The Center for Public Integrity

Closely-fought presidential campaigns can confound expectations by constricting — rather than broadening — public debate about significant policy issues, a phenomenon most recently on display during the debate between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Rep. Paul D. Ryan.

The two men, offering a preview of the foreign policy issues expected to arise at the Oct. 16 and Oct. 22 debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney, mostly competed to demonstrate the muscularity of their teams’ approaches to a vexing set of international challenges.

Each vowed their party would play tough with Iran and stick by the current hard line leadership in Israel; spend whatever is needed for critical U.S. military operations and forces; safely extract U.S. troops from Afghanistan; and efficiently engineer the ouster of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Ryan argued that Iran’s drive for a nuclear weapon has been relentless, and that it is closer now to achieving its goal than it was when Obama won election. Biden responded that Iran is more isolated now than ever before, and said international sanctions are seriously harming the Iranian economy.

Both men were actually right, but their convictions masked the fact that much mystery remains about how the drama over the Iranian program will play out.

Will the toll of tough sanctions eventually cause Iranian citizens to sack their leadership and reverse course? Could that happen soon? Will the sanctions — or the threat of the government’s ouster by its own citizens — convince Iran’s leaders never to mate fissile materials with the other components of a working bomb? Or will the heightened foreign pressures only goad Iran to move faster and farther along the nuclear path?

President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week creating new protections for national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, effectively sidestepping a congressional impasse provoked by the reservations of congressional Republicans.

The order — formally known as "Presidential Policy Directive 19" and signed by Obama out of public view on Oct. 10 and without a White House announcement — directs intelligence agencies to establish procedures for the protection of employees reporting waste, fraud and abuse.

The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

The new order bans retaliation against whistleblowers in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations. Until now, these agencies were not specifically prohibited from retaliating against whistleblowers. 

A House bill aimed at improving protections for most federal employees, known as the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and passed by that chamber in September, lacked the safeguards ordered by Obama. Angela Canterbury, from the Washington, D.C. watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said House Republicans had narrowed the bill’s focus due to worries that its provisions might encourage Wikileaks-type disclosures of sensitive information.

She called this a "red herring," explaining that by protecting those with security clearances who want to blow the whistle on wrongdoing at intelligence agencies, a new law could have encouraged them to “use safe internal channels.” The Senate has yet to take up its own version of the bill.

A major U.S. worry about the tumult in Syria — perhaps the major worry — has been the risk that part of that country's sizable arsenal of nerve agents and other deadly chemical weapons might fall into the wrong hands amid the chaos of a civil war. That's why remarks by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at an afternoon press conference with the Canadian defense minister seem so alarming.

In response to a question about rebel claims to have seized some of that arsenal, Panetta said the intelligence community no longer knows for sure where all of Syria's chemical weapons are, and that as a result, he is unsure if they have been picked up by elements of the Syrian opposition. The opposition, as we know, includes extremist elements as well as rebels supplied with arms by Saudi Arabia with Western advice and encouragement. In short, the new claims emanating from Syria appear to have caught the intelligence community by surprise.

One of the Syrian weapons is VX, an odorless, tasteless chemical considered the most toxic nerve agent ever created. 

Here is the transcript of Panetta's remarks, as released by the Pentagon on Friday afternoon:

Japan, Taiwan, and China have been contesting ownership of five deserted islets and three rocks in the East China  Sea since oil reserves were detected nearby more than forty years ago. But new tensions were stoked this month when the Japanese government nationalized the islands by purchasing them from a Japanese family. 

This week, both Taiwan and Japan sent vessels there, prompting the Japanese to shower the rivalrous boats with water balloons launched from slingshots. Okay, not really. It wasn't balloons that Japan fired, but the hi-tech version of a middle-schooler's backyard weapon: a water cannon.

Although the United States transferred the islands' post-war administration to Japan in 1971, its official position on their sovereignty now is neutral, a stance that came under question in this fun exchange at a press conference Tuesday, Sept. 25, by George Little, the acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs:

        Q:  George, U.S. forces and Japanese self-defense forces are conducting a joint exercise on Guam, simulating the defense of a small island against an unnamed aggressor.  Does this have anything to do with the recent tensions between Japan and China over the Senkakus? 

            MR. LITTLE:  This is merely an exercise, and I wouldn't tie it in any way to island disputes….. 

            Q:  George, having the Marines train the Japanese on how to hit the beach and take an island, how does that jibe with the overall position stated that the U.S. does not take a position in these island disputes? 

            MR. LITTLE:  Repeat the first part of your question for me. 

A little over five weeks ago, the Pentagon’s F-35 program got a new deputy manager, and a few days ago, he gave a candid “outsider’s” appraisal of the most costly weapons program in history — one that was noteworthy for its appraisal of how poorly the troubled aircraft program was run during the past decade and its criticism of the chaotic way that the Pentagon has been buying such high-tech weapons.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, a seven-year Air Force acquisition veteran who last managed the KC-46 tanker program, warned an Air Force Association audience on Sept. 17 at National Harbor, Maryland, that “some of you may cringe at what I say.” Then he disclosed that the F-35’s buggy software “scares the heck out of me,” that its computer-driven logistics system is “frightening,” and that the relationship between the Air Force and the plane’s lead contractor Lockheed Martin is “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

The Pentagon intends to spend over $1.5 trillion over the next thirty years on the F-35, which it considers critical to the country’s military future. It’s a “joint” program because the plane is to be used by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, an approach initially conceived to save costs. But Bogdan said that describing these as variants reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what the effort has become: “It’s three separate airplane programs that have common avionics and a common engine.”

Not only that, the program has eight foreign partners and two foreign customers, a number the Pentagon hopes to grow. Partly as a result, its management has been a mess: Cost overruns so far have hit a billion dollars and production and flight testing are years behind schedule. In his 15-minute talk, Bogdan used the words “complex” or “complicated” 17 times, at one point asserting that “there is not a more complex program on the planet.”

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans have been haunted by the idea that terrorist groups around the world could set off a “dirty bomb” — a simple explosive device that would scatter radioactive material to the winds, devastating a city.

Thankfully, that threat has never materialized. But the government’s watchdog is sounding alarms that terrorists looking to acquire the radioactive materials for such an attack could find them easily and unsecured at hundreds of hospitals around the country.

A report released Tuesday by General Accountability Office has found that only one out of every five hospitals that use high-risk nuclear isotopes for diagnosis and treatment have the recommended safeguards needed to secure the materials.

Over 1,500 hospitals in the U.S. use radiological sources that could be turned into dirty bombs, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which shares purview over nuclear technologies with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  NNSA has spent $105 million to upgrade security at 321 hospitals, but the agency warns it will take until 2025 to upgrade all of the hospitals on their list.

“The longer it takes to implement the security upgrades,” warns the GAO report, “the greater the risk that potentially dangerous radiological sources remain unsecured and could be used as terrorist weapons.”

The improved security features, which include enhanced security doors, increased surveillance equipment and the installation of tamper alarms, have also been slowed by the voluntary nature of the upgrades.  Because the hospitals are not required to undergo these upgrades, facilities looking to cut costs can decide the security upgrades aren’t worth the expense.

What happened to almost $475 million worth of oil destined for the Afghan National Army – that’s what the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) would like to know. 

Unfortunately, the inspectors may never find out.  According to the report released Monday, more than four years of financial records that the Department of Defense was supposed to keep to track this spending are either missing or so poorly kept that even gathering basic information, such as the location and size of fuel sites, was not possible.

The report concludes that the Department of Defense agency in charge of tracking the oil “does not have accurate or supportable information on how much U.S. funds are needed for [Army] fuel, where and how the fuel is actually used, or how much fuel has been lost or stolen.” 

Inspectors found that records from October 2006 to March 2011 were shredded improperly, a violation of DOD policies that made it impossible for auditors to track what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil.  DOD also “could not provide more than half” of the documents requested from March 2011 onward.

“The destruction of records and the unexplained failure to provide other records violate DOD and Department of the Army policies,” wrote SIGAR head John Sopko in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and others that accompanied the report. Sopko, an experienced watchdog appointed in May, noted that he has opened an investigation into the destruction of the older records.

Facing the end of an era of untrammeled growth in defense spending, officials at the Pentagon have spent most of 2012 telling anyone who will listen how potential budget cuts will put national security in jeopardy. While funds for big ticket military items are under new pressure, however, there’s one thing the Pentagon still has pocket change for: its well-groomed chauffeurs.

On Friday, the Army formally solicited new bids to make the grey uniforms used by chauffeurs.  The request was first uncovered by our friend Mark Thompson, who closely tracks such bids for his entertaining Battleland blog at TIME.

The bid makes clear that even though the Pentagon has plenty to worry about these days — the threat of war with Iran, the chaos in Syria, and the continued conflict in Afghanistan, to name a few — someone there still has time to worry about the fine details of how the drivers of top generals and assistant secdefs are to be dressed.

In the solicitation, the fabrics of the uniforms are spelled out with precision:  coats and trousers must be 55 percent polyester and 45 percent wool, while shirts should be 65 percent polyester and 35 percent cotton. The cotton tie must be burgundy. Anticipating a rough winter, the solicitation included an order for 68 black V-neck sweaters. 

The Democratic party platform released this week suggests that national security officials in a second Obama administration will attempt to leave outdated military projects behind, try to bolster the country’s international leadership, and try to control nuclear weapons materials — policies that match some but not all of the preferences expressed by members of both political parties in a May survey organized by the Center for Public Integrity.

The platform, released Tuesday, leaves plenty of wiggle room for the administration, eschewing hard numbers or strategic decisions in favor of generalities — a practice typical in platforms released at convention time that are heavy on rhetoric but light on specifics.

The 2012 platform is even more general than the Democrats’ 2008 version, which contained highly specific pledges of new aid to Afghanistan ($1 billion) and Israel ($30 billion) and called for increasing “the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops.” Instead of looking forward, the focus of this year’s document is on what the Obama administration has already accomplished. 

But it still provides a starting point to consider how Obama and his team might handle national security issues if he wins a second term. (Our look at the GOP’s platform was published Aug. 30.) While the platform does not specifically call for defense cuts, it mirrors the strategic plan laid out by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who called in January for moving away from heavy land forces and restructuring how the military spends its funds, while leaving the future defense budget mostly level.

In May, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center unveiled the results of a major poll on defense spending. Our poll found wide consensus among the public and across party lines that the defense budget could use some trimming — around three-quarters of those polled thought there should be cuts for air power, ground forces, and naval forces, and over eighty percent said there is “a lot of waste” in the defense budget. In fact, respondents preferred far deeper cuts than those suggested by either the Obama administration or the Republicans.

During the conventions, we decided to take a look at what the party platforms say, and how that measures up to public opinion. First up: the GOP and presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Romney has made it clear that he intends to expand defense spending if elected in November, having already called for spending a minimum of four percent of the GDP on national defense.

But Tuesday afternoon, as Romney was being officially nominated at the Republican National Convention, his party unveiled the official GOP platform for 2012. Included in the party platform was a thirteen-page section on “American Exceptionalism,” laying out the Republican view of defense and the future of the military.

While the document is light on specifics and heavy on rhetoric, there are some clues for what would be the Romney administration’s national security priorities. And in some very expensive cases, they don’t match up with public sentiment.