It’s bad enough the war in Afghanistan is not going well, but do we have to blab it to everyone and give encouragement to the Taliban?
That was effectively President Trump’s message during his Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Trump ordered newly appointed acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to end the long-standing practice of allowing independent inspectors general to publish public reports detailing all the things that are going wrong.
“I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary. You understand that?” Trump said, turning to Shanahan, who was seated beside him in the Cabinet room.
“Some I.G. goes over there who — mostly appointed by President Obama, but we’ll have ours too — and he goes over there, and they do a report telling every single thing that’s happening and they release it to the public,” Trump complained. “What kind of stuff is this? We’re fighting wars, and they’re doing reports and releasing it to the public. Now the public means the enemy. The enemy reads those reports; they study every line of it. Those reports should be private reports.”
The U.S. military has been increasing classifying metrics that had been reported in the past by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, including casualties suffered by Afghan forces, troops levels and performance ratings, and the number of troops deserting.
The increasing secrecy has drawn the ire of John Sopko, the head of the independent Afghanistan watchdog, who noted in his most recent quarterly report that Congress expressed disappointment in the Pentagon’s lack of transparency on basic information. That includes effectiveness of bombing and development and retention and casualty rates of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.
“The report said the restriction of information in this manner undermines public confidence, hinders necessary congressional oversight, and raises legitimate questions about the efficacy of current U.S. efforts in Afghanistan,” Sopko wrote in his July 2018 report.
[Also read: Meet the man chasing waste and fraud in Afghanistan]
Trump indicated he had no problem with the idea of an independent watchdog reviewing the progress of a war that Trump himself believes has gone on too long at too great expense. But he argued the dirty laundry should not be aired in public.
“Let them do a report, but they should be private reports and be locked up and if a member of Congress wants to see it he can go in and read it, but for these reports criticizing every single thing … to be given out to the enemy is insane,” he said.
Advocates of more government transparency argue that while some information should be legitimately classified, a blanket ban on the release of inspector general reports would be a giant step of against openness and accountability.
“It’s been almost 18 years of endless war, thousands of lives lost, and billions of taxpayer dollars spent — the American people and Congress deserve to know what’s going on and these reports do exactly that,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.
Inquiries to Shanahan’s office about how the acting defense secretary might implement the president’s order have gone unanswered.
