Wed Twofer: DCGS-A, Palantir, and “Ghost” Afghan Policemen
Pentagon Withholds Internal Report About Flawed $2.7 Billion Intel Program by Gordon Lubold and Shane Harris, Foreign Policy
The Army has spent years defending a multibillion-dollar intelligence system that critics say costs too much and does too little. A new internal report has found that there's a simple, relatively inexpensive program that could handle many of the same jobs at a fraction of the cost. For the past eight months, though, the Pentagon has kept the report hidden away.
Members of Congress have been asking Defense Department officials to send them the assessment, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy, but the Pentagon has yet to do so. At issue is the Army's Distributed Common Ground System, expected to cost nearly $11 billion over 30 years and built by a consortium of major Beltway contractors, including Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics…
Watchdog: US May be Paying Salaries of ‘Ghost’ Afghan Policemen by John Harper, Stars and Stripes
American taxpayers may be the victims of a ‘ghost worker’ scheme in Afghanistan, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an independent watchdog group created by Congress.
“The U.S. may be unwittingly helping to pay the salaries of nonexistent members of the Afghan National Police,” John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, wrote in a Feb. 19 letter to commanders of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which manages the majority of donated funds intended for the Afghan National Security Forces…
