The Center for Public Integrity

Despite its go-it-alone spirit, sparsely populated Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of funding from Washington among the 50 states. A major portion of those federal taxpayer dollars in recent years has come from large infusions of homeland security grants and appropriations handed out to the state since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, where she was mayor from 1996 to 2002, has benefited immensely from the anti-terrorism bonanza. Wasilla, with a population of 7,028, has acquired a surveillance system for its water wells, a 150-foot tall communications tower that altered the city’s landscape, a half-million dollar mobile command vehicle with off-road capabilities, and more.

According to an analysis of federal spending figures and additional records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting from the state of Alaska through open-government laws:

What do "narcoterrorism" in Colombia and Islamist terrorism in the Middle East have in common?

Very little, except that since the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, countries that vow to help the United States fight either one find it easier to attract large amounts of U.S. military training and aid.

In the popular understanding, the Bush administration's "global war on terror" is aimed at hunting down al Qaeda and its allies, the people who "want to attack us again." But the globe includes South America and in it the heavily Roman Catholic Colombia, home to only a tiny number of Muslims and to the world's largest cocaine industry. Colombia's famed drug cartels have spun off both left-wing and right-wing guerrillas who control much of the countryside and spawn endemic corruption, violence and human rights horror stories.

The country's share of U.S. Foreign Military Financing shot up from zero in the three years before 9/11 to more than $100 million in the three years after. Colombia is also the fifth-largest recipient of the Defense Department's new Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP), collecting almost $1.5 million in the three years after 9/11 for the training of the country's military and security forces — which are still routinely implicated in human rights abuses against their own citizens.

The runaway winner of the post-9/11 race for new U.S. military aid dollars is Pakistan, but where did the money go?

Human rights activists, critics of the Pakistani government and members of Congress all want to know, but most of the money — totaling in the billions — came through a Defense Department program subject to virtually no congressional oversight.

That is a major finding of more than a year of investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). U.S. military aid to Pakistan since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks includes almost $5 billion in Coalition Support Funds, a program controlled by the Defense Department to reimburse key allies in the global war on terror. Pentagon reports that ICIJ obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests show that Pakistan is the No. 1 recipient of these funds — receiving more than 10 times the amount that went to the No. 2 recipient, Poland — and that there is scant documentation of how the money was used.

Pakistan also benefited from other funding mechanisms set up in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks. In the three years after the attacks, Pakistan was the third-largest recipient of the Pentagon's new Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, designed to train foreign forces in counterterrorism techniques. More than $23 million was earmarked for Pakistan in fiscal 2006 for "Improving Counter Terrorism Strike Capabilities" under another new Pentagon program referred to colloquially as Section 1206 training, which allows the Pentagon to use a portion of its annual funding from Congress to train and equip foreign militaries. Pakistan finished first in the race for this new Pentagon-controlled training.

Uzbekistan presents one of the clearest examples of the paradox confronting the United States in its war on terror: As it pursues Islamist extremists around the world, it sides with a repressive despot out of what is perceived as military necessity.

Uzbekistan is a country run by a dictator. Despite that, the Central Asian state, which borders Afghanistan to the south and has a Muslim population of 24 million out of 27 million, was an early ally in the U.S.-led war on terror. The former Soviet state is also a place where a poor human rights record didn't stop the U.S. government from providing it with nearly $100 million in military aid in the three years following September 11, 2001, a 1,000 percent increase over previous U.S. military assistance, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' database of U.S. military aid.

American largesse helped secure access to a crucial former Soviet air base, Karshi-Khanabad, or "K2," from which the U.S. military could support its forces deployed in Afghanistan.

The strange tale of U.S.-Uzbek cooperation began just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when a U.S.-Uzbek "status of forces" agreement was signed on October 7, 2001. That same day, the air campaign against Afghanistan began. Through the agreement, the U.S. was formally allowed to place troops on the ground in Uzbekistan and to use the K2 air base in the eastern part of the country for combat and humanitarian missions.

TEL AVIV, Israel — One of Israel's most controversial anti-terrorism tactics has been its policy of targeted killings of suspects believed to be planning attacks. Since the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the fall of 2000, dozens of members of the Palestinian groups such as Hamas, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Islamic Jihad have been assassinated by Israeli military and security forces. As American intelligence and armed forces continue to employ many Israeli counterterrorism and interrogation techniques, the question of whether targeted killings have become another arrow in the American quiver looms large.