The Center for Public Integrity

While much of the world’s focus has been on the civil war in Syria, the island kingdom of Bahrain continues to shake with anti-government protests that started in last year’s “Arab Spring.” While it has received less attention, human rights groups have documented ongoing government abuses.

Those concerns were enough to put a halt on a weapons sale from the U.S. to Bahrain last fall, but the Obama administration announced last Friday that it has decided to proceed with the sale, despite the ongoing upheaval and protests from both Congress and human rights groups.

“Bahrain is an important security partner and ally in a region facing enormous challenges,” wrote Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in an official statement announcing the sales. “Maintaining our and our partners’ ability to respond to these challenges is a critical component of our commitment to Gulf security.”

In a nod to the human rights concerns, the Pentagon said the weapons being sold to Bahrain will not include anything that could be used against protestors. Instead, it would be a package of equipment geared towards protecting the country from external threats, including engines for F-16 planes and harbor security boats.

“Sales of items that are sort of predominantly or typically used by police and other security forces for internal security, things used for crowd control, we’re not moving forward with at this time,” said an unnamed administration official on a conference call last Friday. “That would include things like tear gas, tear gas launchers, stun grenades – those sorts of things.”

The talk of the defense world is the budget — specifically, how to shrink it and what will be cut, due to Congressional wrangling or the looming “sequestration”. Given the new austerity pressures, it’s noteworthy that a costly program targeted for cancellation by both the administration and the Congress has gotten a new government check for a quarter of a billion dollars — and, if the Pentagon gets its wish, will get another $400 million soon.

But that’s what happened with the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a putative replacement for the Patriot missile defense system. It has been plagued with so many cost overruns and delays that DoD and Congress both agreed last year to pull the plug — although conflict remains over the timetable.

The Pentagon decided to keep paying until the program attained a “proof of concept,” a status that falls well short of production and deployment but would in theory allow the U.S. or its foreign partners to restart the project later if they chose. DoD requested a total of $804 million over 2012 and 2013. But Congress disagreed, and agreed to fund only the first year.

How close are congressional lawmakers to pursuing what Americans want in a defense budget? Is the Obama administration closer, or farther away, than Republicans?

Three nonprofit organizations — the Program for Public Consultation (PPC),* the Stimson Center, and the Center for Public Integrity — collaborated on a unique survey meant to answer these questions. The results of this innovative survey are set to be disclosed on Thursday morning, May 10. You can tune in to this website at 10 am EST, when a summary of the results will be posted, as well as the full survey, all the answers, and some graphic depictions of public attitudes. Or you can attend a press conference being held by all three organizations to discuss the results (details below).

As a third option, you can join us for a live Web discussion at 2:00pm EST, where you’ll be able to chat with Steven Kull of the Program for Public Consultation, Matthew Leatherman of the Stimson Center and R. Jeffrey Smith of the the Center for Public Integrity. Just enter your email address in the CoverItLive box on this page to get a reminder before the chat starts. We'll be taking questions live, but if you already have something you'd like us to talk about, feel free to email Cole Goins: cgoins [at] public integrity [dot] org, or leave it in the comments below.

We can’t tell you all the results just yet. But we can say with confidence that what Washington is doing is not what the American people say they want. This may or may not surprise you. But if you come back here tomorrow, you’ll find out what your neighbors, friends, and colleagues — on average — think about national security spending, and you’ll learn precisely all the ways that Washington has gotten off-track in this debate.

Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) want more information from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about an inspector general's report criticizing the Pentagon's treatment of whistleblowers — a report first disclosed by the Center and the Project on Government Oversight.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and McCain, the panel's ranking member, made their feelings known Tuesday in a letter to Panetta.

"Last Sunday, the Washington Post reported on an 'internal Pentagon report' finding that the Department of Defense Inspector General unit responsible for protecting military whistleblowers had failed to do its job," wrote the Senators, referring to the Center story that was reprinted in the Post. "According to the article, the May 2011 report found 'persistent sloppiness and a systematic disregard for Pentagon rules meant to protect those who report fraud, abuses, and the waste of taxpayer funds.'

"We understand that this report was initiated and conducted by the Inspector General, and that the Inspector General has made a number of changes in an effort to address the problems identified in the report," the letter concludes. "Nonetheless, the systematic failure of the Department to protect military whistleblowers from reprisal is a matter of grave concern. Accordingly, we ask that you provide us with a copy of the report and advise us of the actions that have been taken and will be taken to address the problems identified in the report - including steps to re-open any reprisal cases that were inadequately investigated or erroneously dismissed."

The Justice Department has been increasingly eager to prosecute officials for leaks of classified information, charging six individuals with disclosures that violate the Espionage Act just since the start of 2009. But at the same time, the government itself has lost track of hundreds of boxes filled with classified documents at its main records storage site, the Washington National Records Center.

According to a new report from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Office of Inspector General, more than 1,500 boxes of classified documents have gone missing at the site, located in Suitland, Maryland. While some are “still occasionally being located,” the Archives’s office of records services has stopped its internal searching, the report said, and the affected agencies have been notified.

Among the missing records are 81 boxes with documents labeled Top Secret, Secret, and Restricted Data, among the highest classification categories. They were from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Navy, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Energy Department, and other agencies. Restricted Data is a special category for data pertinent to nuclear weapons. Each box contains between 2,000 and 2,500 pieces of paper, states the IG’s report, which was first disclosed by The Washington Times.

These records weren’t stolen in an act of espionage. The IG places the blame for the loss of the boxes squarely on mismanagement by the records center, which is controlled by the Archives, an issue described in the report as “systemic.”

What would average Americans do if they were informed about the level and purposes of U.S. defense spending and had a chance to weigh the arguments that experts make? Would they boost overall funding, or cut it? Would they spend more on air power or sea power?  How much would they say the US should spend on nuclear arms? On major ground forces? On special forces?

Most polls simply ask whether defense spending should be cut or not. But three nonprofit organizations — the Program for Public Consultation (PPC),* the Stimson Center, and the Center for Public Integrity — collaborated on a more useful survey. They provided a representative sample of the American public with neutral information about how funds are currently being spent, and exposed them to various arguments made by advocates in the contemporary debate about defense expenditures. The respondents then said what they wished to spend in key areas.

The results of this innovative survey are now in, and we are inviting you to attend a presentation that will shed new light on the linkages — and gaps — between decisions being made in Washington and what average Americans want. The results will also make clear which arguments in favor of or opposed to current defense spending have the most resonance with members of the public.

Here are the logistics:

Time: Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 10:00-11:30 am

Place: The Stimson Center, 1111 19th Street, NW | 12th Floor, 202 223 5956

Presenters:

Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation*

Matthew Leatherman,  Analyst, Stimson Center's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project

R. Jeffrey Smith, Managing Editor for National Security, Center for Public Integrity

When President Obama signed a formal agreement in Kabul on Tuesday to withdraw the majority of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by 2014, he spoke of a future Afghanistan, able to stand on its own as a respected member of the international community. “We have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” said Obama. “Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon.”

A more sobering view of the challenge that lies ahead came in the latest quarterly report published the previous day by the chief government watchdog over the nearly $100 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction efforts since 2002. U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Steven Trent warned that deep corruption persists in the country, and can easily undermine the success of U.S. development efforts there.

“Corruption remains a major threat to the reconstruction effort,” Trent wrote in his introduction to the 176-page report. He added that the problem may worsen as the United States heads for the door: “Afghan reconstruction has reached a critical turning point. The shift in strategy, decline in funding, and persistent violence and corruption underscore the need for aggressive oversight.”

Trent expressed particular concern about continuing thefts of fuel and cash, the shortcomings of local security forces, bribery of local and U.S. officials, and contractors that fail to deliver what they promised.

Update: Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's spokesman announced May 15 that Panetta has ordered all F-22 flights to be restrained within a “proximate distance” of an airfield in case pilots begin to feel sick from the ongoing oxygen problems. He also ordered that plans to install a backup oxygen system in the planes be accelerated. His decision appears to rule out any use of the costly planes in combat situations in the near future.

When officials told reporters a few weeks ago that they had deployed F-22 fighter jets in the Middle East for the first time, it was downplayed as “a very normal deployment.” But when it comes to the F-22, there’s very little “normal” about it.

Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va, told reporters Monday that some pilots have asked that they be reassigned rather than be forced to fly the jet. And while he described the concerned group as “very small,” Hostage made a point of telling reporters he would be flying the plane himself in the future to “check out” his pilot’s concerns and try to bolster their in-flight courage.

“I'm asking these guys to assume some risks that's over and above what everybody else is assuming, and I don't feel like it's right that I ask them to do it and I'm not willing to do it myself," said Hostage. (A spokesman confirmed the General would begin his training at the end of the month.)

South of the border, war is raging with guns mostly supplied by merchants in the United States.

The Government of Mexico has estimated that almost 50,000 people have been killed since 2006, a toll that has made its top officials irate about the persistent flow of weapons south. Some law enforcement officials in the U.S. government share the Mexicans' concern, but their attempts to stanch the flow by obtaining better intelliegence about it have badly singed their fingers.

The notorious “Fast and Furious” operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — one in a string of attempts over a nearly decade-long period to tag and closely monitor the movement of individual arms — blew up when two of the weapons being tracked were used to kill a U.S. border patrol agent in 2010.

Republicans in Congress seized on the issue, holding multiple hearings last year. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson was reassigned. The Phoenix U.S. attorney who oversaw the operation also resigned, and Republicans called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder. And President Obama has been largely hands off on the gun issue, treating it as the political third rail that is best to be ignored, or at least carefully walked around.

Into this politically-charged environment, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) released a first-of-its-kind report on Thursday that nonetheless attempts to assess the proportional distribution — if not the scope — of the arms flowing to drug cartel operatives.

The raids should have been a gold star for the Navy. A trial run for a newly designed ship turned into a series of successful missions against cocaine smugglers, resulting in the capture of nine smugglers and over five tons of cocaine. But the early 2010 victories were darkened, quite literally, by a power failure on March 6 that left the ship briefly adrift at sea.

The mechanical failure was not the last challenge that would face the crew of the USS Freedom, the first of a new breed of Navy vessels meant to become a core part of its fleet over the next decade. A series of test runs caused cracked hulls that forced the ship to limit its speed; engines that simply failed; and over 600 failures of equipment around the ship, leading to a number of dry-dockings at its home base in San Diego, according to data released April 23 by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

The so-called Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) already had a troubled reputation. The Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation notoriously concluded in a 2011 report that the Freedom was unlikely to be “survivable in a hostile combat environment.”

But POGO, a Washington-based watchdog group, disclosed new details of the Freedom’s shortcomings in a letter to the Chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate armed services committees accompanying the data. The group also raised concerns about what the group calls the Navy’s “pattern of obfuscation” regarding the achievements of the first ship.