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The Pentagon is urging House-Senate conferees on the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill to drop a provision in the House measure that would create a special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

The office would be modeled largely on the independent investigator examining rebuilding efforts in Iraq, where the temporary office has uncovered billions of dollars of contract waste and fraud. In May, House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., called it among one of his bill's most significant provisions, and stressed that the inspector general in Afghanistan would "ensure even greater accountability" of efforts there.

But in a package of appeals on the authorization measure sent last week to the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Pentagon officials said they view the creation of the special investigator as a redundant office that would deplete the Pentagon's inspector general of needed personnel. The Senate version of the bill also created the Afghanistan inspector general, but the Pentagon did not address that provision.

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction "already competes with the departmental IGs for trained staff, who must also be willing to deploy to Iraq," according to the appeal. "Staffing this new special IG for Afghanistan reconstruction would further draw on the limited pool of trained personnel, with limited resources to mentor and train less senior staff."

Pentagon officials also argued the office would take resources from other Afghanistan reconstruction efforts because the bill requires funding to be redirected from other reconstruction accounts.

The Defense Department criticized the House provision because officials believed it would be an internal organization rather than a more independent, cross-agency entity. The House provision requires the Afghanistan IG to report directly to the Defense secretary, but also gives the office oversight of other federal agencies.

A House aide familiar with the provision stressed the intent was not to make another internal Pentagon organization and said members are working to have the IG also report to the Secretary of State. Indeed, the Senate version requires the Afghanistan IG to report both to the secretaries of Defense and State.

The Iraq inspector general was created by Congress as an amendment to the fiscal 2004 emergency wartime supplemental spending measure. Last year, Congress approved language that would keep the office of the Iraq special inspector open until October 2008, overturning a House Republican-sponsored amendment to the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill that would shutter the office a year earlier.

According to the House provision, the Afghanistan inspector general office would close 10 months after 80 percent of the funds appropriated for Afghanistan reconstruction have been spent. The Senate bill would close the office on Sept. 30, 2010.

COMMENTS

• I was in the Green Zone working for IRMO for 23 months as Chief Auditor for the US advisors setting up CPI. The short story is that I saw so much waste and mis-management in ALL USG programs that SIGIR.mil was the only effective audit group there. I knew several of them and also interfaced periodically with DCAA, State IG etc. to see how they were contributing. They weren't. GAO wasn't there, but that was where SIGIR got most of their people, not from the IG's. In my opinion the IG's were ineffective and as a recent articles and Congressional oversight committee hearings have found, the State IG prevented audits, and USAID's audit that were published were lightweight and NEVER placed responsibility on USAID or their managers. Vance Jochim Posted October 17, 2007 7:42 PM
• The USAID Office of Inspector General is opposed to the creation of a special inspector general office for Afghanistan reconstruction, as referenced in amendments SA 2150/SA 3081 to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 1585). While a special inspector general may have been appropriate in Iraq based on the heavy emphasis on reconstruction, we believe that this model would not be effective in Afghanistan because the primary emphasis in Afghanistan is on development activities, and traditional inspector general oversight is most applicable. USAID OIG believes that the Inspector General Offices of Defense, State, and USAID are in the very best position to oversee the reconstruction and development programs in Afghanistan, and that the General Accountability Office is the agency to address cross-cutting oversight issues. · The individual agencies are those who best know their respective internal operations and programs and where to focus in order to most effectively coordinate activities. · We have a collective presence in Afghanistan--either through continuous TDY assignments or through a permanent presence--and are already providing comprehensive oversight, as reflected in our letter to Senator Lautenberg about the Afghanistan Working Group. · A special inspector general for Afghanistan would be duplicative of work already underway and planned for the fiscal year. · The influx of a large, new inspector general office into Afghanistan would hinder our ability to do our jobs because of the strain it would place on the very limited Embassy infrastructure in Kabul. In summary, we encourage Senator Lautenberg and others not to create a special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Instead, we encourage Congress to facilitate and augment the four oversight agencies already successfully working there. Dona M. Dinkler Posted October 17, 2007 11:05 AM