bjbjLULU MARGARET WARNER: Now, waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money during a decade
of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. After a three-year investigation, a Congressionally mandated
commission yesterday issued a blunt finding, that between $31 billion and $60 billion has
been misspent on the two wars. That's up to one-quarter of the entire $206 billion outsourced
to private contractors for everything from security to food preparation to reconstruction
projects. The last 10 years have brought more than 260,000 such contractors to work in war
zones, where they sometimes outnumbered soldiers. The panel urged quick action on 15 recommendations
to tighten controls. And for more on all of this, we turn to Dov Zakheim, one of the commissioners.
He was the Defense Department's comptroller from 2001 to 2004, at the onset of both wars.
And Mr. Zakheim, thank you for joining us. This was a pretty stunning finding on your
part. I mean, up to one out of every $4 spent on contractors was misspent. First of all,
give us a flavor. What are you talking about? DOV ZAKHEIM, Commission on Wartime Contracting:
Well, out of that $60 billion, about $40 billion is what you call waste. Again, that's an estimate
that ranged from about $20 billion to about $40 billion. And waste is simply money that
you spend that you needn't have spent. For example, a road in Afghanistan that should
have cost about $85 million wound up costing over $170 million. We were paying workers
in Iraq, contractors, for a full day's work, when in fact they were working 15 percent
of the time. That's simply waste. It's no different from hiring a contractor to fix
your house, getting overcharged and paying for it. The rest of the $60 billion, about
anywhere between $10 billion and $20 billion, depending on whether it's a $30 billion or
$60 billion estimate, the rest of that is pure fraud, criminal fraud, people making
off with money that they shouldn't. That's how we got to the numbers. MARGARET WARNER:
And that might be either the contractor getting paid for something he didn't do or, what,
extortion over in Afghanistan or Iraq? DOV ZAKHEIM: Well, in Afghanistan, clearly, that's
the case. When I was over there, together with one of my fellow commissioners, we were
handed a copy of a bill, an invoice, that was charged to a contractor and was issued
by an outfit that called itself the Islamic Republic of East Afghanistan. We have reprinted
it in our report. It has a phone number to call: If you want to be safe, call this number.
We're paying people to kill our kids. MARGARET WARNER: Now, how -- you were at the Defense
Department. How was this allowed to happen? DOV ZAKHEIM: Well, in Afghanistan, the basic
problem was that, for the first couple of years or so, we really didn't put very much
money in at all. So we didn't have that kind of a problem. When we then went into Iraq,
because it was so hurried, we drew up contracts that were not specified the way a contract
normally is. It's understandable. It was the beginning of a war. What then happened is
that we didn't have enough people to monitor, to supervise, to oversee what was going on,
to fix the contracts up. And that was due in part to the fact that many of the acquisition
professionals and contracting professionals had been let go in the 1990s. So you had,
in effect, the perfect storm, not enough people, because they had been let go in the '90s,
and too many contracts for too much money, not provided in a specific way in the beginning
of the Iraq war. And that continued because, again, we just didn't have the people to monitor
the contracts, to let them properly, to force competition. And, of course, with all of that,
you lose money. MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, in the huge Defense Department budget, that's
certainly a question of what priorities were set. I mean, the Pentagon doesn't lack for
personnel. DOV ZAKHEIM: Well, it doesn't lack for personnel, but you have to have the right
personnel. And one of our major recommendations is that the leadership be really focused on
this issue. You just heard about Libya. Rob Malley was talking just a minute ago about
how there's going to be a need to reconstruct Libya. That country has money. But we have
got the possibility of going into other countries. We have been fighting what are called contingencies
pretty much on an annual basis for more than the last two decades. And if we don't have
the experts, if we don't train them, if our leadership is not focused on them, then we're
going to make the same mistakes over and over again. And our commission, which, by the way,
was bipartisan -- actually, nonpartisan -- we all agreed on every recommendation. We believe
that unless there is top-level focus on this, unless the culture is changed, unless commanders
recognize how important it is, that contractors are just as much a part of their force as
the people wearing uniforms -- and oh, by the way, thousands of contractors have been
killed, and they don't get ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base -- unless there's a focus on
contracting in a proper way, we're going to make the same mistakes, waste the same money.
And the debt crisis shows us that we don't have the money to waste. MARGARET WARNER:
Could that problem even be exasperated as the U.S. draws its troops down from Iraq in
the next couple of years, or three years, Afghanistan, and, say, State Department or
AID become even more dependent on private contractors for security, for example? DOV
ZAKHEIM: Absolutely. In fact, there are two ways that the problem is getting worse. One
is the challenge of starting projects that the either the Iraqi government or the Afghan
government cannot sustain. We built a power plant -- excuse me -- a water treatment plant
in Iraq that has intermittent power and that is not being used. We built a prison that
is not being used. The Iraqis don't want it. We have built schools in Afghanistan without
teachers; health clinics, over 130 of them, in Iraq without the proper equipment and supplies.
So you have got the problem that we're building stuff that won't be maintained. And, at the
same time, if you rely on security contractors in places where there's corruption, where
there's danger, where maybe the contractors themselves are a danger, then you have got
a problem as well. And we have recommended that, instead of simply focusing on the narrow
issue of whether this is something government can or cannot do, you focus on the risk involved.
Then we will clearly identify places where we just shouldn't have contractors. MARGARET
WARNER: Now, some of your recommendations, first of all, require congressional action
and require spending more money, hiring more people, as you're saying, or an I.G., an inspector
general, for all wartime contracting, at a time of budget austerity, do you think Congress
is going to go for that? DOV ZAKHEIM: I believe so. We're not talking about big bucks here.
When you look at waste that amounts to over $40 billion, or could, and fraud that amounts
to as much as $20 billion, then to spend the kind of money we're talking about for a relatively
small number of people, you would only get more of them once a contingency started. But
you would have a core that would watch over those who are contracting out and managing
to ensure that we don't make the same mistakes again. We're talking about millions, and not
billions. This is a penny wisely spent, and we'd be pound-foolish if we didn't spend it.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, Dov Zakheim of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, thanks
so much. DOV ZAKHEIM: Thank you for having me. he_1 hnqB hnqB he_1 urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
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