Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed the law governing controversial “emergency” weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, according to a watchdog report that shows State Department officials sidestepping congressional efforts to curtail civilian casualties.
“The secretary’s emergency certification was executed in accordance with the requirements of the” Arms Export Control Act, the State Department office of the inspector general concluded. “However, OIG also found that the Department did not fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated with the transfer of [precision-guided munitions] included in the May 2019 emergency certification.”
State Department officials hailed the report as a vindication of Pompeo’s decisions regarding a batch of arms deals that angered lawmakers, sparking a controversy that metastasized into Democratic allegations that he instigated the firing of the State Department inspector general in order to protect his reputation. Pompeo’s team emphasized that the report was completed months prior to the firing of ousted inspector general Steve Linick, while the watchdog acknowledged that Linick’s successor “played no role in any aspect of the review.”
“It is unclear why the OIG required an additional 10 months to finalize the report since its key conclusions were briefed to the Department,” a bulletin released by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus’s office added.
Pompeo sparked bipartisan fury in May 2019 by giving the green light to 22 arms sales valued at roughly $8 billion, an approval granted in defiance of congressional attempts to hold several of the agreements due to frustration with Saudi Arabia’s apparent disregard for civilian casualties while prosecuting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen. Congressional opposition to such arms deals intensified following the Saudi government’s killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — outrage that Pompeo sidestepped by approving the deals on an “emergency” basis.
“The process that the State Department followed for these weapons sales, not to put too fine a point on it, was crap,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, told Pompeo’s point man for such sales during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “The simpler process is follow the damn law and respect it.”
The inspector general concluded that the State Department did follow the law, but the administration benefited in that analysis from the watchdog’s inability to judge whether Pompeo was correct in assessing that there was actually a foreign policy emergency necessitating the expedited approval.
“The AECA affords the President or Secretary considerable discretion in determining what constitutes an emergency,” the report read. “Moreover, the AECA does not define the term ‘emergency.’ Accordingly, OIG did not evaluate whether the Iranian malign threats cited in the Secretary’s May 2019 certification and associated memorandum of justification constituted an emergency, nor did OIG make any assessment of the policy decisions underlying the arms transfers and the associated emergency.”
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, is focused on that issue in the investigation of the sales, saying last week that a former State Department official’s closed-door testimony “depicts a small group of senior State Department officials determined to ignore legitimate humanitarian concerns among their ranks and on Capitol Hill.”
The watchdog report adds that the State Department “did not fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated.” And it also suggests that the State Department has circumvented congressional oversight by approving thousands of arms deals in quantities small enough to allow the administration to proceed without notifying lawmakers. “The records show the Department approved a total of 4,221 below-threshold arms transfers involving Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with an estimated total value of $11.2 billion since January 2017,” the watchdog found.
State Department officials “notified the secretary in 2018 and 2019 that the Department intended to proceed with additional below-threshold approvals notwithstanding congressional holds on larger, above-threshold transfers of similar items,” the report added.
