, however. We are sensitive to your time. I understand Mr. Christoff has an afternoon

testimony experience coming up and I am sure all of you have busy

days.

We would ask, if you can, to wait here for the recess. The staff

will be available to help you in any way. We will not be offended

if you decide the best way to organize your day is to have lunch

sitting in front of you when you come back.

We do not anticipate probably going much more than 45 minutes

or so when we return, but we will come back.

We will stand in recess.

[Recess.]

Dr. SNYDER. We appreciate you all standing by. I don’t see any

peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches in front of you, so I guess you

are holding up all right.

30

We will go ahead and start this temperamental clock and go

around once or twice with the members we have remaining.

Mr. Herbst, I want to ask a little bit about this issue of the timing. I don’t know if you saw the Monday night football game last

night, but Brett Favre was Brett Favre once again and did the first

pass of the overtime, threw an 82-yard touchdown pass, but he is

the kind of player that puts people in the position to win.

There are no guarantees, but he puts his team in a position to

win, and it seems like, as you acknowledged in your opening statement, the changing nature of war, we have always thought before

our military wins wars.

And it may be that we are having to shift—part of the big picture is we are going to have to realize maybe our military, in certain wars, puts us in a position to win the war, but ultimately it

is going to be civilians on the ground doing political reform and

economic development and capacity building that actually wins the

war.

By winning the war, we define it having the kind of democratic

free government in place that is helpful to the world and not hostile to the world.

And so as you have described this today, I didn’t realize until—

I guess it was in response to questions—that you actually are setting up a parallel system, parallel to what is going on in Iraq and

Afghanistan. Now you are going to impact on that and you are involved in training and those kinds of things. But that is where your

timeline is from two to three years to ten years.

You all are entering into this really with no intention that, at

some point, the system that you are setting up is going to replace

what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Is that an accurate statement?

Ambassador HERBST. I would say the following, that the capabilities we are trying to develop, once we have them, could be used in

Iraq and Afghanistan. We already have, as I said, the interagency

system which is ready for use, but we don’t have the civilians who

are able to go out under this system in the countries in question.

But if we had the authorizing legislation and the appropriations

to create these various capabilities, in theory, we would be able to

put hundreds of people onto the ground within a year and certainly

within two years.

Dr. SNYDER. But I am confused. Now you have confused me once

again. There are people on the ground. They are in the numbers

now that the President had requested.

Part of the issue is personnel and we talked about that, but the

other part of it is structure, a Washington structure that permeates

out to Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever the field is.

But what you are saying is you are going back to this issue that

it is like you need authorization for people power, but, in fact, it

is a structural issue, is it not?

If you set up the structure that provides for better planning,

training, coordination, breaks down the stovepipes that my friend

in Iraq complained about, why can’t that move in? Why would you

not want that to move in with the personnel that are in place tomorrow or the next day in Afghanistan and Iraq?

31

Ambassador HERBST. Okay, I see what you mean. I think the answer is that you have—the structure is in place today. People are

sitting in these positions and the decision has been taken that our

capability is meant for the future.

Dr. SNYDER. I am sorry. Say that again.

Ambassador HERBST. The decision was taken at the very start

when this office was created that we are to address future crises

and not these.

Dr. SNYDER. Right. I am trying to think of a metaphor, Mr. Akin.

Mr. Akin has done a lot of great work on this committee, from his

visits at a time when he had a son in the Marine Corps in Iraq

and came back early on saying there are some problems with the

way we are armoring vehicles and he personally saw some of the

vehicles.

In a way, what you are saying is we ought to armor the Humvees

and come up with the MRAP and let us put them in South Korea

and test them. We are not going to put them in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I don’t understand. I didn’t realize that what you are coming up

with is not something intended to impact on what is going on in

Iraq or Afghanistan, because part of that—no wonder the pace is

leisurely. There is no pressure to perform. There is no pressure to

ultimately win the war in Afghanistan or win the war in Iraq, coming from what you all are doing.

Is that a fair statement? I mean, if your mandate is not to deal

with Iraq or Afghanistan——

Ambassador HERBST. It is geared to the future, but if we develop

the human resources, we will put them. But, again, it is not the

system. It is the way we would plug into the existing framework.

Dr. SNYDER. So Mr. Farr’s legislation—when the President

talked about the civilian reserve corps, I think every Member of

Congress that heard that took that to mean it would try to impact

on what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan.

You agree with that.

Ambassador HERBST. That is correct.

Dr. SNYDER. But it would be through the structure that is going

on currently in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Ambassador HERBST. That is correct.

Dr. SNYDER. Not through the structure that you all are devising.

Mr. Akin, for five minutes.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, then what you are saying, Ambassador, is you don’t

have any direct impact at all on what is going on with the reconstruction teams right now, other than trying to create a model to

make them more effective in the future.

Ambassador HERBST. We are, in fact, engaged in——

Mr. AKIN. It will work for you, though.

Ambassador HERBST. We have no oversight over PRTs in either

place. But as I mentioned earlier, we have people in Afghanistan

right now who have helped two PRTs develop a planning model

and are going to be doing that for the rest of our PRTs, as well,

in Afghanistan.

Mr. AKIN. Let me just ask, as I take a look a little bit back in

my own limited history of being here, I have been here seven years,

32

I have seen at least the Iraq situation develop, and I take a look

at different things that happened and some of them—and people

talk about, well, we have made a whole lot of mistakes in Iraq.

I don’t know that we have made a whole lot, but there were certain things that did jump out at me. The first thing is we put

Sharia law into the Iraq constitution. That seems to me to be really

a dumb thing to have done, or we allowed them to.

Now, would your structure help prevent something like that from

happening?

Ambassador HERBST. The step you have just described was, I

would say, a political judgment and the system we are creating will

likewise be subject to political judgments.

So I would not say that what we are devising is meant to solve

the issue you have just described. What it is meant to solve is, one,

coordination of the civilian side of the U.S. Government and, two,

the provision of trained, equipped, skilled people for mission.

Mr. AKIN. My question is, would the organization that you are

proposing or that you are theoretically developing, would it have

the capacity to deal with a decision like whether or not we are

going to put Sharia law into the Iraqi constitution?

Ambassador HERBST. Absolutely. The system that we——

Mr. AKIN. Would that system then have a considerable amount

of input from different people before something like that was done?

Ambassador HERBST. For sure. We would create—we have created, I would say, a rational decision-making, information flowing

process, where all factors would be considered.

Mr. AKIN. It was also pretty much—I assume it was Bremer did

it. To a degree, we isolated or at least gave the Sunnis the impression that they weren’t really going to be players in the new government or they got that impression.

Is that the kind of thing that would be discussed and vetted in

a more coordinated kind of approach?

Ambassador HERBST. The process we have described, the interagency management system would involved substantial regional

expertise in order to make the right decisions.

Mr. AKIN. And one of the things that we have continuously had

as a problem over there is the fact that the major television station

is totally hostile to everything that we stand for or are trying to

accomplish. And so we are working in a complete media—we have

no media to counter their media.

Would that be the kind of thing that your organization also

would deal with that question?

Ambassador HERBST. What we have created is designed to ensure basic government operations and services in a place where

none exists, if our national interests are engaged, and that would

include media, as well as all affairs, all elements of government.

Mr. AKIN. And last of all, is the type of structure that you are

working on, is it, in a sense, parallel to the existing State Department structure? So you are creating two separate organizations.

Ambassador HERBST. Secretary Rice talks about transformational diplomacy and she is trying to change the structures

and the culture of the State Department.

33

I would say we represent the cutting edge in that process and

the system we have devised is changing the way the department

reacts in crises and we have a ways to go.

Mr. AKIN. I think that sounds like a fair answer. I appreciate it.

Thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

Mrs. Davis, for five minutes. And we are really watching the

clock this time, Mrs. Davis. I figured out how it works. You have

to jiggle this wire.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. That was really impressive, Mr.

Chairman. Thank you.

Getting back to the chairman’s comments, I think it really is interesting that there are two parallel engagements going on here in

many ways. And I am trying to find a connection, if there is one.

I have to assume that the work that is going on, Ambassador,

that you are doing in trying to bring this together and think it

through over the next few years, essentially, that there has got to

be some connection to what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But I am still a little confused by that and what that might be,

what lessons learned would be applied and back and forth.

What do you——

Ambassador HERBST. We have created this system to use the

next time. Of course, it is related to Iraq and Afghanistan. One of

the reasons or maybe the reason it was set up, the office was set

up and we have doing this work is because we believe we can make

adjustments and do it better next time.

As part of this, we are in touch with people who are in it and

who have been in both countries. We are doing lessons learned. We

are factoring that into the system we have devised.

My office gets lots of especially non-officers who have been in

both places in PRTs and want to do it better. We are developing

systems to measure, what we call metrics, systems to measure

progress and we are also feeding that back to our operations in

both places, although more so perhaps right now in Afghanistan,

by having people on the ground helping PRTs plan.

So there is certainly a connection. But the thing to keep in mind

is while our office has grown from a handful to 80-plus, that is a

tiny number, small resources compared to the enormous number of

people and funds that we are expending in both Afghanistan and

Iraq. So there is a problem of scale.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. The order over the weekend, as I understand it, they reported that the State Department would be ordering diplomats into the region. I assume that is no longer on a

voluntary basis.

How does that impact what you are doing, if at all, and are those

folks available to do that? Even thinking in the short term and the

long term, how is that going to affect your efforts?

Ambassador HERBST. Well, my colleague, Harry Thomas, the director general, is charged with helping ensure we have the right

people we need currently in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are

looking at various ways to do that.

If they wind up directing assignments, I am not certain that has

a great impact on my operation. I think I already get—S/CRS already gets people who are interested in going to the world’s less

34

predictable places with all of the problems that are involved with

that unpredictability and I think what you are seeing is as more

people in the department are funneled to Iraq and Afghanistan, the

culture is starting to change and some of those, a fair number of

those people wind up coming to work in S/CRS.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I wanted to ask also about just the

interplay of intelligence in all this and whether the culture has

changed to the extent that as we begin to do this, and I think that

my colleague, Roscoe, Mr. Bartlett, asked really a good question.

I mean, what is it that we really want to be doing? Do we have

a role in essentially this kind of nation building and how do we do

it and, I would hope, how do we do it differently?

But that interplay, though, with intelligence and information

sharing, because sometimes there has been a reluctance to do that.

I guess it is hypothetical, but would it have made a difference?

If somebody said, ‘‘You know what? You have no idea what you

are doing here,’’ which I think some people in the State Department would have liked to have said, if they had been asked. How

in the thinking does that play a role?

Ambassador HERBST. Our process includes the intelligence community. So decisions that would be made in this would be based

upon the best information available.

I agree with you that what Representative Bartlett said is very

important, that what we are trying to do is inherently difficult, but

it is also true that we learned on September 11 that there are

areas of the world which are destabilized, which represent very

dangerous national security threats, and that our military is going

to be involved in addressing those dangers and the military knows

that they need the civilian component, as Congressman Snyder

mentioned, Chairman Snyder mentioned, to have a chance of winning.

Without that, we are not in the game.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Right. And I guess just a quick followup. Do you believe, in your estimation, that we are moving from

a DOD centric thinking to more agency centric?

Ambassador HERBST. We are definitely moving to an interagency

centric thinking and our office, while the State Department represents the interagency, and this system, this interagency management system is precisely that one that involves the entire U.S.

Government.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Farr, for five minutes.

Mr. FARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My first question I think is for the Department of Defense and

that is that your directive, and I have copies of it here, of 3000.5,

it is almost two years. It came out in November of 2005.

Why hasn’t the department then created the professional positions which all of your internal directives and coordination have

all—it seems to me you have got everything in place except what

you want these people to do after they get trained.

Ms. WARD. Well, sir, we do have a number of different skill identifiers and specialty skills in the military that relate to stability operations. I am thinking here—you mentioned FAOs, sir, but there

are also civil affairs officers. We have——

35

Mr. FARR. Excuse me for interrupting. But what I find is that—

because when I traveled with a lot of young officers and they all

know about the naval postgraduate school and now that they have

had in-country experience, this is the kind of thing, they see ‘‘This

is what I want to do,’’ the stability ops and things like that.

But there is no incentive to go get a master’s degree in doing

that, because you still haven’t created those sort of, for lack of a

better expression, the MOS when you come out with that training.

Ms. WARD. At my office, we are constantly looking at questions

just like you raise. Should there be a specialized skill? What would

be the career track for these people? How would it fit into the rest

of the force?

So it is something that we relook frequently and something I intend to look at closely during my tenure. At this point, there isn’t

a specialized stability operations MOS.

Mr. FARR. Can we create that? I mean, I think that is important,

because you don’t have the high motivation. As you know, your ascendancy promotions are going to be based on doing a good job with

the job you are handling and if you don’t have that job, you are not

going to apply for it.

Ms. WARD. True, but I think it is also true that you are seeing

commanders now who have experience on the ground and recognize

that they need to not only understand major combat operations,

but they need to understand how they apply non-kinetic effects on

the battlefield.

So the idea is you actually have a force that can do both of those

things. They can conduct major combat operations and they can

conduct stability operations, as well. So what you try to do is infuse

the education throughout the force so that you have that full spectrum capability.

Mr. FARR. Well, I agree with that, too, but I also think you need

to be keen on a really good education and you stand up in the Navy

and Department of Defense, at the naval postgraduate school, the

only graduate school that the military has, for master’s and doctorate degrees and you give them to our officers and officers around

the world, that there you do have the center and it seems to me

it is logical that that is where you start getting a lot more specified.

I want to ask the ambassador. We have the facilities, we have

the programs. Do you see the State Department using that center

more than just for the gaming purposes now? Do you see it actually

sending State Department folks there to, again, maybe get a master’s degree or to be part of that study program, whether short

course or long course?

Ambassador HERBST. I am not responsible for our—the training,

you might say, of the foreign service officers in general, but it

seems to me that this is something that can and should be looked

at, just as we send—let people go for master’s programs at other

universities. It seems to make sense to me.

Mr. FARR. Well, this is, I think, the one criticism. I am keen on

what you are all doing and I think we should have done it years

ago. I, frankly, think that had this all been set up, we wouldn’t still

be in Iraq. We would have been smart about how to get in and get

36

out, and we get in and we get stuck, because we haven’t had this

kind of planning before.

So from the GAO’s office, from a cost-effectiveness standpoint,

this the ounce of prevention that is going to save us a lot of money,

but I am also surprised because you have all got it and why it is

so important and we yet haven’t created these career positions, because this is a new—as you have all indicated, it is the interagency

and it is probably international, as well as interagency, and you

are going to have to have those skills.

And I would think those skills are linguistic skills and area

study skills and knowing—I mean, just think if we had nonEnglish speaking people from some other country to respond to the

fires in California, not even knowing where these roads are, where

these places are, couldn’t communicate with the people whose

houses are burning down. You would have a real mess down there.

I sit on the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, and

what I find is that and what all the experts tell us is that if you

prepare for a natural disaster, you have prepared for a terrorist

disaster, because the first responders are going to be the same.

Maybe the prevention is different, but the response is going to be

the same.

It seems to me we would never think of responding to a disaster

in this country without people being prepared, yet we are offering

to be responding to war related or war created disasters without

being prepared. And we get it, but now we have got to start professionalizing it, because you are not going to have people seeking careers in this area, which is so keen right now, if you don’t give

them a job to do that.

I would like a response, if there is time, Mr. Chairman. Is it misdirected?

Ms. WARD. There is no doubt that we need to vastly expand our

language and cultural awareness skills throughout our military,

and I would argue that a lot of steps have been taken in that direction already.

I mentioned earlier that I was at Leavenworth recently and

talked to them about education at all levels and the language

training and cultural awareness training is spreading systematically throughout our military.

So I think we are taking that very seriously, the need for us to

understand other cultures and have more people who can speak

more languages more skillfully.

I think really the question you are getting at is whether there

should be a special category of people who are trained in this particular kind of operation. Right now, we are certainly taking steps

to spread this type of education throughout our force, not just language and culture, but also the principals of counterinsurgency and

how to be successful in the stability operations, and that is going

really throughout our force.

And so I think you are looking at a question of, well, should

there be a specialty category, a cadre of people who do this specifically for a living, and I think that is an important question that

we are looking at and will continue to look. Right now, we do not

have that, that is true.

37

Dr. SNYDER. We will go ahead and start the clock. We will go another round here, if you are still with us.

I want to hear from, I guess, Ms. St. Laurent or either one of

you, Mr. Christoff, on one of the things that has been said here in

the last ten minutes or so.

You have expressed concerns about more questions need to be asked about the $50 million and the appropriation and consistent

with what Mr. Jones and some others have said.

I am now not clear. What do you all think about this idea that

this is a parallel track that is being set up that is not going to be

the way that services are going to be delivered to Iraq or Afghanistan and how does that impact on budgeting?

And from the perspective of the investment of the American taxpayers in this process that Ambassador Herbst is working so hard

on, why would we not want to benefit somewhat sooner in Iraq or

Afghanistan? If you could address some of those themes, please.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Several comments I have, also in reference to

some of your comments and Mrs. Davis about lessons learned.

But, first, in terms of the civilian reserve corps, I think we fully

support the concept. I am not disagreeing with that. I am just suggesting that as the Congress moves forward and you are ramping

up to 2,000 standby reservists and an additional 2,000 civilian reserve corps, you would want to know a little bit more about the details.

So I think that is something that is appropriate in terms of looking at any new program that will probably cost more money in the

future.

But I want to try to see if I could relate this structure, the framework that we are trying to develop through Ambassador Herbst’s

office with Iraq, because you were talking about lessons learned.

Are there any lessons learned from Iraq that might be applied

to this new framework? And I think there are and I think the development of the joint campaign plan, the campaign plan that was

developed by the Multinational Force Iraq and the U.S. embassy is

an example of interagency coordination and it was done at the field

level.

And I think that in looking——

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Christoff, is this the joint campaign plan that

the Department of Defense refuses to give to this committee, the

House Armed Services?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Correct.

Dr. SNYDER. It is that very same joint campaign plan, but they

give it to GAO.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Correct.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. But since it is within the Administration right

now, it would be a good document to look at from the perspective

of the lessons learned.

Dr. SNYDER. We thought so for several weeks to months.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. But what I am saying is some of the concepts

and the framework that Ambassador Herbst talks about I can see

in the interagency process that is occurring within Iraq.

There is what is called the Iraq policy and operations group, the

IPOG, which is at the NSC level, very much similar to the concept

38

that Ambassador Herbst is proposing for this country reconstruction and stabilization group.

The FACs, the field advanced civilian corps, are PRTs that are

in Iraq right now and then you have interagency and coordination

mechanisms within U.S. embassy Baghdad MNFI, as well.

So I think there are a lot of lessons learned in the development

of our plans in Iraq that could be fruitful and come in completing

this framework that we now have for our future stability operations.

Dr. SNYDER. That doesn’t answer my question, though, Mr.

Christoff. I understand that. Mr. Herbst has been, I think, very aggressive about trying to learn from what is going on in Iraq.

It doesn’t solve the problem of my friend who says the cultural

barriers between the military, Department of State and other civilian agencies seem more striking than those between the United

States and Iraqis, to me, somebody who is in Iraq right today.

I don’t see it is going to go up. I don’t see that the structural

change that Mr. Herbst is working on, there is no intent of having

that structure somehow help to break down those stovepipes.

From your all’s perspective of trying to get the most bang for the

buck, why would we not be insistent that this work be expedited

and that we put a priority on it so that their good work can come

back down to help the folks that are on the PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan today?

Does that not concern you?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. Well, but, again, you have a process in Iraq now

that is being implemented under NSPD–1.

Dr. SNYDER. But we don’t think it is working very well, do we?

Mr. CHRISTOFF. What difference—well, according to the GAO report, probably not.

Dr. SNYDER. We have heard from GAO about you all reporting

that it is not working as well, I mean, our anecdotal information.

We think they are wonderful people. We think they are doing good

things and are obviously working very hard at great risk themselves to do good things, but you all have pointed out, where are

the measurable objectives, what are the goals and objectives and it

is not measurable.

And the good things that are being done, we think, would be

even greater, that there would be more good if we had the kind of

structure that Mr. Herbst is working on to assist them, to break

down some of these stovepipes here in Washington.

I think that is the direction we are heading. Well, anyway, I am

getting too long

I wanted to ask, Mr. Herbst, we have had this issue come up in

the last day or so. I have used the example of my friend in Iraq

there that you just heard me read her quote again and we have

had this issue in the paper this morning about, the ‘‘New York

Times’’ headline, ‘‘Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards,’’

that apparently State Department had a press report.

State Department security investigators offer some kind of immunity to these guards, unbeknownst to the Justice Department,

that is now involved.

Is that not an example of stovepiping? I mean, should that—after

five years of war in Afghanistan, with an abundance of contractors,

39

and heading into five years of war in Iraq, with an abundance,

thousands of contractors, is that not the kind of issue that should

have been broken down?

Somebody somewhere should have said, ‘‘You know, one of these

tens of thousands of armed contracted personnel may have a legal

problem. Perhaps we should ahead of time have a discussion with

the Department of Justice about how to handle that.’’ Is this not

a glaring example of the breakdown, of our failure here in Congress, the failure of the government to not have foreseen these

kinds of issues and break down some of these stovepipes?

Is that not an example of that?

Ambassador HERBST. Congressman, I read that article, but I

really don’t have any more information than what I read in that

article.

All I can say is that the system, the interagency management

system would have in all of its institutions the relevant agencies

playing a role in the area in crisis.

So that State Department would be working with USAID, Treasury, Justice, et cetera, which should make it possible to formulate

responses to events which reflect the outlook and the interests of

the entire interagency.

Dr. SNYDER. Which should not surprise another agency. Actions

should not be taken——

Ambassador HERBST. Transparency is a very important part of

the interagency——

Dr. SNYDER [continuing]. That surprised another agency and it

clearly was a surprise here.

Mrs. Davis, for five minutes.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am

happy to just wrap up my questions.

One of the issues, and I guess this really reflects on the House

committee, as well, when we think in terms of personnel. It is my

understanding, from a colleague, that if somebody serves in the

PRTs, if one of our military offers serves in the PRTs, that is not

considered a joint station, essentially, or joint experience in the

same way that we think of jointness in the services and their need

to be able to do that in terms of career development and career ladder.

So are you aware of that? And I guess the question would be,

was the State Department, as well? It is my understanding, again,

that initially there was no great incentive for anybody to serve over

in Iraq or Afghanistan, because it didn’t help them in their ability

to progress in their career.

Has that changed and what other changes do you anticipate?

And I think to GAO, to Ms. St. Laurent and Mr. Christoff, I

asked about the DOD centric perception. What is your perception

of that? How well do you believe that we are engaging agencies

perhaps beyond State in this interagency now and in these new

plans that are being developed?

Is it still 90 percent? Is it something other than that? And what

is it that reflects that for you, that actually we have gone beyond

that mentality?

Go ahead.

40

Ms. WARD. If I could take that as a question for the record on

the joint billets, because I just don’t know the answer whether the

PRT leaders are, in fact, joint billets. So I will provide the committee an answer on that.

I would say that I think the commanders on the ground see the

PRT as an increasingly important capability in their

counterinsurgency fight. So someone serving in that is certainly

going to get recognition for that.

It is my understanding, in Afghanistan, that often the PRT leaders are coming off of the command list, so have been selected for

command in any case or are actually doing their second command.

So these people are getting rewarded for their service on the

PRTs. On the joint billet issue, I owe you an answer on that.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And at the State Department?

Ambassador HERBST. Again, I am not responsible for personnel

policies, but my understanding, as a career foreign service officer,

is that people who have gone to both Iraq and Afghanistan have

gotten consideration, for example, as they move toward next assignments and I think it has been helpful for people’s careers to

serve there.

So that is I don’t think a problem in terms of our recruitment

for those assignments.

Ms. ST. LAURENT. In response to your second question, I think,

again, DOD’s interest is in expanding the extent to which they cooperate with other agencies, but if you look at the status of planning today, I think there is still probably very much a DOD centric

view in the development of their own plans and there is also the

issue of DOD having much more capacity to respond to these kinds

of events today.

I think one issue I would like to raise with regard to the interagency management framework is it is still not clear to what extent that framework is going to be triggered and when it would be

triggered to deal with future crises, because that has to be a specific determination that is made, whereas the military commands

are able to carry out a wide array of routine planning.

So, again, unless this mechanism is tested and used, the military

may still be in the position of having the most robust plans for

dealing with potential conflicts.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Farr, would you like another five minutes of

discussion?

Mr. FARR. Yes, sir.

Dr. SNYDER. Five minutes.

Mr. FARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Ward, in reading your testimony and understanding how

keen you are on this Directive 3000.5 and recognizing the importance that the Department of Defense ha set up in the naval postgraduate school center there, my question is do you intend to POM

that in the next budget?

Ms. WARD. Sir, I do not know the answer to that question, but

I will look into that. My understanding of the center is that it is

seen by all to be a very important center and contributing a great

deal. So I have no information that it won’t be POM’d.

41

But I would be happy to provide you an answer in writing on

that.

Mr. FARR. Thank you.

And I guess to the ambassador. Ambassador Herbst, I am trying

to get your bill passed and perhaps this hearing will make another

committee in this House a little bit more interested in it, hopefully

so, but without the authorization, we have appropriated the money

and when the appropriators understand how important it is to get

moving.

Without that authorization, what does that do to your——

Ambassador HERBST. We need the authorizing legislation in

order to actually get the money and to use it to create the civilian

reserve corps.

If we receive the money within the next week or so, month or so,

a year from now, we will have a 500-person civilian reserve corps

trained, equipped, obviously, recruited, with the right skills to deploy in a crisis.

Mr. FARR. Because that reserve corps has to be experts and when

you are talking about recruiting, you are talking about people that

have had careers in these various fields of need. So they come in

with those language skills and with other kinds of skills.

What you are doing is honing them into a response team, right,

so that they can operate internationally?

Ambassador HERBST. They will come in with the requisite technical skills needed. Some of them will probably have language

skills, too, but we will make sure that the unit has the necessary

language skills and the necessary area expertise.

So we would be hiring skilled people and then training and recruiting them for stabilization operations, yes.

Mr. FARR. I thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think what is really important here is, again,

the nature of this hearing is all about interoperability of our Federal agencies and it just strikes me that one thing we haven’t done,

and maybe GAO could get into this, is we ought to at least keep

a registry of who these experts are, even if we just set it up voluntarily.

We have the capacity to do that. But when I tried to set that up

with the Manpower Defense Center in Monterey, which has the

computer capacity to handle it all, they were saying it all had to

go out to bid and had to all—it got so confusing that we haven’t

even been able to do it, and we were just looking for a registry for

linguists.

But I do think, as the Federal Government, we need to keep

track of people. The policy is when you leave Federal service, unless you sort of want to be called, you are gone and we don’t know

who you are, we don’t know where you are.

And what a waste of just having an alumni association directory

and that is what I think part of this, setting up this reserve corps,

crisis corps is made up of those people, and we wouldn’t have to

be looking to draft people to go to Iraq. We might have people that

would come out of retirement and could do that job very well.

Mr. CHRISTOFF. And I think there are some good lessons from

how the Canadians and the Germans are trying to put together

this list that could help our purposes, as well.

42

Mr. FARR. I think these incidents are international, we have

international partners, and they ought to be at the table, too. So

I would like to see us move as quickly as possible to get the skill

level and the one-stop process going.

And I want to just applaud the military for taking a lead. It is

certainly a long way from saying we don’t do nation building to Directive 3000.5. I think that is an admission that we can’t stabilize

or lead without this skill set.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Farr.

I have just one or two short questions and then we will conclude.

I know that Mr. Christoff and others need to get going.

My question for GAO, in your conclusion, you know, we read

these little highlights over here and what GAO recommends, ‘‘GAO

recommends that DOD take several actions to improve its capabilities in interagency planning. DOD partially agreed, but did not

specify actions it would take to address them. Therefore, GAO suggests Congress require DOD to do so.’’

We love legislation, you know, so we are glad to hear those kinds

of recommendations. Then you amplify that, stating, ‘‘We have also

suggested that Congress require DOD to develop an action plan

and report annually on its efforts to address our recommendations.’’

Would one of you comment on that, amplify on that a little bit?

Since we, I think, are all in agreement that DOD is the one who

has been most insistent on doing something different and yet the

action plan, you are wanting a legislative mandate on DOD rather

than the other agencies.

Would you comment on that?

Ms. ST. LAURENT. Certainly. We made several recommendations

in our report. Again, we see DOD making progress and moving out

and implementing the directive, but we think there are several

areas that it needs to address more systematically, and one is the

question of how to best define and what process to use to identify

needed capabilities and then whether we have gaps in those capabilities today.

So that was a recommendation we made. When we got the department’s response to our report, it was not clear that they were

going to take any specific steps in response to that recommendation.

We made other recommendations that they provide better guidance on, how to go about determining measures of effectiveness or

performance measures, again, for how they are doing in implementing all the things in the directive.

And because DOD’s responses to all of our recommendations

were rather vague, we think these are issues that need to be addressed with very specific action plans. So that is why we then suggested to the Congress that they might want to require, in some

future legislation or committee report, that DOD report back to

them on what they are doing in response to the recommendations

we have made.

Dr. SNYDER. A week ago or so, we had a hearing here with representatives from State Department and USAID, Justice, Treasury,

Ag, and we had a minor little dust-up, because two of the opening

statements, written statements, one from the Department of JusVerDate 22-MAR-2001 07:42 Sep 08, 2008 Jkt 040714 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-98\303160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
43

tice and one from Ag, had an identical paragraph in it that apparently came from the NSC, which I am fine with the paragraph.

I just think it surprised the witnesses to find out that they had

each had an identical paragraph, even though they were coming

through two different agencies. I think it was a little bit embarrassing for them.

But I wanted to read the one sentence from that paragraph,

which I assume that at least we have a buy-in from Justice, Ag and

NSC, since they all had that as part of their—have acknowledged

some joint authorship.

‘‘To improve our ability to respond to overseas challenges and

provide the personnel expertise needed will require that we increase our numbers of available trained and deployable personnel

within our department and others and that we support them with

a structure in Washington that conducts planning and coordination.’’

I think that—and you are working on it, Mr. Ambassador. My

only perhaps minor criticism today would be I understand the importance of the civilian reserve corps, and I think we under-fund

the State Department. You have no redundancy around the world.

If we pull an Ag person out of Uzbekistan to go to Iraq, there

is no one to step forward and do the work in Uzbekistan. There are

a lot of issues there. But to me, the most important issue here is

‘‘and support them with a structure in Washington that conducts

planning and coordination.’’

And what we are hearing today is you all are working on a structure that you hope will be ready in two to three to ten years, but

the concern is it is not going to be helping, we don’t think, in any

immediate way with the work that our folks are doing in Iraq and

Afghanistan today.

And that may be something that we all need to spend more time

talking about and how we can impact on that.

I did want to acknowledge Mr. Akin’s absence. He would have

been here, but he has an amendment on the floor today.

Mr. Ambassador, did you want to make a final comment?

Ambassador HERBST. Yes, Mr. Chairman. The structure is ready

now. I think the reason why we have a bit of confusion is it is not

being applied directly to run the current crises, but the structure

is ready now.

What is not ready now is the human response capability which

has the necessary—all the training and the skill sets and the interagency elements that we have devised.

Dr. SNYDER. Well, I think we have had that discussion. I am still

not clear why there is not more immediate impact on what is going

on with our current PRTs overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. It

sounds like a parallel structure.

We appreciate you all being here. You all should take this as an

open ended opportunity, if there is anything you want to clarify for

the record, take as a question for the record, feel free to add any

additional comments.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

OCTOBER 30, 2007

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

OCTOBER 30, 2007

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

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OCTOBER 30, 2007

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER

Dr. SNYDER. NSPD–44 designates the Secretary of State as the lead for coordinating and integrating U.S. Government efforts to prepare, plan for, and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities.

— What have been the most significant challenges that State, and S/CRS in particular, have faced as they attempted to coordinate and integrate U.S. government stabilization and reconstruction activities in the form of PRTs and their

interface with other State and USAID and military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and how have these challenges informed your work in S/CRS?

Ambassador HERBST. Consistent with NSPD–44, the Secretary of State has directed the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) to

develop the mechanisms needed to lead, coordinate, and institutionalize civilian capability to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations and to help stabilize and

reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife, so they can reach a

more sustainable path toward peace, democracy, and a market economy. However,

S/CRS was created after the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were underway, and

it has not been directly involved in the management of the PRTs.

Instead, over the three years since it was established, S/CRS has begun to create

a fundamentally new approach to enable more timely, integrated, and effective management of U.S. Government efforts in reconstruction and stabilization. This new

approach draws on lessons learned from the U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular the importance of ensuring that adequate civilian resources are

available to conduct effective reconstruction and stabilization operations and the

need to maximize unity of effort among civilian agencies and between civilians and

the military in pursuit of a common strategic objective.

For instance, in Afghanistan, S/CRS has developed a planning methodology with

CJTF–82, the operational U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan, and the Embassy to improve interagency PRT planning as well as to train new PRT leaders.

Lessons from S/CRS’ current work on PRTs in Afghanistan are being applied in the

IMS operations guide, which, for example, lays out coordination procedures between

the FACTs and the other structures in the IMS.

On the larger question, improved performance in future reconstruction and stabilization missions requires modification of long-standing bureaucratic practices and

creation of new habitual relationships, lines of communication, and forms of cooperation. Creating these new forms of cooperation and securing the resources to

carry out its mandate have been among the most significant challenges S/CRS has

faced.

Dr. SNYDER. NSPD–44 designates the Secretary of State as the lead for coordinating and integrating U.S. Government efforts to prepare, plan for, and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities.

— Do you agree with GAO’s assessment that the roles and responsibilities of all

organizations need to be more clearly defined? If not, why not? What steps

are being taken to clarify the roles and responsibilities within State and

among Government agencies that not only related to other interagency stability and reconstruction efforts, but could help the PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan now?

Ambassador HERBST. The GAO report contains useful recommendations that we

will consider as we move forward on developing the interagency procedures and

mechanisms for effective management of reconstruction and stabilization operations.

The Department believes that the GAO report, however, does not fully capture

progress made toward achieving the goals articulated in the report recommendations, as well as the overall progress achieved toward developing a civilian reconstruction and stabilization capability.

S/CRS and our interagency partners continue to work on fine-tuning the Interagency Management System (IMS), the interagency policy and operational mechanism for managing the USG response to reconstruction and stabilization situations.

In conjunction with our interagency partners and colleagues in State’s regional bureaus, we will refine and test the IMS through a number of events, experiments,

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and exercises with the goal of further identifying gaps and clarifying roles and responsibilities both within the Department of State and among executive branch

agencies.

Over ten U.S. Government departments participated in a recent demonstration of

the IMS and in the after-action review that provided very useful input to help the

interagency fine tune IMS procedures and mechanisms.

These lessons learned and new ways of cooperation among State and the interagency can help facilitate integrated, coordinated civilian activity in the PRTs in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dr. SNYDER. NSPD–44 designates the Secretary of State as the lead for coordinating and integrating U.S. Government efforts to prepare, plan for, and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities.

— From your perspective, do you see significant differences in the capabilities

and capacities of U.S. Government agencies to engaged in stabilization and

reconstruction activities as indicated by the challenges of standing up three

different kinds of PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan and how are these differences best addressed as you move forward in planning for other current

and future stability and reconstruction efforts?

Ambassador HERBST. Differences in interagency capabilities and capacities do

exist and are being addressed through multi-agency working groups convened under

the authority of the NSPD–44 Policy Coordinating Committee that bring together

representatives from a dozen U.S. Government (USG) agencies, as well as National

Security Council staff, to develop the means for effective future interagency management of reconstruction and stabilization operations.

The civilian response capability being developed by the Office of the Coordinator

for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) under NSPD–44 will provide the ready,

quick response, civilian surge capacity needed to meet short or long term personnel

requirements for reconstruction and stabilization missions. It includes the following

components:

• Active Response Corps (ARC), the USG civilian ‘‘first responders,’’ who are

ready for immediate deployment within 48 hours to reconstruction and stabilization crises worldwide.

• Standby Response Corps (SRC), USG civilian employees who maintain their

current government positions but are trained and ready to deploy within thirty

days.

• Civilian Reserve Corps (CRC), the pool of civilian (private sector and state and

local government) experts requested by President Bush that will, if authorized

this fiscal year, provide trained volunteers with specialized skills.

S/CRS is working with its interagency partners to create, staff, and operate these

three corps. Our coordinated effort will help harmonize differences among agencies’

capabilities and capacities.

Dr. SNYDER. I understand S/CRS has been working with PRTs in Afghanistan, but

I appreciate that they started and formed before S/CRS was up and running. If the

U.S. Government decided to take on an entirely new stabilization and reconstruction

task similar to what we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan starting today,

could you give us some idea as to how the work you have been doing in S/CRS

would be applied? Why isn’t S/CRS involved with PRTs in Iraq? Should it be? Why

or why not?

Ambassador HERBST. In the initial stages of a new reconstruction and stabilization operation of a similar nature and size as that in Afghanistan, the U.S. Government (USG) can activate the Interagency Management System (IMS) for Reconstruction and Stabilization. When activated, the IMS is the structure by which the

USG would plan for and manage an operation in Washington (Country Reconstruction and Stabilization Group), at military headquarters (Integration Planning Cell),

and in the field (Advance Civilian Teams).

In Washington, S/CRS would coordinate and co-chair with the NSC and the Assistant Secretary of the relevant State Department regional bureau an operationspecific Country Reconstruction and Stabilization Group (CRSG) to oversee Washington-based whole-of-government strategic planning and operations. This planning

process would follow the USG Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation currently being refined by an interagency working

group.

In addition to the Washington-based CRSG structure, the supported Geographic

Combatant Command or multi-lateral military command would receive a team of

USG civilian planners—called an Integration Planning Cell (IPC)—to harmonize civilian and military planning processes.

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Finally, if requested by the Chief of Mission, an interagency Advance Civilian

Team (ACT) would deploy to support the Embassy in implementing the U.S. strategic plan for reconstruction and stabilization. An ACT could also deploy with the

military if there was no existing U.S. diplomatic mission, as was the case in Afghanistan in 2001. In addition, Field Advance Civilian Teams (FACTs) could be further

deployed to extend the U.S. reconstruction and stabilization capacity to the regional

or provincial level, serving a role similar to that played by PRTs in Afghanistan

today.

The different components of the IMS structure would include representatives from

all relevant federal agencies. To ensure adequate staffing for such missions, S/CRS

has established an Active Response Corps (ARC) and a Standby Response Corps

(SRC) of full-time federal personnel. President Bush has also proposed a Civilian

Reserve Corps (CRC) that would be comprised of civilians with the requisite skills

who contractually obligate to serve—much as in the military Reserves—making

their relevant skills available for Reconstruction & Stabilization missions if and

when called-upon by the President.

In Afghanistan, S/CRS has developed a planning methodology with CJTF–82, the

operational U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan, and the Embassy to improve

interagency PRT planning as well as to train new PRT leaders. Lessons from S/CRS’

current work on PRTs in Afghanistan are being applied in the IMS operations

guide, which, for example, lays out coordination procedures between the FACTs and

the other structures in the IMS.

S/CRS also has been involved with PRTs in Iraq. In response to requests from

the Department of State’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau, S/CRS helped design and

field interagency training in support of the 2007 surge of PRT personnel to Iraq.

S/CRS is also working to capture lessons learned from the Iraq PRT experience to

inform PRT training and improve the USG’s response to future contingencies.

Dr. SNYDER. As the PRTs have amply demonstrated, reconstruction and stabilization is not a task the U.S. should take on alone. What, in particular, are you doing

to apply the key lessons from the experience of having international partners in Afghanistan and Iraq doing parallel work in some regions to a larger, overall planning

framework for reconstruction and stabilization? Are other nations’ efforts viable

models for us to consider?

Ambassador HERBST. The USG Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation, currently being refined by an interagency

working group, was initially developed jointly with the United Kingdom’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU). The principles, processes, and methodologies in

the framework, including on conflict assessment and metrics, have been tested with

more than 30 U.S. and international partners through Multi-National Experiments

4 and 5. We continue to jointly refine these tools with international partners to enable close integration of efforts in future reconstruction and stabilization operations.

In consultation with regional bureaus, some of these tools have been adapted for

U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

Since its inception, S/CRS has engaged with potential partners around the world

to establish relationships, learn from each other’s best practices, and generally set

the stage for coordinated responses to future engagements. S/CRS is in close and

frequent coordination with counterparts in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia,

France, United Nations, the European Union, NATO, Finland, Japan, South Korea,

and the Netherlands, to name a few. To share lessons and refine procedures for future coordination, S/CRS staff collaborate on a working level with international

counterparts and participate in training and exercises led by these partners, and

vice-versa.

In future reconstruction and stabilization operations, as it is now, much of the

work of finding and committing international partners will be diplomatic. The responsibility for diplomatic outreach ultimately rests with the Department of State

regional bureau in support of the Secretary of State and the President. This effort

would be bolstered by the Interagency Management System for Reconstruction and

Stabilization (IMS), a newly agreed upon system for how the U.S. Government

should organize itself to deal with a stabilization crisis. It would be a function of

the Washington portion of the IMS, the Country Reconstruction and Stabilization

Group (CRSG), to identify the objectives, to know which international partners have

capacity and expertise in which areas, to frame the discussion with these potential

partners, and to integrate to the greatest extent possible planning and operations

with these partners. By approaching these partners early and at a high-level and

then planning deliberately together at capitals and in the field, we hope to avoid

doing parallel work and better focus our efforts on our areas of strength.

Dr. SNYDER. We have been interested in learning about metrics to determine success for PRTs in both Afghanistan and Iraq and we appreciate that the work they

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do is inherently difficult to measure, but as you consider what sorts of reconstruction and stabilization efforts you might be called upon to coordinate are you giving

sufficient thought as to how the effectiveness or success of those missions might be

measured? Describe the methodology you intend to use to measure the performance

of civil-military teams involved in stabilization and reconstruction operations.

Ambassador HERBST. Since its creation, S/CRS has developed methodologies and

processes based on the principle that metrics must be integral to mission planning

and operational management. From the outset, at the strategic level, policy options

need to be paired with an understanding of what ‘‘success looks like’’ on the ground.

At each level of planning (strategic, operational, and tactical), planners and decision-makers must arrive at a shared and realistic understanding of how success will

be measured. Metrics, when used appropriately, should help policymakers determine

when changes in strategy or tactics are required.

Effective metrics do not simply capture USG ‘‘outputs’’ alone (e.g., number of

schools built or number of police trained). While those data sets are critical to program management and oversight, policymakers must be concerned with what ‘‘impact’’ our efforts are having on the lives of the people on the ground (e.g., do people

feel safe and do people feel that their government is providing the necessary services). We and our international counterparts are learning to measure outcomes in

addition to outputs. This will inform our policy towards the host nation; aid us in

refining our continuing reconstruction and stabilizations efforts in the host country;

and will be instrumental in the research and study done to improve the efficacy of

future reconstruction and stabilization engagements elsewhere in the world.

Dr. SNYDER. Are you developing benchmarks or measures to determine when stability operations are no longer needed and more traditional means of providing development and diplomatic assistance can be used? How permissive does the environment need to be? Have milestones or standards been established to determine when

to transition to more traditional means? If not, why not?

Ambassador HERBST. The transition from R&S operations to long-term development and diplomatic activities should occur when local government and other relevant local actors have the capacity to sustain a stable environment and adequately

address spoilers and other instigators of conflict. In each country, potentially in each

province, this transition point is different. Measures of success, similarly, should be

tailored to the country and province.

S/CRS has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USAID, U.S. Institute of Peace and the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at the U.S.

Army War College to develop a menu of possible indicators that focus on assessing

the security of local civilians. This project is titled Measuring Progress in Conflict

Environments (MPICE). In addition, MPICE contains menus of indicators for the

four other sectors (Governance, Rule of Law, Economics and Social Well-being) identified as critical to success by the report Winning the Peace: An American Strategy

for Post-Conflict Reconstruction produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dr. SNYDER. What are the resourcing considerations for future stability operations? How will they be reflected in future budget requests? Does the State Department require an increase in the overall number of FSOs?

Ambassador HERBST. In Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007, S/CRS worked to demonstrate through interagency assessment, planning, coordination, and deployment

that it can provide more effective assistance for reconstruction and stabilization operations. In Fiscal Year 2008, S/CRS is answering the growing demand and will

build on our proven value-added. We will expand the Active Response Corps, deploy

more experts, increase our country planning engagements, increase our training,

and continue to build our long-term ability to put interagency civilians teams on the

ground where and when we need them.

For FY 2009, a unified budget request is being prepared for all resources needed

to develop and deploy the interagency response, such as training, readiness,

equipment, some deployment funds, and new staffing, including Foreign Service

and Civil Service positions necessary to build the capacity for quick response

during crises.

Dr. SNYDER. What types of incentives do you believe will be required to induce

civilians to volunteer? Are you re-evaluating current incentives to determine if additional or other incentives are needed in light of the unanticipated need to direct assignments to Iraq?

Ambassador HERBST. We believe that patriotism will be a strong incentive for volunteers, keeping in mind that they are volunteering to be part of a national resource; not in response to a particular engagement. However, realizing the danger

and hardship inherent in assignment to countries where conflict is ongoing or has

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recently ended, members of the Civilian Reserve Corps who are activated will be

eligible for the same monetary incentives available to other federal employees civilian employees when deployed. Depending on the location and conditions of the assignment, these may include Premium Pay, Post Differential, Danger Pay, Locality

Pay, and possibly a Recruitment Bonus depending on the difficulty in filling positions.

There will be a dual compensation waiver for retired Foreign Service and Civil

Service employees, which will be a significant incentive for federal retirees.

Reservists, when deployed and on a term appointment in the civil service, will accrue the same Leave benefits as other federal employees and will be eligible for life

and health insurance, workers’ compensation, and participation in the Federal Employees Retirement System and the Thrift Savings Plan.

We believe the incentives above as well as a desire to serve one’s country, as demonstrated by the high fill and re-employment rates of the ‘‘3161’’ positions in Iraq,

will be sufficient. However, we will be regularly re-evaluating our recruitment efforts to determine if additional incentives are required.

Dr. SNYDER. Describe the interaction and relationship S/CRS has with the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. Describe the role of the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan plays in the Interagency Management System

and in the Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict

Transformation.

Ambassador HERBST. S/CRS plays a supporting role to the respective Department

of State regional bureaus. As a result, our interaction with the Assistant to the

President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan occurs

through the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the Bureau of South and Central

Asian Affairs.

The Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and

Afghanistan is not involved directly with the IMS and the USG Planning Framework, as these mechanisms are not being used for Iraq or Afghanistan. However,

other components of the NSC monitor the progress of—and participate in—the implementation of National Security Presidential Directive-44 on Management of Reconstruction and Stabilization Operations, including the development of the Interagency Management System for Reconstruction and Stabilization and the USG

Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation.

Dr. SNYDER. What policy and guidance have you set for the Services for selection

and or training for stability operations?

Ms. WARD. DoD Directive 3000.05, ‘‘Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations’’ establishes policies governing stability

operations training. It directs DoD institutions to develop stability operations curricula across the spectrum of training activities to include both individual and unit

training. In keeping with the Directive’s overall mandate of giving stability operations priority comparable to major combat operations, stability operations training

is an integral part of DoD’s training regimen.

Particular emphasis is placed on ensuring an appropriate balance in training for

combat and stability operations, with the needs of current operations tipping the

balance toward greater stability operations training. For stability operations, focus

is placed on the skills necessary to:

- Analyze the environment, and apply kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities as the

situation demands.

- Train and advise foreign security forces at the tactical, operational, and national levels.

- Work with civilian partners (USG, international, host nation, etc.).

- Support transitional security, civil governance, and essential services activities

in conflict zones.

- Operate within a foreign culture.

DoD is capturing the best practices from current operations to ensure DoD maintains and enhances its capacity to prepare units for operations in any theater, including stability operations.

Dr. SNYDER. GAO reported that DOD has yet to identify and prioritize the full

range of capabilities needed for stability operations because of a lack of clear guidance on how and when to accomplish this task. What progress has DOD made in

identifying and prioritizing capabilities needed to effectively conduct stability operations? What steps is DOD taking to ensure that different combatant commands approach the identification of requirements in the same way? How is CENTCOM doing

it? Does CENTCOM have responsibility for U.S. PRT strategy and operations in

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Iraq and Afghanistan? How have the capability requirements for the PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq been identified and addressed?

Ms. WARD. DoD’s approach has been to focus on updating strategic-level guidance

documents to instruct DoD components, including Combatant Commands (CoComs),

to incorporate stability operations considerations in the planning and conduct of operations.

The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations

Capabilities is working to more accurately identify specific capability gaps across

the spectrum of doctrine, organizations, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities. The Army has also conducted an extensive stability

operations capability gap analysis to identify missing stability operations capabilities.

The CoComs are an integral part of stability operations capability development

for both U.S. and international partners. Through the standardized Integrated Priority List (IPL) process, CoComs provide information to the Department on the capabilities needed to conduct their mission. These requirements are assessed in program development across all CoComs using a prioritization process that seeks to

balance risks. Each CoCom has priorities unique to the nature of their region. One

region may require capabilities in the security sector while others require governance or rule of law capabilities. DoD does not expect that each CoCom will submit

the same requirements, but instead expects each to provide an assessment of their

requirements across the spectrum of capabilities. As any other CoCom, CENTCOM

participates in this process and provides requests for information (RFI), requests for

forces (RFF) and Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statements (JUONS) to acquire

specific capabilities to conduct stability and other types of operations.

USCENTCOM does not have sole responsibility for Provincial Reconstruction

Team (PRT) strategy and operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. In Iraq, this is the responsibility of the Office of Provincial Affairs, under the Department of State. In

Afghanistan, this responsibility is shared by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), US Embassy, and USCENTCOM.

USCENTCOM retains responsibility for operations in Iraq but has delegated a

number of authorities for the conduct of the campaign in Iraq to Multi-National

Force—Iraq (MNF–I). MNF–I coordinates directly with the Office of Provincial Affairs on matters relating to PRTs. In Afghanistan, PRTs fall under the authority

of ISAF, and broad PRT strategy is developed jointly by ISAF, the Government of

Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy, and Allies.

PRT capabilities and requirements have been identified as part of the Request for

Forces process; specific equipment needs are met through a combination of unit

equipment and Joint Operational Needs Statements. In certain instances, PRT capabilities are also requested in Joint Manning Documents, which are developed and

submitted in support of headquarters elements, and through direct coordination

with the Department of State for necessary civilian skills. DoD is tracking these capabilities and requirements in order to inform future capability development and institutionalization.

Dr. SNYDER. We have been interested in learning about metrics to determine success for PRTs in both Afghanistan and Iraq and we appreciate that the work they

do is inherently difficult to measure, but as you consider what sorts of reconstruction and stabilization efforts you might be called upon to coordinate are you giving

sufficient thought as to how the effectiveness or success of those missions might be

measured? Describe the methodology you intend to use to measure the performance

of civil-military teams involved in stabilization and reconstruction operations.

Ms. WARD. DoD is supporting development of PRT metrics that include: (1) establishing clear objectives and end-states; (2) developing milestones and transition

phases for achieving the objectives; (3) applying resources in a coordinated fashion;

and (4) continuous joint assessments based on an agreed-upon model with indicators.

DoD (the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff, U.S. Army Peacekeeping

and Stability Operations Institute, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), the Department of State’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, the

U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the

Fund for Peace are working on a model for conflict measurements to assist in campaign design for stability operations. The goal is to measure and evaluate success

and progress against stated objectives. Such measures will also be applied to the

development of milestones and transition points.

Although objective data are difficult to collect in a conflict environment, the aim

of this undertaking is to reflect the reality of conditions on the ground. This is especially important for establishing trend lines, to include the ebbs and flows of shifting

conditions, in order to inform decision-makers of needed resource allocation and priVerDate 22-MAR-2001 07:42 Sep 08, 2008 Jkt 040714 PO 00000 Frm 00102 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-98\303160.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
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orities. DoD is also examining existing models and data collection efforts by think

tanks such as Carnegie, Brookings and commercial country risk assessment as a

check on its internal measurements.

Dr. SNYDER. What are the resourcing considerations for future stability operations? How will they be reflected in future budget requests?

Ms. WARD. DoD does not anticipate creating separate stability operations budget

lines for DoD capabilities, but is instead driving an overall shift in priorities in capability development. As DoD continues to identify key capabilities, ranging from

doctrine to organization to equipment, they will be reflected in the deliberations of

the Department and in budget requests. DoD will work through existing budget

frameworks and risk-informed deliberations of mission assignments and program

development across the Department. Future resourcing for stability operations will

be reflected in both programs and in application of key authorities, such as those

needed to develop partner capacities.

Beyond DoD, the U.S. government is currently underinvested in civilian capacity

to conduct stability operations. During his recent Landon lecture series speech, Secretary Gates highlighted the need for ‘‘a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security—diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign

assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development.’’ Increasing

resources for civilian capacity will be critical in order to conduct successful stability

operations in the future. Likewise, as the capabilities of foreign partners become

more critical, changes to U.S. government programs that support functions such as

foreign train, advise and assist programs can be expected.

Dr. SNYDER. According to GAO’s testimony, DOD’s policies and practices inhibit

sharing of planning information and limit interagency participation in the development of military plans developed by the Combatant Commanders. Specifically, GAO

reported that there is not a process for sharing plans with non-DOD agencies, early

in the planning process, without specific approval of the Secretary of Defense. What

actions is DOD taking to improve information sharing with interagency partners

early in the planning process?

Ms. WARD. DoD believes that the quality of DoD planning improves with appropriate participation from other U.S. departments and agencies; this has been the experience in Homeland Defense and War on Terror efforts, where DoD routinely

plans with other agencies in whole-of-government efforts. However, DoD must balance the benefits of sharing military contingency plans with the need for force protection, operational security, timely plan development, and the limited capacity of

civilian agencies to participate in the DoD planning process.

Currently, DoD shares critical aspects of military plans with elements of other

agencies, while not necessarily sharing the entire plan. In executing current operations, DoD encourages field coordination between CoComs and Chiefs of Missions,

and the assignment of liaison officers for sharing information. DoD has recently

taken the step of inviting interagency representatives to participate in the development of DoD strategic planning guidance. DoD intends to work with other agencies

to test new processes and fora for plans coordination as well as solicit their input

earlier in the planning process. Additionally, the Departments of Defense and State

are reviewing personnel-detailing processes between the departments with the intent of increasing collaboration. Finally, DoD strongly supports National Security

Presidential Directive-44 whole-of-government planning efforts, which will guide the

development of U.S. government plans that military contingency plans may support.

DoD believes that these efforts, as well as increased involvement of civilian agencies in reviewing DoD plans, will build those agencies’ ability to support DoD planning efforts.

Dr. SNYDER. According to GAO, previous DOD planning guidance considered four

phases for military operations. However, DOD’s revised planning guidance now includes six phases of an operation. Could you explain the significance of this shift

and how it affects stability and reconstruction operations?

Ms. WARD. The shift from four phases to six phases is significant in that it emphasizes the importance of planning for and conducting a variety of activities

throughout an operation. The new construct recognizes that all military operations

are a combination of offensive, defensive, and stability operations. The proportions

of those activities vary based on the operation’s phase and type. This means that

greater emphasis in military planning will be placed on activities conducted during:

Phase IV—Stabilize; Phase V—Enable Civil Authority; and back to Phase 0—Shape.

Dr. SNYDER. Describe the interaction and relationship the Department of Defense

has with the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for

Iraq and Afghanistan in the implementation of DOD Directive 3000.05 and NSPD–

44.

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1GAO Military Operations: Actions Needed to Improve DOD Stability Operations Approach

and Enhance Interagency Planning, GAO–07–549 (Washington, D.C.: May 31, 2007). 2 Every two years, the Air Force conducts a comprehensive review of the Air Force Concepts

of Operations (CONOPS) that articulate the capabilities needed and activities the Air Force

must execute for the Joint Force Commander. The Capability Review and Risk Assessment

(CRRA) process is the engine for capabilities-based planning. Inherent in the CRRA process is

the use of both internal and external analysis. Within the CRRA process, the Air Force uses

analyses provided by Risk Assessment Teams and analytic organizations. The capabilities identified in the CONOPS are consolidated in an Air Force Master Capabilities Library.

Ms. WARD. DoD’s primary interlocutors on the National Security Council staff for

implementation of DoD Directive 3000.05 and National Security Presidential Directive-44 are through the Office for Defense Policy and Strategy and the Office for Relief, Stabilization, and Development (under the Deputy National Security Advisor

for International Economics). Those offices work with the Office of the Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. DoD, as well as State and NSC,

are working to ensure lessons learned from across the U.S. government and from

these and other post-conflict engagements are integrated into the development of

new interagency doctrine, policy, and capabilities.

Dr. SNYDER. Your testimony cited several challenges that DOD has encountered

in implementing its stabilization and reconstruction policy.

• What are some of the significant challenges that DOD has faced in identifying

needed capabilities and measures of effectiveness?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. As discussed in our report on DOD stability

operations, we found that the identification of stability operations requirements was

occurring in a fragmented manner and that DOD had yet to systematically identify

and prioritize the full range of needed capabilities.1 As a result, the services were

pursuing initiatives to address capability shortfalls that may not reflect the comprehensive set of capabilities that will be needed to effectively accomplish stability

operations in the future. At the time of our review we identified two factors contributing to DOD’s limited progress in identifying capabilities. First, DOD had not

issued guidance or set specific timeframes for the combatant commands to identify

stability operations capability requirements. Furthermore, Joint Staff officials explained that the combatant commanders were expected to identify capability requirements based on revised operational plans, but DOD had not issued planning

guidance to the combatant commanders to revise plans to reflect stability operations

activities. Joint Staff officials expressed concerns that if combatant commands based

their requirements on existing plans that have not been updated to reflect new planning guidance, the requirements would not reflect the more comprehensive stability

operations capabilities needed. Second, a lack of a clear and consistent definition of

stability operations resulted in confusion across the department about how to identify activities that are considered stability operations. For example, Air Force officials stated in their May 22, 2006, Stability Operations Self Assessment that the

absence of a common lexicon for stability operations functions, tasks, and actions

results in unnecessary confusion and uncertainty when addressing stability operations. In March 2007 they reiterated that they still considered the lack of a common lexicon a hindrance in identifying stability operations capabilities. Without

clear guidance on how and when combatant commanders are to develop stability operations capability requirements, and a clear definition of stability operations, the

combatant commanders and the military services may not be able to effectively

identify and prioritize needed capabilities.

Similarly, we found that DOD guidance did not clearly articulate a systemic approach for developing measures of effectiveness and because of significant confusion

over how this task should be accomplished, DOD had made limited progress in developing them. For example, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps had placed the development of measures of effectiveness on hold pending more guidance and the Air

Force believed that they had met the requirement to develop measures through a

biennial review of Air Force Concepts of Operations 2 conducted in 2005. At the time

of our review, officials from DOD’s office for stability operations stated they were

aware of the confusion surrounding the development of measures of effectiveness

and were planning on conducting training that would help in developing the measures. However, as noted in our report, without clear departmentwide guidance and

milestones for completing the measures, confusion may continue to exist and DOD

will be limited in its ability to assess its efforts to enhance stability operations capabilities.

Dr. SNYDER.

• How does DOD typically identify capability gaps and to what extent has this

process been applied to examining stability operations capabilities?

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3 A list of a combatant commander’s highest priority requirements, prioritized across Service

and functional lines, defining shortfalls in key programs that, in the judgment of the combatant

commander, adversely affect the capability of the combatant commander’s forces to accomplish

their assigned mission. The integrated priority list provides the combatant commander’s recommendations for programming funds in the planning, programming, and budgeting system

process. Also called IPL. 4The Joint Chiefs of Staff are responsible for conducting a Joint Quarterly Readiness Review,

which is a scenario-based readiness assessment that identifies capabilities and risks associated

with missions that support strategic-level planning guidance. Participants in this review include

the Combatant Commanders, senior representatives from DOD, the Military Services, and other

DOD components.

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. During the course of our review DOD identified a variety of methods being used to identify capability gaps, and in their official comments to our report, stated that the identification and development of stability, security, transition, and reconstruction operations capabilities are not so different from other DOD capabilities that they require new or separate methodology

to identify and develop military capabilities and plans. The methods highlighted by

DOD included:

• Officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy stated

they intended to identify capabilities and recommend priorities to the Secretary of Defense through an iterative process where combatant commanders

would compare planned requirements for stability operations with current

available forces and military capabilities and propose remedies for eliminating

gaps. The Joint Staff would review these assessments and provide guidance to

help identify requirements. The combatant command requirements were then

expected to drive each service’s development of stability operations capabilities

and capacity.

• The use of Integrated Priority Lists.3

• Joint Quarterly Readiness Reviews, which are a scenario-based readiness assessment that identifies capabilities and risks associated with missions that

support strategic-level planning guidance 4.

• Other approaches, such as the Army’s ongoing process to address gaps in

Army stability operations capabilities and capacities and the Air Force’s use

of an analytical capabilities-based planning model that identifies specific shortfalls related to stability operations.

At the time of our review, however, limited progress had been made by the department in identifying and prioritizing needed capabilities, and at the three combatant commands we visited, we found that the identification of stability operations

requirements was occurring in a fragmented manner. This limited progress was

caused by weakness in DOD’s guidance, the absence of specific timeframes to complete capability gap analysis and confusion over how to define stability operations.

Dr. SNYDER. According to your report, previous DOD planning guidance considered four phases for military operations. However, DOD’s revised planning guidance

now includes six phases of an operation. Could you explain the significance of this

shift and how it affects stability and reconstruction operations?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. By expanding its planning construct to consider shaping efforts to stabilize regions so that conflicts do not develop and expanding the dimensions of stability operations that are needed in more hostile environments after conflicts occur, DOD has recognized the importance of deliberately planning for stability and reconstruction operations. This change in the planning construct reflects a fundamental shift in DOD’s policy that designates stability operations as a core mission that shall be given priority comparable to combat operations, and emphasizes that planning for stability and reconstruction activities is as

important as planning for combat operations. In addition, this shift in policy and

planning guidance requires DOD planners to understand and incorporate the roles,

responsibilities, and capabilities that all agencies and organizations can contribute

to stabilization efforts into military plans. Additionally, DOD must collaborate with

non-DOD agencies to coordinate its planning efforts with representatives from various U.S. agencies, organizations, other governments, and the private sector.

Although DOD has taken steps to establish interagency coordination mechanisms

and to improve interagency participation in its planning efforts, it has not achieved

consistent interagency representation or participation at the strategic, operational,

and tactical levels of planning. At the time of our review, we identified the following

three factors that limited interagency participation in DOD’s planning efforts:

• DOD had not provided specific guidance to commanders on how to integrate

planning with non-DOD organizations.

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5The NSC Deputies and Principals Committees must approve use of IMS for any operation.

• DOD practices inhibited the appropriate sharing of planning information with

non-DOD organizations.

• DOD and non-DOD organizations lacked an understanding of each other’s planning processes and capabilities, and non-DOD organizations had limited capacity to fully engage in DOD’s planning efforts.

As a result, the overall foundation for unity of effort in stability operations—common understanding of the purpose and concept of the operation, coordinated policies

and plans, and trust and confidence between key participants—is not being

achieved.

Dr. SNYDER. According to your testimony, recent changes in policy and guidance

require State and DOD to integrate their stabilization and reconstruction plans and

to coordinate those plans with relevant government and non-governmental organizations. Can you describe the relationship between the planning framework State is

developing under NSPD–44 and the planning improvements you suggest DOD pursue for improving interagency participation in military planning?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. As a part of its implementation of National

Security Presidential Directive 44 (NSPD–44), State’s Office of the Coordinator for

Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) led development of the Interagency Management System (IMS) for managing high-priority and highly complex operations.

IMS is designed to guide communications and interagency coordination between

Washington policy makers and Chiefs of Mission, as well as between the civilian

and military sectors. NSC approved IMS in March 2007. Although S/CRS and military combatant commands have jointly led exercises and simulations to test the system and train personnel in using it, as of November 2007, IMS had not been applied

to any stabilization and reconstruction operations.5 As a result, it is difficult to

know how effectively civilian and military plans would be coordinated in an actual

operation.

As described above, the IMS is a mechanism that has been developed by S/CRS

to integrate planning for high priority and highly complex operations, and the NSC

Deputies and Principals Committees must approve its use. In contrast, the planning

improvements we suggest in our report on DOD stability operations is focused on

the wide range of military plans combatant commanders develop for potential contingencies on a routine basis for which they may need to seek input from other

agencies or organizations. In our report, we stated that although DOD has taken

steps to establish interagency coordination mechanisms and to improve interagency

participation in its planning efforts, it has not achieved consistent interagency representation or participation at all levels of planning; and that to successfully integrate planning efforts, DOD and non-DOD organizations must overcome a lack of

understanding of each other’s planning processes and capabilities, and differences

in each others planning cultures and capacities.

To improve military planning efforts we recommended that the Secretary of Defense in coordination with the Secretary of State take the following three actions:

• Provide specific implementation guidance to combatant and component commanders on mechanisms to facilitate and encourage interagency participation in

the development of military plans that include stability operations-related activities.

• Develop a process to share planning information with the interagency representatives early in the planning process.

• Develop an approach to overcome differences in planning culture, training, and

capacities among the affected agencies.

Dr. SNYDER. According to GAO’s testimony, DOD’s policies and practices inhibit

sharing of planning information and limit interagency participation in the development of military plans developed by the Combatant Commanders. Specifically, you

reported that there is not a process for sharing plans with non-DOD agencies, early

in the planning process, without specific approval of the Secretary of Defense. What

actions should DOD take to improve information sharing with interagency partners

early in the planning process?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. As noted in testimony and our stability operations report, at the time of our review, DOD did not have a process in place to

facilitate the sharing of planning information with non-DOD agencies, when appropriate, early in the planning process without specific approval from the Secretary

of Defense. Specifically, DOD policy officials, including the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations, stated that it is the department’s policy

not to share DOD contingency plans with agencies or offices outside of DOD unless

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6 Interim Progress Report on DOD Directive 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security,

Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations (Washington, D.C., August 2006). 7GAO, Stabilization and Reconstruction: Actions Are Needed to Develop a Planning and Coordination Framework and Establish the Civilian Reserve Corps, GAO–08–39 (Washington, D.C.:

Nov. 6, 2007). 8Foreign Affairs Manual, 1 FAM 112(a). 9 22 U.S.C. 3927.

directed to do so by the Secretary of Defense, who determines if they have a need

to know. In addition, DOD’s planning policies and procedures state that a combatant commander, with Secretary of Defense approval, may present interagency aspects of his plan to the Joint Staff during the plan approval process for transmittal

to the National Security Council for interagency staffing and plan development. This

hierarchical approach limits interagency participation as plans are developed by the

combatant commands.

Additionally, according to State officials, DOD’s process for sharing planning information at the time of our review limited non-DOD participation in the development of military plans, and invited interagency participation only after the plans

had been formulated. In their opinion, it is critical to include interagency participation in the early stages of plan development at the combatant commands. Likewise,

in the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy’s interim report to the Secretary of Defense on DOD Directive 3000.05, it was acknowledged that DOD would continue to

face serious problems concerning the release and sharing of information among

DOD, other U.S. government agencies, international partners, and other non-governmental organizations.6 The interim DOD report attributed issues in informationsharing to DOD policies and emphasized that to improve information-sharing capabilities senior leadership direction is required. Therefore, as stated in our report, we

recommended that to improve information sharing between DOD and non-DOD

agencies early in the planning process, systemic solutions are needed and can be

achieved through improved guidance and more effective processes to appropriately

share planning information with interagency representatives.

Dr. SNYDER. According to GAO’s testimony, State’s planning framework provides

unclear and inconsistent guidance on the roles and responsibilities within the agency between S/CRS and its regional bureaus.

• What steps should be taken to clarify the roles and responsibilities of organizations within State and among federal agencies? Who has the authority to clarify

the roles and responsibilities government-wide?

• Please provide examples of what specific guidance is unclear or inconsistent.

• What consequences could occur be if State does not clarify the roles and responsibilities?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. To address concerns about various actors’

roles and responsibilities within the framework, we recommended that the Secretary

of State clarify and communicate specific roles and responsibilities within State for

S/CRS and the regional bureaus, including updating the Foreign Affairs Manual.7

We also recommended that the development of the framework be completed, and

that it be fully applied to an actual operation. Fulfilling this second recommendation

would require that the Secretary of State work with interagency partners, including

NSC, not only to clarify roles and responsibilities within State, but also the roles

and responsibilities of agencies other than State. We also stated that although the

NSC need not approve all elements of the framework, without such approval, it will

be difficult to ensure that the U.S. government agencies collaborate and contribute

to planning efforts to the fullest extent.

In November 2007, we reported that NSPD–44, related State and administration

guidance, and the planning framework collectively do not provide clear direction on

roles and responsibilities in two key areas. First, S/CRS’s roles and responsibilities

conflict with those assigned to State’s regional bureaus and Chiefs of Mission. According to the Foreign Affairs Manual, each regional bureau is responsible for U.S.

foreign relations with countries within a given region, including providing overall

direction, coordination, and supervision of U.S. activities in the region.8 In addition,

Chiefs of Mission have authority over all U.S. government staff and activities in

their countries.9 As S/CRS initially interpreted NSPD–44, S/CRS’s roles and responsibilities included leading, planning, and coordinating stabilization and reconstruction operations; these responsibilities conflict with those of the regional bureaus and

Chiefs of Mission. S/CRS officials stated that they expected the next version of the

Foreign Affairs Manual to include a clearly defined and substantive description of

the office’s roles.

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Second, guidance varies regarding S/CRS’s responsibility for preventing conflicts.

NSPD–44 and the memo announcing S/CRS’s creation include conflict prevention as

one of the office’s responsibilities. However, S/CRS’s authorizing legislation and a

State memo aligning S/CRS with the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance do not explicitly include conflict prevention as a responsibility. Ambiguity about S/CRS’s prevention role could result in inadequate prevention efforts. One DOD official in the

Global Strategic Partnerships office stated that responsibility for prevention is currently unassigned, and the work might not be done without such an assignment.

The overlap and ambiguity of roles and responsibilities have led to confusion and

disputes about who should lead policy development and control resource allocation.

As a result, some of State’s regional bureaus resisted applying the new interagency

planning process to particular reconstruction and stabilization operations. In addition, State and other agency staff said S/CRS had conflicts with Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance over which office controlled resource allocation for these operations,

which also made it difficult for S/CRS to coordinate and plan reconstruction and stabilization operations using the framework.

Dr. SNYDER. According to GAO’s testimony, State’s interagency planning framework for stability and reconstruction operations is not fully approved nor has it been

fully applied to any operation. What are the most significant challenges that S/CRS

is facing in completing and testing this framework and how would they be best addressed?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. Three challenges have slowed development

and acceptance of both S/CRS and the planning framework. First, some civilian

interagency partners are concerned that S/CRS is assuming their traditional roles

and responsibilities. Staff from one of State’s regional bureaus believed that S/CRS

had enlarged its role in a way that conflicted with the Regional Assistant Secretary’s responsibility for leading an operation and coordinating with interagency

partners. USAID staff noted how their agency had planned and coordinated reconstruction operations in the past and questioned why S/CRS now had these roles. Although most agency staff and outside experts we interviewed agreed that interagency coordination should improve, some USAID and State employees questioned

why NSC was not given the primary role for planning and coordinating stabilization

and reconstruction operations or for implementing NSPD–44.

Second, some interagency partners stated that senior officials have provided limited support for S/CRS and its planning framework. Staffs from various State offices

said senior officials did not communicate strong support for S/CRS or the expectation that State and interagency partners should follow its framework for planning

and coordinating reconstruction and stabilization operations. In addition, S/CRS was

not selected to lead planning for recent high-priority operations, such as the ongoing

efforts in Lebanon and Somalia, which several officials and experts stated are the

types of operations S/CRS was created to address. Finally, NSC approved the Interagency Management System (IMS) as the mechanism for communicating and coordinating across U.S. government sectors and between the field and strategic levels.

Although NSC approved the mechanism in March 2007, as of November 2007 it had

not initiated its use despite a resurgence of civil unrest in Lebanon and Pakistan.

Third, interagency partners believe the planning process, as outlined in the draft

planning guide, is too cumbersome and time consuming for the results it produces.

Officials who participated in the planning for Haiti stated that the process provided

more systematic planning, better identification of interagency goals and responsibilities, and better identification of sequencing and resource requirements. However,

some officials involved in planning operations for Haiti and Sudan stated that using

the framework was time consuming, involved long meetings and extra work hours

for staff, and was cumbersome to use because it was overly focused on process details. Staff also said that, in some cases, the planning process did not improve outcomes or increase resources, particularly since S/CRS has few resources to offer.

Although many agencies participated in the framework’s development, concerns

remain over the roles and responsibilities for S/CRS, State’s regional bureaus, and

the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance. As a result, we recommended that the Secretary of State clarify the roles and responsibilities for stabilization and reconstruction activities within State, including updating the Foreign Affairs Manual. Moreover, the planning guide remains incomplete and unapproved by NSC. Although

there is no requirement that NSC approve this element of the framework, without

such approval it will be difficult to ensure that U.S. government agencies collaborate

and contribute to interagency planning efforts to the fullest extent possible. Therefore, we also recommended that that the Secretary of State, in conjunction with

NSC and other interagency partners, complete the framework’s development and

test its usefulness by fully applying it to a stabilization and reconstruction operation.

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Dr. SNYDER. According to the preliminary observations GAO presented, State is

facing several challenges in establishing and maintaining a rapid deployment corps.

• What are some of the most significant challenges that State and other civilian

agencies are facing in developing a civilian response capability?

• What are some of the effects on stabilization and reconstruction operations if

civilian agencies cannot develop the capability and capacity to rapidly deploy in

support of stabilization and reconstruction operations?

Mr. CHRISTOFF and Ms. ST. LAURENT. State and other agencies face three primary

challenges in establishing internal rapid response capabilities. First, S/CRS has had

difficulty establishing positions and recruiting for the Active Response Corps (ARC)

and training Standby Response Corps (SRC) members. S/CRS plans to increase the

number of authorized staff positions for ARC from 15 temporary positions to 33 permanent positions, but S/CRS staff said it is unlikely that State will receive authority to establish all 33 positions. Although S/CRS has not had difficulty recruiting

SRC volunteers, it does not presently have the capacity to ensure the additional

1,500 volunteers it plans to recruit by 2009 are properly trained.

Second, although other agencies have begun to develop a stabilization and reconstruction response capacity, most have limited numbers of staff available for rapid

responses to overseas crises. Since most agencies primarily focus on domestic issues,

it is difficult to obtain either funding or staff for international operations not directly related to their core domestic missions. Finally, deploying volunteers, whether

from State or other agencies, can leave home units without sufficient staff to complete their respective work.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA

Ms. DAVIS. It is our understanding that if a military officer serves in a PRT it

is not considered a joint station or joint experience in the same way that we think

of jointness in the Services and that their need to be able to do that in terms of

career development and career ladder. Are PRT commander billets identified as

‘‘joint billets’’?

Ms. WARD. Officers serving in PRT commander positions may request their experiences be reviewed to determine if they warrant the award of joint experience

points.

From the inception of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986 until 30 September 2007,

the DoD Joint Officer Management (JOM) program was a billet-based system. By

policy, temporary positions (such as a PRT commander post) were not authorized

on the Joint Duty Assignment List (JDAL) due to the tour length requirements in

Title 10, USC, Section 664. However, statutory changes in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 provide broader opportunities for officers to

earn joint credit.

DoD re-issued DoD Instruction 1300.19 in October 2007, updating the Joint Officer Management Program and reiterating DoD policy that a significant number of

officers be educated, trained, and experienced in joint matters to enhance the joint

war fighting capability of the United States through a heightened awareness of joint

requirements, including multi-Service, interagency, international, and non-governmental perspectives. The new Joint Qualification System is dual-track, counting

both assignments in JDAL positions as well as the accrual of joint experiences, no

matter where they occur. Therefore, officers may now earn joint experience points

from duties other than JDAL positions. The accrual of joint experience points, along

with requisite Joint Professional Military Education, leads to joint qualifications.

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