Congressional worry about the millions of dollars of wasted Pentagon spending in Afghanistan has spilled over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, even as the Senate Armed Services Committee prepares to hold its first hearing on the issue next week.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter on Friday to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to request a formal audit of the Defense Department’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations.
“I believe that the Defense Department must provide an accurate accounting of how all the money provided to the TFBSO was actually spent,” Grassley wrote in a letter to the special inspector general. “I need assurance that all this money was spent in accordance with the law.”
Grassley wrote that he recommended the Pentagon’s inspector general work with the watchdog specifically for Afghanistan reconstruction on the report to Congress.
The task force came under fire last year for spending $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan when a comparable structure cost just $500,000 to build in Pakistan. It also wasted millions on housing staff, who stayed in luxury villas instead of in military facilities.
“It seems like TFBSO personnel were living high on the hog in a war zone when keeping a low-profile and exercising a reasonable measure of austerity would have been a more appropriate way to conduct the people’s business,” Grassley wrote in the letter.
An audit released earlier this week found that the task force wasted at least $54 million on projects to help Afghans generate revenue from their natural resources that did not meet intended goals.
The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support will holding a hearing on Wednesday to receive testimony on these projects and why they were so costly.
Brian McKeon, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, and John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, are expected to testify.
