Starting Points: GAO

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Apr 8, 2010

Language proficiency is Foreign Service's 'greatest challenge,' Negroponte says

By Joe Davidson
Thursday, April 8, 2010; B03

The site at 21st and E streets NW once was a favorite watering hole for State Department employees seeking something harder than the soft drinks offered in the agency's cafeteria.

Workers from State still meet at that location, presumably for more lofty deliberations than those found in most saloons. The American Foreign Service Association owned the Foreign Service Club, but decided to get out of the restaurant and bar business years ago. In that recently renovated space it sponsored a sober discussion Wednesday on challenges facing Foreign Service officers. AFSA did offer chocolates wrapped in the association's shield, but without booze to loosen up the dialogue, it might have been a far cry from the joint's livelier days.

The forum's main attraction was John Negroponte, who has served, sometimes in a storm of controversy, in a wide variety of foreign policy positions, including as the nation's first director of national intelligence. But neither foreign policy nor his controversies were on the minds of those who gathered to hear his take on some of the challenges they face as Foreign Service officers.

Although the quantity of State Department and Agency for International Development officers has increased steadily in recent years, serious gaps in their number and foreign language proficiency remain.

The "greatest challenge," according to Negroponte, is the need for officers who can speak the languages of the world.

"There is no substitute," said the multilingual Negroponte, "for recruiting, training, deploying, retaining and retraining," officers in languages and geography so they "develop the contacts, the knowledge, the insight, the local and area expertise" needed to help develop America's foreign policy.

Image by rita banerji via Flickr

But State isn't meeting that challenge well enough, according to the Government Accountability Office. In September, it said the department needs a comprehensive plan to address "persistent foreign language shortfalls."

According to the GAO, whose study was current as of October 2008, there are "notable gaps" in State's foreign language capabilities that "could hinder U.S. overseas operations."

Worse yet, some of those gaps are in super-critical countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nearly one-third "of officers in all worldwide language-designated positions did not meet both the foreign language speaking and reading proficiency requirements for their positions, up slightly from 29 percent in 2005," the GAO reported. About 40 percent of officers in the Near East, South and Central Asia, China and places where Arabic is spoken are language-deficient.

As bad as the numbers are in those countries, the language skill set there is better than in America's war zones. In Iraq, 57 percent of Foreign Service officers lack sufficient language skills. Afghanistan trails far behind, with 73 percent unable to directly communicate with the country's people.

State Department officials told the GAO that the language gap could begin to close next year if it gets requested funding, but they did not say when they expect the language staffing requirements to be fully met.

But the GAO also reported that Foreign Service officers have a different take on the problem.

"Another challenge is the widely held perception among Foreign Service officers that State's promotion system does not consider time spent in language training when evaluating officers for promotion, which may discourage officers from investing the time required to achieve proficiency in certain languages," the report said. "Although HR officials dispute this perception, the department has not conducted a statistically significant assessment of the impact of language training on promotions."

The second challenge cited by Negroponte is the need for State to provide a mix of policies and incentives "in order to optimize the deployment of officers and their families for a substantial majority of their careers."

Last year, President Obama took an important step in making international postings more attractive when he signed legislation that begins to close a pay gap for Foreign Service officers, who do not get locality pay as do other federal employees.

Without that law, Negroponte said, there was a "perverse incentive" for Foreign Service officers to serve in the United States. He advocated greater employment opportunities for spouses of officers abroad -- "that effort has faltered at various times" -- and a reduction in postings to which officers can't take their families. At least, he said, State should "find ways of compensating for that problem."

In another report, the GAO said, "State uses a range of incentives to staff hardship posts, but their effectiveness remains unclear." Despite some progress, the GAO said persistent staffing gaps continue to be a problem.

The GAO made clear to Congress the stark result of these deficiencies: "State's diplomatic readiness remains at risk."

Mar 16, 2010

GAO blocks contract to firm formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police

Image by Chayak via Flickr

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 16, 2010; A05

Federal auditors on Monday put a stop to Army plans to award a $1 billion training program for Afghan police officers to the company formerly known as Blackwater, concluding that other companies were unfairly excluded from bidding on the job.

The decision by the Government Accountability Office leaves unclear who will oversee training of the struggling Afghan National Police, a poorly equipped, 90,000-strong paramilitary force that will inherit the task of preserving order in the country after NATO troops depart.

GAO officials upheld a protest by DynCorp International Inc., which currently conducts training for Afghan police under a State Department contract. DynCorp lawyers argued that the company should have been allowed to submit bids when management of the training program passed from State to the Army. Instead, Pentagon officials allowed the training program to be attached to an existing Defense contract that supports counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

Xe Services, the new name of Blackwater, was poised to win one portion of a much larger group of contracts, shared among five corporations, that could earn the companies more than $15 billion over five years.

GAO officials said the decision will allow a new round of bidding by DynCorp and other firms, including Xe Services.

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"We recognize the Army's position that it needs to swiftly award a contract for these services," said Ralph O. White, an attorney with the GAO's procurement oversight division. But he said the Army must conduct a "full and open competition," or explain in writing why DynCorp had been excluded.

The Pentagon's decision to allow Xe to run the training program drew a strong protest last week from Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Levin cited a history of allegedly abusive behavior by the contractor's employees, including misappropriation of government weapons and hiring of workers with criminal records that included assault and drug offenses. He also accused managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan.

Levin, responding to Monday's GAO decision, said government contracting practices had too often been unfairly exclusive, though he acknowledged that Xe may ultimately end up as the winner in competitive bidding.

"If this contract is re-bid and Blackwater is among the bidders, I hope that the Defense Department will take a close look at the company to determine if it is a suitable contracting partner for the U.S. government," he said.

A spokesman for Xe declined to comment.

DynCorp President Bill Ballhaus welcomed the decision.

"We are performing this crucial training mission now, and will continue to meet all objectives of the commanders on the ground while a full and transparent bidding process can ensure the best outcome for the taxpayer, our mission and the Afghan people," he said.

Nov 20, 2009

GAO finds fault with stimulus jobs data but touts transparency - washingtonpost.com

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By Ed O'Keefe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 20, 2009

Government auditors raised doubts Thursday about the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program, but they also said that mistakes reported in recent weeks signal the benefits of government transparency.

Roughly 10 percent of the recipients of stimulus dollars failed to submit quarterly reports last month, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.

"I think missing reports may drive the job numbers up, and I think there are enough inaccuracies in here to drive the numbers down," said Earl E. Devaney, who oversees Recovery.gov, the government's stimulus-tracking Web site. The Obama administration reported last month that the stimulus has created or saved about 640,000 jobs thus far.

Some recipients' failure to report spending data last month "is distressing and must be addressed," Devaney said, adding that Congress should penalize recipients who fail to report.

The doubts expressed by Devaney and acting GAO Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro at Thursday's House oversight committee hearing lend nonpartisan credence to general concerns about stimulus data. Devaney, who assumed his position in the spring, has repeatedly cautioned government officials at all levels that early data would probably contain errors. But some of those mistakes aren't necessarily a bad thing, he said.

"In reality, this data should serve in the long run as evidence of what transparency can achieve," he said. "In the past, this data would have been scrubbed from top to bottom before its release. The agencies would never have released the information until it was near-perfect."

Republicans attacked the jobs figures, referring to the data as "propaganda" and "garbage," and called the entire stimulus reporting process "disgusting."

"The administration continues to misread the economy, misunderstand the nature of economic growth, mislead the American people with faulty jobs claims and miss the steps this country needs to take to get our economy back on track," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

The Obama administration has struggled to clearly define stimulus job creation because -- as Devaney and Dodaro noted -- it is difficult to know what role the funding played.

"This has never been done before," White House stimulus adviser Ed DeSeve said after the hearing. "You can't name another government program that has done this."

Jul 19, 2009

Venezuela's Drug-Trafficking Role Is Growing Fast, U.S. Report Says

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 19, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, July 18 -- A report for the U.S. Congress on drug smuggling through Venezuela concludes that corruption at high levels of President Hugo Chávez's government and state aid to Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas have made Venezuela a major launching pad for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe.

Since 1996, successive U.S. administrations have considered Venezuela a key drug-trafficking hub, the Government Accountability Office report says. But now, it says, the amount of cocaine flowing into Venezuela from Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and the world's top producer of the drug, has skyrocketed, going from an estimated 60 metric tons in 2004 to 260 metric tons in 2007. That amounted to 17 percent of all the cocaine produced in the Andes in 2007.

The report, which was first reported by Spain's El Pais newspaper Thursday and obtained by The Washington Post on Friday, represents U.S. officials' strongest condemnation yet of Venezuela's alleged role in drug trafficking. It says Venezuela has extended a "lifeline" to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States estimates has a hand in the trafficking of 60 percent of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

The report, scheduled to be made public in Washington on Monday, drew an angry response from Chávez, whose government has repeatedly clashed with the United States. Speaking to reporters in Bolivia on Friday, the populist leader characterized the report as a political tool used by the United States to besmirch his country. He also said the United States, as the world's top cocaine consumer, has no right to lecture Venezuela.

"The United States is the first narco-trafficking country," Chávez said, adding that Venezuela's geography -- particularly its rugged 1,300-mile border with Colombia -- makes it vulnerable to traffickers. He also asserted that Venezuela had made important gains in the drug war since expelling U.S. counter-drug agents in 2005, a measure the GAO says made Venezuela more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

"Venezuela has begun to hit narco-trafficking hard since the DEA left," Chávez said, referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "The DEA is filled with drug traffickers."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) commissioned the GAO study in February 2008, asking the nonpartisan agency to determine whether Venezuela was "in the process of becoming a narco-state, heavily dependent [on] and beholden to the international trade in illegal drugs."

In a statement about the GAO report, Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the findings "have heightened my concern that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with the United States on drug interdiction is related to corruption in that country's government." He said the report underscores a need for a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

The release of the report is expected to provide ammunition to some Republican lawmakers who have criticized the Obama administration's efforts to reinstate the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Chávez. U.S. diplomats have said that despite his ties to Chávez, Zelaya should be returned to power to serve the six months left in his term.

A Democratic aide in Congress who works on Latin American policy issues suggested that the call for a review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela could interfere with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid to improve relations with Caracas, which were badly frayed during the Bush years. "The administration inherited a messy bilateral relationship and deserves a chance to put it on a more even keel," the aide said.

The GAO report describes how cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled into Venezuela via land and river routes, as well as on short flights originating from remote regions along Colombia's eastern border. Most of the cocaine is then shipped out on merchant vessels, fishing boats and so-called go-fast boats. Though most of it is destined for U.S. streets, increasing amounts are being sent to Europe, the report says.

The GAO contends that corruption in Venezuela, reaching from officers in the National Guard to officials in top levels of government, has contributed to the surge in trafficking.

In September, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated three Venezuelan high-ranking officials, all close aides to Chávez, as "drug kingpins" for protecting FARC drug shipments and providing arms and funding to Colombian guerrillas. They are Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, director of the military's Intelligence Directorate; Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services; and Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former interior and justice minister.

News of the GAO report came as Colombian officials in Bogota released an internal FARC video in which the rebel group's second-in-command, Jorge Briceño, reads the deathbed manifesto, written in March 2008, by the then-supreme commander, Manuel Marulanda. In the video, seized in May from a FARC operative and obtained by the Associated Press, Marulanda stresses the strategic importance of "maintaining good political relations, friendship and confidence with the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador."

Marulanda's letter also laments that a trove of internal e-mails, many of them compromising Venezuelan and Ecuadoran officials, fell into the hands of Colombian authorities that month. Briceño, reading the letter to a group of guerrillas in a jungle clearing, announces that among FARC "secrets" that were lost is information about the "assistance in dollars" to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's 2006 presidential campaign.

Venezuela did not immediately respond to the video. But on Saturday, Correa, an ally of Chávez, denied receiving campaign funds from the FARC and suggested the video was a "setup."

"There is a setup to damage the image of the country and the government," he said in a radio address.