Waste and confusing security policies at State for embassies

BY SUA Staff – Not only is there a new “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – this time Benghazi related, a careful look at how the security was handled there comes into stark relief. Each day a new document emerges, or a new clue to what the administration knew and when they knew it becomes a very important question. This question also begs a view of the rest of our embassies and how the administration’s foreign policy is applied in each location across the globe.

Recently, many revelations have emerged in this regard and among them is the way money is doled out to our embassies to foster the administration’s foreign policy. Judicial Watch, a prominent watch dog organization has revealed that money has flowed in gross amounts, ell while the Benghazi Compound was denied security upgrades, even to minimal previous standards. Other examples abound:

• In February of 2010, plans were revealed for a major new embassy in London that exceeded $1 billion;
• The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has unnecessarily spent more than $700,000 on cellphone service and lost track of millions of dollars of government property, according to a State Department audit released in 2010.
• In 2009, The State Department had bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams From My Father” more than a decade after its release. The Egyptian embassy spent over $28,000 on this project alone.
• In 2010, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid millions of dollars to a contractor for snacks and meals that weren’t eaten, according to a report from the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The embassy overpaid by more than $2 million, according to the investigation, first reported today by Foreign Policy magazine. The money was paid to KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary that provides food service to 1,500 embassy employees.
• In a May 3, 2012, email, the State Department denied a request by a group of Special Forces assigned to protect the U.S. embassy in Libya to continue their use of a DC- 3 airplane for security operations throughout the country. Four days later, on May 7, the State Department authorized the U.S. embassy in Vienna to purchase a $108,000 electric vehicle charging station for the embassy motor pool’s new Chevrolet Volts. The purchase was a part of the State Department’s “Energy Efficiency Sweep of Europe” initiative, which included hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on green program expenditures at various U.S. Embassies.
• After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous. Eager to raise an American flag and open a consulate in a bustling downtown district of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, officials in 2009 sought waivers to stringent State Department building rules and overlooked significant security problems at the site, documents show. (Read more here as well.)
• On 9.11.12 – the State Department spokesperson said that a Marine Security Detachment was deployed on that day to carry out those duties at the U.S. Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados.

According to Wikipedia, the Marine Security Guards number approximately 1000 Marines at 150 posts (also known as “detachments”), organized into nine regional MSG commands and located in over 135 countries in 18 time zones, as well as its headquarters at Marine Corps Base Quantico.[2] Headquarters Company, along with MSG School, is composed of approximately 100 Marines providing administrative, logistical, legal, training and education support.

The remaining nine companies are commanded by a lieutenant colonel, and typically entail a number of detachments in several countries. The companies are as follows:

The way the State Department secures its staff seems to very widely. There is also a long record of waste and abuse of tax dollars. With these examples in mind – it further drives the point home and begs the question: WHY?

State Dept. Skimps On Libya Security

Blows $5.6 Mil on Cultural Preservation Abroad

Judicial Watch

A U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Libya because the State Department skimped on security yet the agency has enough cash to blow millions in one year on “pressing cultural preservation needs” in foreign countries.

News of the controversial allocation could not come at a worse time, on the heels of the brutal assassination of an American ambassador and his staff by al-Qaeda terrorists in Benghazi. It marked the first time in three and a half decades that a foreign ambassador got murdered abroad while representing the U.S. government.

The State Department deploys foreign diplomats and is responsible for their safety. In Libya the agency cut corners by hiring an unknown and inexperienced British firm rather than the larger, more reputable companies that are customarily used in overseas danger zones infested with hostile, anti-American Islamists. As a result, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on the mission are dead.

While the State Department saved money on security in Libya, it somehow managed to find $5.6 million in 2011 to support “pressing cultural preservation needs” in dozens of foreign countries. Here are some of the dire projects funded by U.S. tax dollars that perhaps could be better spent on securing U.S. embassies in hostile Arab countries.

Uncle Sam doled out $750,000 to restore a 16th-century tomb complex in India, $700,000 to conserve ruins in Tanzania, $600,000 for the “temple of the winged lions” in Jordan and $450,000 for the conservation of a 10th century temple in Cambodia. Those were just the big ticket projects. Hundreds of thousands more went to smaller causes throughout the world.

For instance, the restoration of a 16th century convent in Guatemala got $119,052 and an aqueduct in Mexico received $115,000 and the following three projects each got $100,000 from the State Department; a program to document endangered musical traditions in Mali, the restoration of a railroad station in Paraguay and a 19th-century log house museum in Russia. Here is the list of all the allocations for 2011.

This is all part of the administration’s international diplomacy efforts, a cornerstone of the Obama presidency. Just last month the State Department launched a first-of-its-kind Diplomatic Culinary Partnership to “elevate the role of culinary engagement in America’s formal and public diplomacy efforts.” A new American Chef Corps has been created because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims that “culinary engagement” can “further intercultural dialogue and strengthen bilateral relationship.”

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