The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 created the independent U.S. Postal Service and authorized it to make arrangements with DOD regarding the performance of military postal services. Each military service managed its own mail program until 1980, when DOD and the U.S. Postal Service entered into an agreement for the joint provision of postal services for all branches of the armed forces. The agreement created the Military Postal Service Agency, which acts as an extension of the U.S. Postal Service beyond the boundaries of U.S. sovereignty and must provide full postal services, as nearly as practicable, for all DOD personnel overseas where there is no U.S. Postal Service available. The Military Postal Service Agency is DOD’s single manager for military postal functions. Although this joint service agency is organizationally located under the Army Adjutant General and depends on the Army for funding and staffing, the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisitions, Technology, and Logistics) is responsible for the agency’s policies and oversight. In October 2002, several months prior to U.S. and coalition troops crossing the border into Iraq, a joint planning conference was held at U.S. Central Command—the designated combatant command for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The U.S. Central Command hosted the conference, bringing together postal officials from all four military components, as well as the U.S. Postal Service and the Military Postal Service Agency. The conference led to the creation of a U.S. Central Command postal operating plan that assigned roles and responsibilities for all joint postal operations during the impending contingency. The DOD doctrine for joint military operations states that postal support for any contingency is coordinated by the combatant command in the region. The combatant commander appoints a single-service postal manager to direct, implement, and manage all postal operations in the joint theater. Since the Gulf War in 1991, the single-service manager for postal operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility has been the Air Force’s 82nd Computer Support Squadron, currently assigned to the Air Force’s Air Combat Command. However, U.S. Central Command has the overriding responsibility for all operations in theater, including postal operations. The movement of mail from the Unites States to troops in the Iraqi theater follows several complex logistical steps. Letters and parcels with military addresses destined to Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain are sent to one of four International Mail GatewaysNew York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miamifor processing. According to Military Postal Service Agency data, 90 percent of all letters and parcels for Operation Iraqi Freedom were processed through New York. The U.S. Postal Service delivers letters to the International Service Center at John F. Kennedy Airport, in New York; parcels are delivered to the Postal Service’s International and Bulk Mail Center in New Jersey. After the letters and parcels are sorted, they are then packaged, placed into containers, and then transferred to Newark International Airport in New Jersey where they are loaded onto airplanes for transport to the Iraqi theater. Unlike during Operations Desert Shield/Storm, where military planes operated by the Military Airlift Command transported much of the mail, a dedicated contractor aircraft carried mail during Operation Iraqi Freedom. During the next stage of mail movement, the mail planes fly to aerial mail terminals colocated at the international airports in Kuwait and Bahrain. Once landed, local airport ground handlers offload the mail containers from the planes and take them to an Air Force Mail Control Activity located at the airport, where the mail is staged for ground transportation. In Bahrain, mail for service members stationed in Iraq is processed at the U.S. Air Force Mail Control Activity; mail for service members located in Bahrain or aboard ships is processed at the U.S. Fleet Mail Center. For troops stationed in Iraq, mail is transferred onto a contracted cargo plane and flown directly into Iraq. In Kuwait, all mail is processed at the Joint Military Mail Terminal. Figure 1 illustrates two different examples of how military mail flows from the Newark International Airport into the Iraqi theater. The Joint Military Mail Terminal, which handles the bulk of the letters and parcels entering the Iraqi theater, sorts the mail and arranges for its transportation—either by land or by air—to the various regions occupied by U.S. troops. Mail must be delivered to the unit level, designated by ZIP codes provided by the Military Postal Service Agency, before it can be distributed to individual service members. Figure 2 illustrates postal operations and a backlog of mail in February 2003 at the Joint Military Mail Terminal in Kuwait. According to the Military Postal Service Agency, more than 65 million pounds of letters and parcels were delivered to U.S. Central Command’s contingency area of responsibility during calendar year 2003 at a cost of nearly $150 million. The largest amount moved in a single month was April 2003, when over 11 million pounds of mail were delivered. This represents an average of just over 377,000 pounds per daythe equivalent of about forty 40-foot-long trailers full of mail. Figure 3 illustrates a convoy of trucks carrying 40-foot trailers of mail leaving the Kuwait Joint Military Mail Terminal. The timeliness of mail delivery to troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom cannot be accurately determined because DOD does not have a reliable, accurate system in place to measure timeliness. Data collected by military postal units using the Transit Time Information Standard System for Military Mail indicate that average delivery times met the Army wartime standard of 12 to 18 days. However, the methodology used to calculate and report these times consistently masks the actual time it takes for service members to receive mail, thus significantly understating actual delivery times. Test letters sent to individuals at military post offices also have produced unreliable data because many test letters were never returned, and letters were sent only to individuals located at military post offices. Military postal officials acknowledge that mail delivery to troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom was not timely. In addition, more than half of the 127 soldiers and marines we talked with during informal meetings at their home bases in the United States said they were dissatisfied with the timeliness of mail delivery while they were deployed. Morale suffered, as mail from home was many service members’ only link with friends and families. The Army’s wartime standard for first class mail delivery is 12 to 18 days from the point of origin to the individual service member. According to our analysis of data reported by the Transit Time Information Standard System for Military Mail, average postal transit times for letters and parcels sent to the Iraqi theater ranged from 11 to 14 days from February through September 2003. (See fig. 4.) These times represent the time it takes for a letter or parcel to go from its point of origin (a stateside post office) to a service member’s designated military post office, where he or she picks up mail. However, on the basis of our analysis, we found that the methodology used to calculate and report transit times significantly understates the actual time it takes for a service member to receive mail. According to Transit Time Information Standard System for Military Mail guidance, transit times should be reported by postal units in theater on the basis of a random sample of all incoming letters and all incoming packages arriving at military post offices in the Iraqi theater. The samples are then divided into three categories according to the date of the U.S. postmark: postmark less than 10 days old, postmark 11 to 15 days old, and postmark over 16 days old. Each of these three categories is given a weight value of 10, 15, and 16, respectively, which represent the break points of each category. The sample size (number of letters or packages sampled) in each category is then multiplied by the weight value and averaged to get the reported transit time. Consequently, regardless of the sample size or the actual number of days the items spent in transit, the resulting average will always be from 10 to 16 days. For example, a piece of mail that spent 100 days in transit would be counted in the same category and weighted the same as one that only took 16 days. Similarly, a piece of mail that spent 4 days in transit would be counted in the same category as one that took 10, and again weighted the same. (See table 1 for an example of how this methodology is used to calculate transit times.) This methodology is even less viable when one considers that during the peak of wartime operations, all mail destined for Iraq was held at the joint military mail terminal in Kuwait for 23 days (late March through mid-April) because of the rapid pace of troop movements. However, this 23-day hold on mail is not reflected in the transit time data, as the “weighted average” methodology masks the calculation, thus significantly understating actual transit time. Officials at the Military Postal Service Agency and at the Army’s 3rd Personnel Commandthe Army entity providing in-theater postal support during Operation Iraqi Freedomcould not provide documentation that described this methodology. We reviewed the Transit Time Information Standard System for Military Mail guidance, the standard that explains and prescribes how military postal activities collect mail transit time data, and could not find any mention of this particular methodology. Only 3rd Personnel Command, the source of the transit time data, was aware that the transit times were being reported in this manner. According to a 3rd Personnel Command official, it had always been done this way. We discussed the methodology with Military Postal Service Agency officials. While they acknowledge that the Transit Time Information Standard System is the official tracking system, they were not aware that this particular methodology was being employed, and moreover could not tell us why it was being used. In order to collect transit times on retrograde mail (which the Transit Time Information Standard System for Military Mail does not collect) as well as prograde mail, the Military Postal Service Agency sent test letters to individuals located at military post offices within the contingency area of responsibility.