Small Wars Journal

Rep. Hunter Warns Army to Back Off Whistle-Blower

Sun, 12/18/2016 - 7:33am

Rep. Hunter Warns Army to Back Off Whistle-Blower by Tom Vanden Brook , USA Today

Rep. Duncan Hunter warned the Army on Thursday to stop retaliating against a whistle-blower who alleges that a program that sent civilian social scientists to battlefields with combat units was rife with fraud and abuse.

The Army had announced in 2015 that it had killed the program known as the Human Terrain System only to acknowledge earlier this year that it had renamed it the Global Cultural Knowledge Network and continued to fund it. In all, the Army has spent more than $725 million training and deploying anthropologists to Iraq and Afghanistan despite charges of fraud and sexual harassment and questions about its effectiveness.

Hunter, a California Republican, member of the Armed Services Committee and longtime critic of the program, wrote to Army Secretary Eric Fanning and chief of staff, Gen. Mark Milley, that Steffany Trofino, a civilian employee had faced retribution, including a recommendation that she be fired, for communicating with his office…

An investigation by USA TODAY found multiple problems with the program, which received support from former Army secretary John McHugh and some commanders. Among the problems the paper found: Some team members were paid $280,000 per year for work Army investigators suspected had never been done, and team members, in sworn statements, told the Army that sexual innuendo and harassment was commonplace among team trainers.

The American Anthropological Association also has condemned the program for putting at risk social scientists and the people they surveyed, and for use of information they compiled to be used to target people they study.

Hunter, an early supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, vowed to kill the program and said he expected support from the new administration…

Read on.