The Center for Public Integrity

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."

How would the American public shape the Pentagon's budget? Find out this Thursday, May 10, at 2pm EST as we discuss the findings of our new survey with the Program for Public Consultation and the Stimson Center gauging citizens' priorities for military spending.

Joining the live chat: Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation; Matthew Leatherman, analyst for Stimson Center's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project; and R. Jeffrey Smith, managing editor for national security at the Center for Public Integrity.

Enter your email below to get a reminder for the event. 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.

The Defense Department has inadequately protected from reprisals whistleblowers who have reported wrongdoing, according to an internal Pentagon report, and critics are calling for action to be taken against those who have been negligent.

The report, dated May 2011, accuses the officials, who work in the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General, of persistent sloppiness and a systematic disregard for Pentagon rules meant to protect those who report fraud, abuses, and the waste of taxpayer funds, according to a previously-undisclosed copy. The report was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

A three-person team of veteran investigators at the Pentagon, assigned to review the performance of the “Directorate of Military Reprisal Investigations,” concluded in the report that in 2010 the directorate repeatedly turned aside evidence of serious punishments inflicted on those who had complained.

The actions included threatened or actual discharges, demotions, firings, prosecutions, and even a mental health referral. At least one of the alleged reprisals was taken because the complainer had written to Congress, an act that Pentagon regulations say is a “protected communication” immune from retaliation. Some of the other whistleblowers had alleged discrimination, travel violations, and “criminality,” the report states.

In all, the team disputed the directorate’s dismissal of more than half of the 156 whistleblowing cases it reviewed, and called for the directorate to revamp its procedures and start enforcing the protective rules. 

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.

After the successful U.S. interception of a simulated North Korean warhead in a 2007 test, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III expressed great confidence in the capabilities of the U.S. missile defense program. “Does the system work? The answer to that is yes,” Obering, then the program’s director, told reporters at a briefing.

Last Friday, after a year-long study, the General Accountability Office expressed far less confidence and issued a clarification of sorts: The Pentagon, it said, really has no idea if its missile defense systems will do their job, because over the past several decades it hasn’t  concocted validated targets to test them, fielded proven interceptors, or even collected all the data needed to assess their early performance.

Deployment of the interceptors Obering praised, the GAO warned, had been rushed to meet a 2004 deadline set by President George W. Bush. The design was not fully tested before production got under way — a frequent occurrence at the Pentagon — and the results were “unexpected cost increases, schedule delays, test problems, and performance shortfalls,” according to its report.

This troublesome pattern of concurrently testing and manufacturing interceptors and related equipment is now being repeated by the Obama administration, the independent audit agency said in its 100-page report.

Due to President Obama’s decision in 2010 to deploy missile defenses in Europe by 2015 and improved interceptors by 2020, the program “continues to undertake highly concurrent acquisitions,” it said. While a spate of recent test failures has slowed or halted production of three of the program’s four types of interceptors, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency plans to buy 29 more of another type that failed in testing last year. The cost will be $389 million.