We're too busy to remember now, but please call us next year
Last year on June 6, the White House sent out a lousy tweet to commemorate the 68th anniversary of D-Day, a cheap gesture which I thought was deplorable. This year, it hasn't even done that.
I know someone was using the White House Twitter account on June 6, because he or she sent a tweet decrying the lack of free Wi-Fi in our schools. But nothing about 10,000 men being killed or wounded on that day to begin the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation. I'm partly disgusted, but also partly relieved that at least no political hack or intern used the occasion to promote the bombing of Syria.
Next year will be a round-number anniversary, and maybe our politicians will pay somewhat more attention then. At least, the French are already paying attention to the the 70th anniversary.
Something happened here 69 years ago, and it was - arguably - the most momentous event in world history. Shame on us that we don't commemorate it every year.
Yeah, that is one boiling vat of rage getting out of the silver Honda, overflowing with anger and emitting a steaming, although limited and unimaginative, trail of obscenities.
The U.S. Embassy in Valletta has confirmed that the American who was screaming at the Maltese gentleman in that YouTube video - currently at 118,000 hits - is an embassy employee who has now departed.
While others deplore his behavior and the embarrassment it has caused the U.S. government, I'll admit that when I saw the news report about this incident my first thought was: I hope the guy isn't a Marine or a hotheaded DS agent. (Oh? I'm the only one who thought that? Sure I am.)
Not that it really matters, I suppose, but after seeing the video I think I can eliminate Marines and DS agents. The minivan, the bald spot, the pointless slap at the rear view mirror as he gives up and backs off, even the shorts and sandals - I would never challenge anyone to fight while wearing sandals - all say Soccer Dad in a snit.
He doesn't even look that dangerous. Despite all the screaming and gesturing, he never so much as kicks the other guy's door or tries to break a window. Come on, we Americans invented road rage! Is that all he's got?
My money is on the guy being a stressed-out consular officer.
The New York Times has posted a criminal complaint that was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against Patrick Campbell, a citizen of Sierra Leone who is accused of engaging with a buyer in the United States to send 1,000 tons of yellowcake uranium to Iran. Campbell was arrested on arrival at JFK airport, en route to meet his buyer in Miami.
I'm astonished that this story has gotten no interest so far from the Washington DC media. At least, as of mid-afternoon on August 23, it hasn't been reported in the WaPo or any other newspaper that I checked. Are they too preoccupied with Syria and Egypt to notice an arrest involving nuclear weapon precursor material and Iran?
Or maybe they don't think this Patrick Campbell fellow is all that impressive as an International Man of Mystery. Consider these gems from the criminal complaint:
Campbell was dealing with an undercover U.S. law enforcement agent - of course - when he offered to sell uranium ore to Iran.
Campbell apparently hasn't followed the news about Edward Snowden, NSA, and all that, because he responded to a solicitation on the internet seeking a seller of yellowcake uranium ore, and he used telephones and Skype to negotiate with the buyer.
Campbell agreed to come to the United States to pitch the deal to the buyer, and even to bring samples of Uranium 308 with him. My favorite part of the compliant is in paragraph 28, where the undercover agent insisted "it was up to Campbell to prove that this was not a scam" by flying over to the U.S. with his criminal wares. I mean, really, who falls for that?
Campbell even brought his sales pitch with him. On PowerPoint slides, naturally, loaded on a thumb drive. That, and the Skype conversations, will make wonderful exhibits for the prosecution. The Skype convos must have been priceless.
"Yeah, I know this is illegal ... no problem, I'll disguise the yellowcake as chomite ... believe me, I can get anything out of the port of Sierra Leone using my mineral export company ... hey, I've done this kind of deal before with China and Ecuador ... of course I'm for real - I'll come over there right now and prove it to you!"
He faces up to 20 years in prison, which might be long enough to get over the embarrassment of such amateurishness.
It's been a crazy week, I grant you, but my crazy-o-meter just pegged when I saw the Muslim Brotherhood re-tweeting the late Gore Vidal (he died last year) on the glories of revolution in Egypt.
@GoreVidal is, of course, a tribute account, but Ikhwanweb is the verified official English-language twitter account of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Either the Muslim Brothers are much more broad-minded than I'd assumed, or else whoever entered that tweet didn't know much about the politics or the sexuality of the late Mr. Vidal.
I think we all know who that senior official is. So, do we have a quorum? All in favor? All opposed? Overwhelmingly carried with no votes cast against the resolution.
A UK court has sentenced the chief salesman of the most notorious scam bomb detector in history to seven years imprisonment. Gary Bolton joins his partner in crime, James McCormick, who was sentenced in May to ten years, and their chief customer collaborator in Iraq, Major-General Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives, who reportedly was arrested on corruption charges in February 2011.
Click on the embedded video above for an excellent background story on the scarcely believable fraud that was the GT200 bomb detector.
A Kent businessman who made up to £3m a year from the sale of fake bomb detectors around the world has been jailed for seven years by a judge at the Old Bailey.
Gary Bolton, 47, hawked the bogus kit to military and police clients in countries including Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, China, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Egypt and Tunisia despite it being based on a novelty golf ball finder.
The devices cost as little as £1.82 to make and were sold for as much as £15,000 [about $24,000]. They remain in use in Thailand, where human rights campaigners claim they have cost lives, and were only abandoned by Mexican agencies in 2011.
An embarrassing aspect of this sad business is that some UK government trade promotion entities - unwitting to the fraudulent nature of the devices - helped Bolton peddle his products abroad.
The court heard that branches of the UK government had offered some support to Bolton's enterprise, called Global Technical. They include UKTI, Whitehall's export sales arm, and the British embassy in Mexico, which from 2005 to 2009 offered support though introductions to potential clients and allowed Bolton's firm to use its premises for demonstrations.
Why would anyone buy a bomb detector that consisted of an empty plastic box and a telescoping antenna? Corruption is one answer, obviously. In a 2011 Report to Congress (here), the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction estimated that 75 percent of the value of McCormick and Bolton's considerable sales in Iraq had gone to bribes.
As for those reasonably honest police and military officials around the world who were genuinely taken in by the GT-200? Well, google "the ideomotor effect" for starters. But also reflect on the fact of life that fifty percent of everybody in any population group is below average. It might not have taken as much snake oil as you would expect to sell a guy an empty plastic box for $24,000.
The 'no rules' ethos ended badly for both Blackwater and State
You really should have some rules when you employ security guards and Blackwater-type protection contractors overseas. As the theme song for COPS has been asking for 25 years now:
Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they work for you?
Well, one thing you might do when you hire bodyguards and such from private security companies is to require those companies to meet industry standards and model management practices.
The State Department's Office of the "Spokesperson" (to use her annoying gender-neutral title, which is not an improvement on "Spokeswoman" if you ask me) announced yesterday that State, and more specifically the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, will sign on to an international set of standards to govern its use of private security contractors.
On September 19th and 20th of this year, the Government of Switzerland will host the launch of the association to serve as a governance and oversight mechanism of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICoC). The United States has expressed its intention to join the Association as a founding member and will participate in the launch conference.
The Department of State recognizes and appreciates the progress made on the development of the ICoC and the pending establishment of an ICoC Association. As long as the ICoC process moves forward as expected and the association attracts significant industry participation, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) anticipates incorporating membership in the ICoC Association as a requirement in the bidding process for the successor contract to the Worldwide Protective Services (WPS) program. DS also anticipates that the successor contract to WPS will require demonstrated conformance with the ANSI PSC.1-2012 standard.
The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers is here, and the American National Standards Institute equivalent requirements for private security company operations is here.
My opinion is that requiring Bad Boyz Inc to sign on to these standards will do no harm. It's inevitable anyway, since all large security providers will surely sign on whether DS requires them to or not. Industrial codes of conduct and ANSI standards are primarily a device for businesses to lower their liability, and fear of liability absolutely rules private industry. (Not the public sector, though, at least not yet; but that will change the day a jury awards a U.S. government employee damages based on the USG's negligent failure to provide a safe working environment.)
Will it do any actual good? Maybe not, but that might not matter a lot. The big problems State had with Blackwater, et al, in the past seem to have been solved when it moved most of the contract protection specialists in-house by making them personal service contractors, and thereby easier to manage and discipline. Would that it had done that sooner.
The State Department Spokesperson - and that awkward gender-neutral word "spokesperson" is indeed her official job title, although I'll be damned if I can see why it's any better than "spokeswoman" - Jen Psaki issued an update on the status of Embassies and Consulates this afternoon:
On Sunday, August 11, the Department of State will re-open 18 of the 19 embassies and consulates that were closed recently. Our embassy in Sanaa, Yemen will remain closed because of ongoing concerns about a threat stream indicating the potential for terrorist attacks emanating from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Our consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, which closed yesterday due to a separate credible threat to that facility, will also remain closed.
We will continue to evaluate the threats to Sanaa and Lahore and make subsequent decisions about the re-opening of those facilities based on that information. We will also continue to evaluate information about these and all of our posts and to take appropriate steps to best protect the safety of our personnel, American citizens traveling overseas, and visitors to our facilities.
And so, with no more explanation of the threats - or the threat streams to use another bit of annoying jargon - than when they were closed a week ago, 18 of the 19 affected NEA and AF posts will reopen.
As for Sanaa and Lahore, well, sometimes a cooling off period or a safety shutdown is a good idea. In fact, we probably should close those posts for no reason at all from time to time, just to be unpredictable and make our people a moving target.
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Those lazy, hazy, crazy, days of summer (a good song, BTW) have rolled on for quite long enough, and it is now time that I take up something that has been bugging me for a few weeks - the State Department's clumsy post-Benghazi term of art, "high threat post."
The Department has used the term pretty extensively, but has never explained what it means, at least not in any public forum that I've seen. Official spokesman have said there are 27 high threat posts, but they have not indicated how or why those posts were selected. The Department hasn't even said which posts they are, although there have been at least two news media reports that named names and claimed official sources.
Confusion reigns, as Department employees try to reconcile the 27 posts that the news media has named with their danger pay or hardship differentials, their unaccompanied status or - more often - its lack, and the strange absence from the list of some posts that are indisputably high threat by any common meaning of the words. Beirut, for instance. None of it makes much sense.
As for exactly which 27 posts it is that are so special, here's what the news media tells us.
CBS News reported on December 8, 2012 (here) that the following posts are now under the purview of the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for High Threat Posts:
The scope of the expanded High Threat Unit has widened to include Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen. Previously the only posts that fell under the High Threat designation were in Iraq and Afghanistan.
National Review On-Line reported on November 30, 2012 (here) that the mystery posts are:
The State Department said in an announcement that the new assistant secretary will be responsible for “evaluating, managing, and mitigating the security threats, as well as the direction of resource requirements at high threat diplomatic missions.” Those missions include American diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen.
There are two minor inconsistencies between those lists. CBS listed Niger instead of Nigeria, and NRO listed Algeria but not Afghanistan. Putting that aside, just focus on the fact that both lists are of 17 countries. That's countries, or diplomatic missions, and not posts. The 17 countries have a total of 27 U.S. diplomatic posts between them (because Pakistan is one country but four posts, Nigeria has two posts, and so on).
So we have 27 posts that are of some special, but unspecified, security concern. If the 27 were referred to as "posts of special concern," or some such formulation, I think that meaning would be pretty clear. Unfortunately, the Department is referring to them as the "high threat posts," as in the name of the new office that will oversee them, and that naturally makes people assume the State Department has, literally, only 27 posts that are ranked High on its Security Environment Threat List. That assumption would be wrong.
Slight digression. The Security Environment Threat List has been described in multiple publicly available sources of information, such as this one by the General Accountability Office, so it's in the public sphere and may be mentioned by blogs such as mine. Here's how the GAO describes the SETL:
Diplomatic Security, in consultation with posts, other State bureaus, and other government agencies, uses these standards, called the Security Environment Threat List, to assign threat levels to each post. There are six threat categories: international terrorism, indigenous terrorism, political violence, crime, human intelligence, and technical threat. Each post is assigned one of four threat levels for each threat category. A post's threat level dictates what security measures should be in place. The levels are as follows:
Critical: grave impact on American diplomats
High: serious impact on American diplomats
Medium: moderate impact on American diplomats
Low: minor impact on American diplomats
If you think about the Security Environment Threat List, you might get even more confused by the term "high threat post." Are they the posts that are ranked High for all six categories of threat, or only for some categories? And what about the posts ranked Critical? Are they automatically included, as in high-threat-and-up posts? End digression.
Lately, I see official spokesmen have been referring to these 27 special posts as the "high threat / high risk" posts, which is a mouthful but also an improvement on the original term because it suggests that some kind of risk analysis went into the selection of those special posts.
The only public discussion I've seen of this matter was in the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing of July 16, which featured testimony by the Acting Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, Gregory Starr, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for High Threat Posts, Bill Miller.
The hearing had low press interest, low attendance by committee members, and – maybe because of that – some uncommonly intelligent discussion about how the Department prioritizes its needs for new embassy construction, security upgrades, and security training. The entire hearing is worth listening to, but a ton of good sense and plain talk about risk management occurs between the 25 and 28 minute marks.
I noticed three particularly interesting things in the testimony of DAS Bill Miller:
At the 1 hour 8 minute mark, he directly addressed the confusion over terminology. "High threat post," he said, is “a very often-used and not well-defined term," and he stressed that the 27 diplomatic posts which he oversees are not simply those that are rated high on the Security Environment Threat List.
At the 19 minute mark, he testified that after the attacks of September, 2012, the Department selected certain posts for a higher level of security attention. “The Department weighed criteria to determine which posts are designated high threat / high risk, and there are now 27 posts which fall under this designation.” That statement appears on page 3 of his written testimony. He did not describe the selection criteria.
At the 1 hour 6 minute mark, he gave a nice capsule description of the risk management process. The Department, he said, needs to constantly balance a host country's capability and willingness to provide security support to our missions with the local threats to those missions and the physical vulnerability of our mission facilities (for example, office buildings that are too flimsy to harden up against attack, or that are too close to surrounding streets, etc).
Considering the totality of DAS Miller's testimony, I think we can see how the 27 posts were selected. Their particular combinations of the big three risk factors - weak or unreliable host country support, high security threats, and physical vulnerabilities to those threats - made them stand out as Diplomatic Security's top tier of concern. Neither DAS Miller nor any other official spokesman has said that in so many words, but if one did, I would be satisfied with that explanation.
Assuming I am interpreting this correctly, a diplomatic mission could have one, or two, or even all three of those risk factors to varying degrees, and that wouldn't necessarily make it an official High Threat Post. But if a post has all three of those things to an exceptionally high degree, then it has won the trifecta of suckiness and gets to be an HTP.
If that's not a good enough explanation of the deeper meaning of the number 27, then I have some more. It's the only number that's a perfect cube (3 to the 3rd power). There are 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was the age at which Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse all died. And there was that movie about 27 dresses.
But I think I'm right about the Trifecta of Suckiness theory. As I was typing this post this evening, I clicked on a press release about an appropriations bill introduced today to authorize next year's funding for Department of State operations and embassy security. Lo and behold, it includes a section requiring the Department to identify its high threat posts, and defines that term as follows:
The term 'high risk, high threat post' means a United States diplomatic or consular post, as determined by the Secretary, that, among other factors, is -
(A) located in a country with (i) high to critical levels of political violence and terrorism; and (ii) the government of which lacks the ability or willingness to provide adequate security; and,
(B) with mission physical security platforms that fall below the Department of state's established standards.
Ah, ha! The same big three risk factors that featured in DAS Miller's testimony before the SFRC. If that section makes it into the final bill, then next year we'll have an official notification of exactly which posts are HTPs and why.
Until then, if you are serving at a post that is experiencing pervasive suckiness of an exceptionally high degree, then you just might be at an HTP.
Established by resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775:
Resolved, That six companies of expert rifflemen, be immediately raised in Pensylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates.
That each company, as soon as compleated, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.
My hat is off to all the "brave, healthy, able bodied, and well disposed" young men and women who have enlisted "for the defense of the Liberties and Independence of the United States" since that day.
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In Part 3, I quoted a GAO report to note some of the practical limitations that prevent most of the Department's overseas office facilities from fully meeting security standards. In this post, I'll cite the Foreign Affairs Manual to the effect that certain types of overseas facilities are not required to fully meet security standards or to obtain waivers of unmet standards.
Now, to track down the Department's actual requirements for overseas facilities security and waivers thereof, you have to go deep into a Dork Forest of official paperwork and policy geek language. Misunderstandings are common, and one of those misunderstandings concerns the Special Mission in Benghazi. It did not 'meet standards.' But did those standards apply in the first place, and did the Mission need a waiver of unmet standards?
The written statement of former RSO Tripoli Eric Nordstrom to the House Oversight Committee concerning security measures taken and not taken in Benghazi (here) contains this key passage:
SECCA [the Secure Embassy and Counterterrorism Act] establishes statutory security requirements for U.S. diplomatic facilities involving collocation and setback. Under SECCA, the State Department, in selecting a site for any new U.S. diplomatic facility abroad, must collocate all U.S. Government personnel at the post on the site. Each newly acquired U.S. diplomatic facility must be placed not less than 100 feet from the perimeter of the property. New U.S. chancery/consulate buildings, solely or substantially occupied by the U.S. Government, must meet collocation and 100-foot setback statutory requirements; otherwise, waivers to the statutory requirements must be granted by the Secretary of State. Furthermore, in accordance with 12 FAM 315.5, the Secretary {of State} must notify the appropriate congressional committees in writing of any waiver with respect to a chancery or consulate building and the reasons for the determination, not less than 15 days prior to implementing a statutory collocation or setback waiver.
The requirement for a waiver might seem clear - it was required by law, and Hillary Clinton herself had to have signed it - but the key phrase is "U.S. chancery/consulate buildings." What exactly qualifies as a chancery or consulate?
All policy language is subject to definition. The first thing the FAM says about the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act is in 12 FAM 313. Note paragraph b:
12 FAM 313 SECURE EMBASSY CONSTRUCTION AND COUNTERTERRORISM ACT (SECCA)
a. SECCA establishes statutory security requirements for U.S. diplomatic facilities involving collocation and setback. (1) Site Selection (Collocation): The State Department, in selecting a site for any new U.S. diplomatic facility abroad, must collocate all U.S. Government personnel at the post (except those under the command of an area military commander) on the site.
(2) Perimeter Distance (Setback): Each newly acquired U.S. diplomatic facility must be sited not less than 100 feet (30.48 m) from the perimeter of the property on which the facility is situated.
b. U.S. diplomatic facilities are defined for purposes of the SECCA to include any chancery, consulate, or other office notified to the host government as diplomatic or consular premises in accordance with the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations. It also includes offices subject to a publicly available bilateral agreement with the host government that recognizes the official status of the U.S. Government personnel present in the facility.
So for the purpose of applying SECCA, a "U.S. diplomatic facility" is an office that is notified to the host government, or is the subject of a publicly available bilateral agreement. Full stop.
The question then becomes: was the Special Mission in Benghazi so notified to the host government? If the answer to that question is yes, then it needed a waiver. If the answer is no, then it did not.
The Benghazi ARB report said the Mission was never formally notified to the Libyan government:
Although the TNC [Transitional National Counsel] declared that Tripoli would continue to be the capital of a post-Qaddafi Libya, many of the influential players in the TNC remained based in Benghazi. Stevens continued as Special Envoy to the TNC in Benghazi until he departed Libya on November 17, 2011, after which the Special Envoy position was not filled. Stevens was replaced by an experienced Civil Service employee who served for 73 days in what came to be called the “principal officer” position in Benghazi. After November 2011, the principal officer slot became a TDY assignment for officers with varying levels of experience who served in Benghazi anywhere from 10 days to over two months, usually without transiting Tripoli. In December 2011, the Under Secretary for Management approved a one-year continuation of the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, which was never a consulate and never formally notified to the Libyan government.
Assuming the ARB report is correct on that point, there was never a need for a waiver of security standards for the Special Mission in Benghazi. Therefore, various Congressmen can stop wasting their time in a futile hunt for that smoking gun in Hillary's hands.
They are in hot pursuit of it now. Here's Rep. James Lankford questioning Eric Nordstrom on May 8, at the second Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi:
The key exchange is:
(Lankford): "By statute, Mr. Nordstrom, who has authority to place personnel in a facility that does not meet the minimum OSPB [Overseas Security Policy Board] standards?"
(Nordstrom): "The OSPB standards go in tandem with SECCA, which is the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, both of which derived out of the East Africa bombings, or were strengthened after that. It's my understanding that since we were the sole occupants of both of those facilities - Benghazi and Tripoli - the only person who could grant waivers or exceptions to those was the Secretary of State."
And with that, the hunt is on for the blockbuster withheld waiver memo that is assumed to exist.
I haven't seen the Department issue a statement of its own, separate from the ARB report, to clarify the status of the Special Mission in regard to SECCA's standards and waiver requirements. There are plenty of policy analysts and legal advisers in the building who could give Congress a definitive opinion, and the Department spokesmen would be well advised to use them.
The entire matter of Benghazi and its aftermath are traumatic enough already, and I'd hate to see people get even more emotionally invested in a waiver memo that doesn't exist.
As per usual, Google did a little tiny ribbon for Memorial Day instead of one of its trademark Google Doodles.
I suppose if I were one of Google's indentured high-tech servants making less than the prevailing U.S. wage (thanks, Congress) I wouldn't put any effort into the occasion, either.
Bing, also as usual, has an appropriate background image.
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In Part 2, I referred to the difficultly of upgrading the security of temporary, and/or hastily acquired, facilities. I also cited Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy (here) saying that at least half of the State Department's overseas office buildings fail to fully meet the standards established by the Overseas Security Policy Board.
Why is it so hard to upgrade those buildings until they meet standards? Is it insufficient funding? Lack of will? Total bureaucratic indifference? Technical incompetence?
Opinions about all of that will differ, but anyone who has actually tried to upgrade the security of one of those buildings has realized the inherent limitations of conventionally constructed buildings - that is, of the normal kinds of office and residential buildings that you find the world over. Unless and until you build a building to suit yourself, i.e., a Fortress Embassy, you will have to settle for something less than fully satisfactory.
The situation was explained very well in a General Accountability Office report from 2008, GAO-08-162, which was succinctly entitled "Embassy Security: Upgrades Have Enhanced Security, but Site Conditions Prevent Full Adherence to Standards." A few quotes from that report will do:
At the 11 posts we visited with ongoing or completed CSUP [Compound Security Upgrade Program] projects, we found that the projects had enhanced posts' compliance with State's physical security standards as detailed in the "Foreign Affairs Handbook" and "Foreign Affairs Manual." The projects we viewed added or enhanced pedestrian and vehicle access points, replaced perimeter fencing to meet anti-climb requirements, installed bollards and barriers at key points to meet anti-ram requirements, built safe areas for post officials in case of attack, enhanced the hard line separating post employees from visitors, and installed forced entry/ballistic-resistant windows and doors.
Nevertheless, without building a new facility, many posts are unable to meet all security standards for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of CSUP. We found that none of the posts we visited adhered fully with current security standards because of conditions that were outside the scope of CSUP projects. For example, most of the posts we visited were located in dense urban areas that prevented them from achieving a 100-foot setback from the street, one of the key security standards. OBO [Overseas Buildings Operations] and DS [Diplomatic Security] officials acknowledged that, at many locations, it is not feasible to increase the setback by acquiring land and closing off nearby streets. In other cases, officials stated the buildings themselves were not structurally capable of handling heavy forced entry/ballistic-resistant windows or other upgrades. And in other cases, officials commented that host nations or cities would not allow certain upgrades to be implemented, such as removing trees to create a clear zone around the embassy or changing the facade of historic buildings.
That's about the size of it. The U.S. government occupies hundreds of office buildings overseas, and has done so since the 1800s. Despite the pace of new embassy construction, which kicked into high gear only in 2000, many of the buildings we occupy today were acquired long before we had any type of security standards. We can upgrade them to a greater or lesser degree but can't make them Fortresses retroactively, for all the reasons the GAO noted - locations that lack significant setback distance from public streets, structures that can't support the weight of serious physical barriers, and host governments that won't permit certain changes.
The most serious of these reasons is structural limitation, which means that you can't add more weight to a building than its load-bearing structure will allow. The structural limitations of the typical building that you can acquire overseas might not be obvious, but trust me, adding Fortress-level amounts of concrete or steel to it isn't an option. (By the way, an excellent general-interest primer on this topic is Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture, in case you are really motivated to read into the subject.)
You can try this yourself at home. Steel plate of a useful thickness weighs 10 pounds per square foot, the forced entry/ballistic-resistant doors used in Fortress Embassies weight almost 1,000 pounds each, and equivalent windows weigh 44 pounds per square foot. (I take that information from the brochure of a company that sells Department-certified security products.) Call a building contractor and ask what it would take to plate your house in steel and replace the doors and windows with forced-entry/ballistic resistant ones.
Unless you live in something made of reinforced concrete, you'll probably find it isn't feasible. And in that event, you would most likely settle for something less. The U.S. government does the same.
I'll have one last quick comment in response to the Benghazi ARB, to be posted sometime this Memorial Day weekend.
Typical U.S. Embassy Command and Control Hub, I think
I'd be willing to pay more than $1 million for a Command and Control Hub like that, the kind they have in every Tom Clancy-esque movie. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to pay more than a few thousand for a simple guard booth.
I've noticed that the public imagination runs wild when it comes to Marine Security Guards. Almost everyone I know outside the Department, especially including those who have never visited a U.S. embassy, believe every embassy is protected by one or two platoons of Marine infantry who encircle the place to keep foreigners away.
Where do they get these crazy ideas? From movies like The Bourne Identity, in which about 100 Marines chase Matt Damon around the U.S. Consulate in Munich (an exceptionally unrealistic scene, but please enjoy), and Zero Dark Thirty, in which Marines in combat gear are shown outside the gate of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, rifles at port arms, shoving back any Pakistanis who come too close. Those are depictions of a normal day, not a riot or attack, or an emergency evacuation. Just the day-to-day for Marine Security Guards.
No matter how inaccurate that image may be, it will come in handy now that the taxpayers are getting the bill for setting up 35 new MSG Detachments. I predict there will not be one peep of discontent, since the taxpayers know they're getting $1.6 million worth of foreign-ass-kicking value from each of those Marines.
I see two take-aways and one bit of real news from the NYT story. First, the facilities needed to support this expansion - new Post 1 booths and Marine Houses - are where 90+ percent of the costs are. And second, the first new Detachment won't be in place until more than one year after the Benghazi attack, the incident which prompted the build-up. Lesson to be learned: nothing like this happens quickly or cheaply.
The story's last paragraph has the real news, which the Times might not have realized is news. SecState Kerry is quoted as saying that the priorities for Marine Security Guards have shifted, and their first responsibility is now to protect people, not classified information.
Most people probably thought that was always their first priority, but actually, it wasn't. (Indeed, the website of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group still reflects the former, traditional, mission statement with its emphasis on protection of classified materials.) So now, maybe the public's high expectations of embassy ass-kicking will finally be met.
WASHINGTON — When the State Department fields the first of 350 additional Marine security guards at high-risk embassies and consulates around the world later this year, the price tag will be steep: about $1.6 million per Marine.
Why so much?
It turns out that about $525 million of the $553 million that Congress approved this year to deploy more Marine guards — fulfilling a recommendation of the independent review panel that investigated the attacks last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya — is going toward building new command-and-control hubs in the posts and living quarters for the Marines.
The department plans to send 35 new Marine detachments, with about 10 Marines each, to diplomatic posts over the next few years. The first 90 are expected to arrive by the end of the year, officials said.
-- snip --
The financing for the new facilities also covers living quarters, which would include bedrooms and common areas, as well as small gyms and cafeterias. The department prefers that the Marines live on the compound when possible, officials said.
-- snip --
[Department officials] said each of the new command centers and additional housing would be custom-designed, either as part of brand-new embassies or leased housing. The department is in the process of developing specific project plans for each of the new Marine detachments, with the first new facilities to be included in embassies under construction in Laos and the West African country of Benin.
-- snip --
Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday in outlining the recommendations from the investigative panel that the additional Marines would be added to the diplomatic posts that face the highest threats. “We’re making sure that their first responsibility is protecting our people, not just classified materials,” he said.
U.S. embassy life can be an endless series of temporary projects
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In Part 1, I commented about a couple of those Wise Men who are to shed their wisdom on the Department regarding best practices for security in high threat / high risk locations. Now, here's something else that I think is puzzling.
Recommendation 5 of the ARB report called for the Department to develop security standards expressly for temporary mission facilities. That makes great sense to me, since there is a vast difference between the sort of hasty facilities that we need to acquire and fit-out in expeditionary environments and the permanent Fortress Embassies that the Department might build in more stable places. 'Expeditionary' has to happen right now, making use of available materials and funds to improvise a minimum level of protection, whereas Fortress Embassies take several years to design and build and cost several hundred million dollars.
Two such different situations need two different sets of standards, right? You might think so.
Here's what the ARB recommended:
The Department should develop minimum security standards for occupancy of temporary facilities in high risk, high threat environments, and seek greater flexibility to make funds rapidly available for security upgrades at such facilities.
Here's how the Department's press release reported its action on that recommendation:
The Department has re-affirmed that Overseas Security Policy Board Standards apply to temporary facilities.
We identified flexible funding authorities to make improvements to our overseas facilities.
Aren't they talking past each other here? The ARB recommended the Department develop security standards for temporary facilities because, you know, it doesn't have any such standards now. The standards it has are intended for permanent situations.
To "reaffirm" that we'll apply the security standards we already have to temporary facilities seems to be a refusal to deal with the recommendation. Worse, it leaves those temporary facilities in the same bureaucratic limbo as Special Mission Benghazi, lacking the money and direction for serious security upgrades because they lack a permanent status.
To quote from the ARB report:
Special Mission Benghazi’s uncertain future after 2012 and its “non-status” as a temporary, residential facility made allocation of resources for security and personnel more difficult, and left responsibility to meet security standards to the working-level in the field, with very limited resources.
Having appropriate standards for temporary facilities - which means standards that aim for a lower, albeit more realistic and achievable level, of protection - would regularize what is now an ad hoc practice.
By the way, not all permanent U.S. diplomatic missions around the world meet those Overseas Security Policy Board standards that the Department just reaffirmed. Not even half of them do, according to none other than Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy.
More than half the U.S. diplomatic posts overseas may not fully meet security standards, a senior U.S. official told a hearing on Thursday that follows an attack on the mission in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died.
Pat Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management at the State Department, told a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that the United States had a diplomatic presence at 283 locations around the world.
He said 97 safe and secure facilities had been completed since the 1999 passage of a U.S. law authorizing additional funding for security upgrades, including 70 full replacements of embassies or consulates, as well as some building of Marine guard quarters and office annexes.
"There remain approximately 158 posts that have facilities that may not fully meet current security standards," he said.
"Many of these facilities were built or acquired prior to the establishment of the current security standards, and others are subject to authorized waivers and/or exceptions."
The Department has completed many new construction projects since 2000, however, according to a publicly available presentation by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, only one in four U.S. government employees overseas (about 20,500 out of a total of 85,000) works in a Fortress Embassy.
The other three out of four work in a wide range of facilities, some better than others, but all of them somewhat less secure than a purpose-built modern embassy. They are either grandfathered or "subject to authorized waivers" due to the impracticality of fully meeting security standards retroactively in buildings the Department did not construct.
If that's the situation for our permanent facilities, then surely our less-than-permanent facilities will likewise fail to fully meet Overseas Security Policy Board standards. Why not accept that reality and develop security standards that are suitable and achievable for temporary occupancies?
I'll have another quick comment tomorrow or Saturday about the practical limits of hardening up conventional buildings.
A panel of experts will think deeply about security
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So, yesterday the State Department sent out a press release about the progress it has made implementing the recommendations of the Benghazi ARB. That effort will have major ramifications. To quote from the release, it "will require fundamentally reforming the organization in critical ways. While risk can never be completely eliminated from our diplomatic duties, we must always work to minimize it."
Recommendation 4. The Department should establish a panel of outside independent experts (military, security, humanitarian) with experience in high risk, high threat areas to identify best practices (from other agencies and other countries), and evaluate U.S. security platforms in high risk, high threat posts.
And where does that recommendation stand now?
The Department established a six-person panel to identify best practices used by other agencies and countries; this panel’s work is expected to be complete by late summer.
The State Department, whatever its faults, is the only organization in the world that operates so many diplomatic missions in so many volatile locations. And, whatever we may think of our budgets, it is vastly better resourced and better staffed than its counterpart organizations in other countries and international agencies. I've served in the U.S. military, worked in the private consulting sector and as a field security adviser for a UN humanitarian agency, and have worked for the Department for so long that I can watch myself age as I flip through my old passport pictures, and I honestly think the Department pretty much defines the best security practices in high-risk / high-threat areas. What's more, since I'm in frequent contact with other U.S. agencies and foreign security establishments, I know that opinion is shared by others.
Of course, I'm always eager to learn from outside independent experts, but who are these wise men? Whatever they're doing has been kept out of the news media, but today I learned the names of two of the panel members. It was a let-down.
One of them I know only by reputation (which is good), but his professional background is only marginally relevant, his career was spent entirely on the domestic side, and he retired from active duty about twenty years ago. The other I know personally, going back to one of his first jobs in the Department. He has a relevant background, and he rose to a high position in another U.S. government agency, but stepped down from that position after a rather large mismanagement fiasco.
Even giving these gentlemen every benefit of the doubt, placing them on this panel gives Congressional critics cause to doubt both its independence and its expertise.
Maybe the rest of the panel will be so super impressive that I'll be amazed and delighted when they complete their work and issue a report. Hey, hope springs eternal.
The other item that I want to quickly comment on is the recommendation to develop minimum security standards for temporary mission facilities. More on that tomorrow.
New details from administration e-mails about last year’s attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, demonstrate that an intense bureaucratic clash took place between the State Department and the CIA over which agency would get to tell the story of how the tragedy unfolded.
That clash played out in the development of administration talking points that have been at the center of the controversy over the handling of the incident, according to the e-mails that came to light Friday.
It's just about two agencies squabbling over who gets the blame, you see. Distasteful, but nothing having to do with the White House.
You have to read 14 paragraphs into the story to find out that "White House officials were directly involved in developing the talking points through discussions with the CIA, the State Department, the FBI, the Justice Department, and elements of the Pentagon."
Let's hope nobody reads that far. Meanwhile, the WaPo will be scanning the sky for bogies while Jay Carney pursues a target.
In the words of @iowahawkblog, "journalism is about covering important stories - with a pillow, until they stop moving."
Jay Carney certainly earned his pay yesterday. He must have been dizzy from all that spinning he did for the White House press corps.
"Those were Intelligence Community talking points ... the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive ... this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators ... And if you look at the issue here, the efforts to politicize it were always about, you know, were we trying to play down the fact that there was an act of terror and an attack on the embassy ... I appreciate the question [by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, but] the things you’re talking about don’t go to the fundamental issues.”
I suppose that depends on what you think the fundamental issues are. Now that the mainstream press has discovered the twelve drafts of the Benghazi talking points, they seem to think it is a fundamental issue that Carney has been lying to them telling them untruthitudes for several months.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.
“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were [sic] changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”
Parse that Official Spokesman language and you'll see that Carney can claim to not be lying, even as he does not tell the truth. To say "the White House and the State Department have made clear" that only a single change was made to those talking points is not the same as saying that, in truth, only a single change was made. If somebody else has been lying, that isn't Carney's concern.
Carney took offense at some impudent questions from the press corps and pointed the finger of blame back at them:
"This is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something we did not hide - well, at least we aren't hiding it anymore, ever since the talking point drafts were published by ABC News yesterday" Carney said.
I made up that last part about 'we aren't hiding it anymore.' That is, I made a non-substantive factual correction to what Carney actually said. And I advise that you not get all wrapped up in the queston of what I may or may not have changed about what he said, because that would just be a distraction from the fundamental issue here.
The best seven minutes of yesterday's press conference are embedded below.
The House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi that is scheduled for Wednesday promises to be the real deal, with bombshells and whistle blowers and all. Given the professional positions of the three named witnesses, and their essentially apolitical nature, this hearing looks like it will challenge the established narrative of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board report.
Chairman Issa previewed some of the expected testimony during an interview on Face the Nation yesterday. (See the embedded video, above.) From the tidbits that have been released so far, it does not look good for at least one particular senior official, one who avoided the consequences suffered by a few middle managers after the ARB report was issued.
At the 10:50 mark of yesterday's interview, in the context of a question about where blame should be placed, Issa dropped the name of Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, who was "at the center of knowing everything" about Benghazi. At the 11:17 mark, Issa said that Kennedy was "at the table during what we believe at this point is a misinformation campaign at best and a cover up at worst."
U/S Kennedy (right) at October 2012 hearing
Undersecretary Kennedy, of course, testified at the Committee's first Benghazi hearing in October 2012.
I notice that he did not take the center of the table that day. Quite the contrary. In fact, he left a whole lot of room between himself and DS's Charlene Lamb.
What's not such a good thing is that the solicitation was dated March 28, 2013, which is just three weeks short of thirty years since the Beirut embassy bombing. That incident led to the Inman Commission and to the business of building Fortress Embassies which has gone on ever since. Now, thirty long years later, we might be close to finally building a Fortress in Beirut.
From the solicitation:
This will be a design-bid-build project. The resultant contract shall be fixed price. The estimated construction cost is $526.231 million.
The new Embassy compound will be constructed on U.S. Government-owned property located in Aoukar, approximately 11 km north of Beirut city neat the site of the existing U.S. Embassy compound. The complex of buildings will be in the range of 78,636 gross square meters in area and will include a new Chancery, General Services Office/support buildings, parking structure, TDY lodging facility, Marine Security Guard Quarters (MSGQ), Chief of Missions Residence (CMR), Deputy Chief of Missions Residence (DCMR), Staff Housing, Compound Access Control (CAC) facilities, RSO Annex, Utility Building, Community Center, and vehicular/pedestrian screening facilities. The project site is approximately 17.8 hectare (43 acres) located on a steep hillside in a neighborhood of residential and light commercial uses. The land slopes east to west with a topographic change of approximately 100 meters. This project will be designed and constructed to achieve, as a goal, a LEED Silver rating.
By the way, the sketch I inserted above is not connected to the present solicitation. It is from the very first attempt to build a new U.S. Embassy in Beirut, back in 1957. That project was suspended during the Lebanese Civil War of 1958. History keeps repeating, huh?
Police Officer in Islamabad, Pakistan, detecting ... nothing
There is good news from the UK today, where a jury has convicted the biggest con man in the security industry on three counts of fraud. Jim McCormick, salesman extraordinaire of scam bomb detectors, will be sentenced in May. Then, police say, they will go after his multiple millions of ill-gotten gains.
I've blogged about this outrageous scam before, here, here, here, and here. The ADE 651 'bomb detector' consists of an empty plastic box, a swiveling antenna, 'coded' cards, and a massive load of snake oil. A little official corruption helps to close the deal, too.
The ADE 651, sold to Iraq for $65,000 @
The things have been sold under various names in Iraq, Pakistan, Jordon, Mexico, and many other places where the bombs are as real as McCormick's detectors are phony.
Jim McCormick's claims about his range of detection devices were extraordinary. He said the Advanced Detecting Equipment (ADE) he developed at his Somerset farm could pick up the most minuscule traces of explosives, drugs, ivory and even money. They were so good they could spot target substances from as far away as 1,000 metres, deep underground and even through lead-lined rooms. If their plastic grips and waggling antennae bore a passing resemblance to a £15 novelty golf ball finder, that was no coincidence. The 57-year-old businessman had used the jokey product sourced from the US as a starting point for an enterprise that made him a multimillion-pound fortune but placed lives at risk around the world.
-- snip --
It was all nonsense, albeit potentially lethal for the people of Iraq, where 6,000 of the fraudulent gadgets formed a first line of defence against car bombs and suicide bombers at checkpoints. When the devices were opened, it emerged that cable sockets were unconnected and supposed data cards were linked to nothing. One scientist told the jury who on Tuesday convicted McCormick of three counts of fraud that the antenna intended to point to suspect substances was "no more a radio antenna than a nine-inch nail".
It is thought hundreds of lives could have been lost as a result of the failure of the devices, whose detection powers were no better than a random check. One truckload of rockets reportedly went through 23 checkpoints in Baghdad equipped with one of McCormick's devices without being spotted once.
-- snip --
It took the [British] government over a year to cotton on to the problems. In November 2008, a whistleblower wrote to Ian Pearson, a minister in the business department, urging him to shut down the trade in fake explosive detectors, but nothing was done. In January 2009, the whistleblower, who does not want to be named, sent a dossier detailing the scam that began with a hard-hitting title – "Dowsing rods endanger lives" – to James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the Commons defence select committee.
Arbuthnot promised to raise the matter with the minister for defence equipment and support but it was not until 12 months later that their export was banned on the basis that they were a danger to British and allied troops. By then, McCormick had made a fortune on the back of contracts with Iraqis, who paid $85m (£55m) for the bogus devices.
-- snip --
Police have identified £7m of McCormick's assets, which they intend to try to seize, but believe the fraudster has stashed at least that amount away from the eyes of the taxman and other authorities in Cyprus, Belize and Beirut ... McCormick had separate trading arrangements with other countries. In Lebanon, a UN agency and a luxury hotel were among purchasers. Devices were sold to Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime, Iran, China, Syria, Jordan, Georgia and Mexico.
-- snip --
[After selling someone else's phony device for a few years in the 1990s, McCormick] decided to try to make his own detector. By now the 9/11 attacks had happened and there were fortunes to be made in security. McCormick found a novelty device called the Golfinder "tuned to elements found in golf balls". The marketing blurb urged: "Don't laugh. It works when used properly," but added: "It's also a great novelty item that you should have fun with."
He bought 300 for just under $20 each and replaced the labels with his own. The ADE 100 was born. McCormick modified his device between 2005 and 2009 and it morphed into the ADE 101 with an asking price of around $7,000. A similar but more solid device was called the ADE 650.
-- snip --
By 2009, British and US soldiers in Basra and Baghdad were expressing "real concern" about the devices after x-raying them and finding no working parts inside. One brigadier told the Old Bailey jury "he had never seen the device detect anything". They compared them to divining rods or ouija boards. Soldiers reported going through checkpoints when they knew they were covered in traces of explosives. At one checkpoint McCormick's detectors might pick something up – but they would then sail through the next one.
McCormick was arrested in the UK in January 2010 and as part of the investigation a full double-blind trial of the devices at Cambridge's Cavendish laboratory found the results were no better than random. The device was right three out of 25 times. One scientist said McCormick's description of radio technology was "an affront".
But still the device continued to be used in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. "We know it doesn't work and that it has been banned, but we are continuing to use it," an Iraqi army lieutenant told an AFP correspondent in the weeks after McCormick's arrest. "It is bullshit. But still we are lying about it."
-- snip --
"I'm confident people have lost their lives because of this," said Detective Superintendent Nigel Rock, who led the Avon and Somerset police investigation. "There are young Iraqi officials standing on checkpoints hoping this device is going to tell them if there's a bomb in that car or wrapped around that person. I find it incredible and diabolical. He knew what he was doing."
In a just world, McCormick would be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Iraq searching for bombs with his own ADE 651. But in this world, it looks like we will have to settle for taking away his cash, cars, boats, and homes.
So Czechs are aghast at the American public's confusion about the location of Chechnya. The Ambassador of the Czech Republic issued a statement today to plead for our understanding that these are two different countries, and to assure us that "the Czech Republic is an active and reliable partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism."
It pains me to admit it, but the Ambassador might as well give up. In times of public panic, technically, everybody from outside of America is a Chechen.
AP photo from video, minutes after the attack in which Anne Smedinghoff and four others were killed
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As Domani Spero asked just the other day, can it possibly get any worse than this? I think it could very well get worse, if and when the public gets the results of the on-going FBI investigation into the attack, or those of any investigation the Defense Department may be conducting.
It's quite bad enough already, judging by the details that have come out so far. Let's see ... the book donation visit to the Sheik Baba Metti school by a team from the U.S. Embassy and PRT Zabul was announced to the press one day in advance. But, despite that lack of operational security, the team was allowed to walk to the school from the PRT's base at FOB Smart rather than use protected vehicles. The roughly 100-meter long route to the school evidently wasn't swept before the team's walk, or blocked to traffic during the movement. The team's military escort didn't know which gate to use to enter the school - a school that the PRT itself funded and regularly visited - which required the team to double back to FOB Smart and further expose themselves to attack.
Lastly, the attack reportedly involved a roadside bomb as well as a suicide driver in a bomb-laden vehicle. If that's true, it means that the Taliban were able to plant a command-detonated bomb in the street immediately outside FOB Smart despite the surveillance that street was undoubtedly under by both the U.S. and Afghan military.
The latest details come from an Associate Press story today which quotes an anonymous State Department official.
A senior State Department [official] familiar with the investigation into the attack told the Associated Press that the group was walking, not driving, from a military base to the nearby school in Zabul Province when the explosion hit.
[snip]
The official was not authorized to speak to the news media and provided the details on condition of anonymity.
[snip]
The official said on-foot travel for the group was approved because of the short distance — about 100 yards — between the base and the school compound, and was in keeping with past visits to the site, which also houses an Afghan Ministry of Agriculture office.
Because of the proximity, the group would have had to get out of their vehicles at the military base, the official said.
He said the group took the shortest and most direct route from the base but was told on arrival that the entrance they wanted to use, and had been used previously, no longer provided access to the school.
The group was moving past the military base to another entrance to the compound at the time of the explosion, apparently from a suicide car bomber. That was followed by a second blast, apparently from a roadside bomb.
UK Guardian graphic
Why was the team allowed to walk to the school? Why was that short transit from the FOB to the school so badly planned? Why didn't anyone notice an explosive device planted seemingly right outside the FOB's perimeter wall? Will any official body be convened to ask these questions?
The regulations governing Accountability Review Boards have a limited exception for incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I assume one will not be convened in this case. (I cannot find a citation extending that exception into 2013, but maybe there is one and I'm just not looking in the right place.)
However, the State Department seriously needs an independent review here, not least for reasons of Congressional relations. It would be well advised to convene one, ideally in conjunction with the Defense Department.
