Wasted Spending In The Drug War

See All Aboard the Latin American Drug War Gravy Train: Waging the war on drugs in Latin America is a gold mine for contractors, a waste for taxpayers by Mike Riggs of Reason. Excerpts:

"Private companies received nearly $2 billion in Latin American drug war contracts between 2005 and 2009, according to a report released Thursday by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). That money may as well have been stuffed in garbage bags and dropped randomly from the backs of airplanes.

The two major agencies tasked with overseeing the drug war in Latin America—the State Department and the Department of Defense—lack “a centralized database or system with the capacity to track counternarcotics contracts," McCaskill found. As a result, both agencies struggled to explain contracts worth millions of dollars that were awarded to unknown recipients to complete ambiguous and often sketchy projects."

"All told, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) awarded more than $50 million in contracts to “miscellaneous foreign contractors,” and another $6.8 million for “miscellaneous commodities, supplies, and/or services” between 2005 and 2009. The INL’s bean counters have no idea who these companies are, or what they were tasked with doing, only that, in most cases, they got paid."

"“the volume of procurement actions overwhelms staff capacity in some instances” because many of the “acquisition steps are manual processes that are both time-consuming and error prone.”"

"the Small Business Administration’s program for “disadvantaged” businesses allowed three Alaska Native corporations—Olgoonik, Alutiiq, and Chugach McKinley, Inc.—to receive more than $50 million worth of “sole-source contracts of unlimited value without justification or approval”"

"McCaskill’s findings led her to declare that U.S. "efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed.""

There has been

"...increased violence, torture, kidnappings, sexual assaults, and open skirmishes between cartels, other cartels, and police."

"We are wasting tax dollars,” McCaskill said Thursday, “and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return.""