Findings | Recommendations

Findings:

• The U.S. military presence in Latin America is substantial. The near-disappearance of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) funding for the region -- the largest single source of security assistance during the 1980s -- should not be interpreted as signaling reduced military collaboration. For example, about 56,000 U.S. troops rotated through Latin America during 1997, most on counterdrug missions, training deployments or other foreign military interaction activities. The U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), the "unified command" of the U.S. military responsible for all of Latin America and the Caribbean except Mexico, maintains bases in Panama, Honduras, and Cuba, radar sites and special-forces trainers in many other countries, and Security Assistance Organizations attached to embassies throughout the region.

• U.S. military training for Latin America goes far beyond the School of the Americas. During the past few years, much public attention has been focused upon the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas and its role in training Latin American military personnel. This is an important debate; however, in order to understand the broad range of U.S. training many other programs must be considered.

1. Other institutions exist for Spanish-language training of Latin American officers. The Air Force maintains an Inter-American Air Forces Academy in Texas, and the Navy maintains a small-craft instructional school in Panama.
2. Courses eligible to be subsidized by the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which 2,377 Latin Americans attended in 1997, were given at 150 U.S. institutions in 1995.
3. Many courses are taught by Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) given by U.S. instructors sent to the region.
4. Under the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, U.S. Special Forces teams carry out dozens of joint training activities each year with Latin American militaries.
5. The Department of Defense (DOD) carries out significant counternarcotics training through its own budget.

• Primary source materials are difficult to obtain, particularly from the Pentagon. Much information that is technically "public" could only be acquired with significant effort and, at times, through political connections. Statistics that the State Department (DOS) provides Congress for training, assistance and cooperation programs under its jurisdiction, we found, are seldom collected and reported in a similar fashion by the Defense Department (DOD). For example, the DOS Congressional Presentation for Foreign Operations provides annual country-by-country program descriptions and spending breakdowns for the programs that it administers. The DOD provides nothing comparable in a non-classified form; most unclassified reports required of DOD are smaller documents that are submitted separately and therefore are less accessible.
  
  Much of the most useful information about DOD programs in this study was the hardest to acquire. The difficulties we experienced in obtaining information about U.S. military programs indicate that it would be all but impossible for anyone in Latin America, on the receiving end of these programs, to do the same.

• The State Department's reporting about its military-related programs makes it easier for Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities. This may seem unusual since the congressional committees responsible for authorizing assistance -- the House International Relations and Senate Foreign Relations Committees -- have been unable to pass legislation authorizing foreign assistance programs since the mid-1980s. Foreign aid, however, is a very controversial part of the budget, and the yearly process of appropriating money for aid programs is often quite contentious. To persuade Congress to approve its foreign aid request, DOS must convincingly justify the programs to be funded. As a result, significant reporting is provided in the annual budget justification documents sent to Congress. The foreign aid appropriations bills themselves contain their own mandatory notification and reporting requirements on military-related programs. The reporting that DOS provides often goes beyond legal requirements, making reporting the norm for DOS-administered programs. It is worth noting that the ratio of dollars appropriated to congressional staff responsible for oversight is much smaller with DOS-administered programs than with DOD programs.

• On the other hand, Congress cannot adequately monitor DOD’s activities in Latin America, especially counternarcotics programs, due to a lack of reporting and public information. DOD has a very large counternarcotics program, spending about $650 million in 1998 on interdiction and counter-drug assistance -- most of it in Latin America. While it is clear that the designated congressional staff have access to more detailed classified information about DOD counternarcotics activities, readily available public information is very limited. The country-by-country breakdown of DOD counternarcotics assistance reproduced in this study, which provides little more than aggregate figures, was only acquired after a congressional inquiry was made.
  
  • The role played by congressional staff overseeing the Defense Department, according to a staffer interviewed for this study, could be called "management by exception." More detailed monitoring would be almost impossible considering the small committee staff responsible for this large budget. If a program requires an expensive weapons system, is controversial or of special interest to a member of Congress, the committee requests information from DOD and it is provided. Otherwise, the institution is largely assumed to be functioning as intended. It is not that DOD is necessarily hiding information; more often than not, no one is asking for it.
  • For example, most congressional staffers interviewed knew little about the "section 1004" counternarcotics program, which provided over $230 million in assistance to the region last year. Originally authorized to allow some forms of counterdrug military assistance, section 1004 of the 1991 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- while large in comparison to other U.S. programs in Latin America -- accounts for perhaps one-tenth of one percent of the yearly defense budget. Staffers' attention has instead been drawn to the newer, more controversial "section 1033" and "section 1031" DOD counternarcotics programs, which had significant oversight and reporting requirements added to them.
    
• The principal authorizations for the military’s involvement in counternarcotics are extremely broad and have no reporting requirements. Very little public information is available about the authorizations provided DOD under section 1004 of the 1991 NDAA and section 124 of Title 10, U.S. Code. There is no way for policy analysts or most congressional staffers to track the execution of, or trends in, these programs in specific countries because they do not have the basic data needed to do so.

• Oversight of counternarcotics activities and foreign military training is difficult due to multiple funding sources. Foreign military training is now funded through both DOS and DOD, and general counternarcotics programs are funded through several departments. While this may have a certain rationale, it is problematic that no single body has oversight responsibility for all programs. Under the current arrangement, individuals responsible for oversight have only a partial picture and lack the time and mandate to concern themselves with the whole. In essence, the buck stops nowhere.
  
  A new riverine counternarcotics program for Colombia and Peru provides an example. While this kind of activity would have been funded through DOS foreign-aid legislation in the past, the program was instead funded through the 1998 Defense Department budget authorization (section 1033). Meanwhile, the program received additional support from a Special Forfeiture Fund directed through the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in the White House, which ultimately channeled the money through the DOS International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau.
  
  Greater oversight is particularly necessary because training and equipping militaries to carry out counternarcotics operations is a controversial policy choice. Critics both within and outside military establishments express concern about promoting a military role abroad that is not accepted within the United States.

• DOD’s international counternarcotics budget is almost triple that of State; the DOD and DOS budgets for counternarcotics assistance programs are roughly equal. The State Department's International Narcotics Control budget for Latin America totaled $161 million in 1997. DOD’s counternarcotics programs in Latin America during the same year were $444 million, while programs that provide assistance and training (as opposed to detection and monitoring operations carried out by U.S. personnel) totaled about $163 million. Despite the significant size of DOD counternarcotics assistance programs, most congressional debate around U.S. counternarcotics programs in Latin America still takes place within the foreign operations funding committees outside the context of the defense budget process.

• Multiple funding sources, together with distinctions about what constitutes "assistance," create loopholes which could be used to skirt congressional intent. Normally, eligibility and reporting requirements applied to a specific program through one funding mechanism, such as the foreign aid bill, do not apply to similar programs funded under a separate piece of legislation like the defense appropriations bill. Additionally, much DOD training -- such as exercises, deployments, and special-forces activities -- is not considered "security assistance" because its primary purpose is to train the U.S. forces involved. Even though foreign military training is clearly a frequent by-product, these activities are not considered training programs.
  
  While seemingly an exercise in legalistic hair-splitting, these distinctions obviate rules dictating which militaries can receive assistance and what information must be disclosed. This erupted in controversy recently when it was reported that certain U.S. training for the Indonesian military prohibited in the foreign aid bill was carried out by U.S. special forces with DOD funding.
  
  Where Latin America is concerned, this issue comes to light around implementation of the "Leahy amendment," a provision in the foreign aid appropriations law named after its sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The Leahy language states that no U.S. military assistance can be provided to a foreign military unit if credible evidence exists that the unit’s members committed gross human rights violations, until action is taken to prosecute those responsible. The Clinton administration said it would apply this provision to all U.S. counternarcotics programs, regardless of funding source. By force of law, however, the Leahy restriction only applies to programs funded within the foreign aid process, and not programs funded through the defense budget. The Defense Department’s JCET and counternarcotics programs, for instance, have both involved Colombian Army units prohibited from receiving U.S. assistance through traditional security assistance programs.

• The rationale for funding counternarcotics and other programs through different channels seems to depend more on which department has money available than with what is most effective, appropriate and transparent. While foreign military training has historically been funded out of foreign aid accounts, counternarcotics foreign military training programs and the new Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS) are funded through the much larger defense budget. The CHDS, a component of the National Defense University, works toward ends similar to those of expanded IMET, a program in the foreign aid bill. Yet if CHDS had been authorized under the expanded IMET program, it would likely have competed for funding within the program and not added to the total amount available for IMET. The same is true of DOD’s counternarcotics training. This training would likely have received much greater scrutiny and competed for funds within a much more limited budget had the Administration sought to authorize it within the foreign aid bill.

• Budgets for Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA) programs in Latin America doubled between 1996 and 1997. These programs raise jurisdictional questions. While development assistance programs are generally funded out of the foreign aid bill, under HCA schools are built, wells are dug and children are vaccinated by a program funded and carried out by the DOD. While supporting development in Latin America is a worthwhile endeavor, the funding mechanism is an odd jurisdictional decision. The State Department’s Agency for International Development budget for Latin America has been slashed 60% since 1990, yet in two years the HCA program has doubled its reach. At the same time, analysts of civil-military relations have raised concerns regarding the signals these programs send to host-country militaries about proper roles, arguing that these activities may encourage military involvement in internal functions that would be unacceptable in a well-established democracy and can just as easily be carried out by civilians.

• The end-use monitoring reports provided Congress are so old by the time they are submitted that they were of little more than historic value for this investigation. The International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) End-Use Monitoring Report for 1995, for instance, was released in September 1997. As of April 1998, the 1996 report remains unavailable.
  
  "End-use monitoring" is the practice of ensuring that equipment and training transferred to other countries are used for the purpose for which they were provided. End-use monitoring procedures and requirements should be reviewed to ensure that the information provided to Congress is actually useful.

• While there is some end-use monitoring of equipment, there is no after-training tracking of foreign military personnel who have been trained by the United States. Without such evaluation, there is no easy way to determine whether trainees have returned to commit human rights violations, or if those trained in counternarcotics actually performed counternarcotics duties upon their return. The first is important because monitoring any correlation between U.S. training and human-rights violations is necessary to assess the value of training programs. The second matters because DOD training for Colombians and Mexicans is taking place under authorizations that only allow DOD to offer counternarcotics training. Both of these countries have significant insurgencies as well. At present, it is impossible to know if the line been counternarcotics and counterinsurgency is being crossed with U.S. assistance.

• New attention is being given to programs focusing on civilian control of the military, defense management and human rights. In 1997, 21 percent of Latin American IMET students took courses qualifying as expanded IMET. Furthermore, the new CHDS, which focuses on training civilians from Latin America in defense issues, is now functioning and may contribute to the civilian capacity for military oversight.

Recommendations:

• Congressional oversight and public disclosure regarding the Department of Defense’s military activities with Latin America should be improved, particularly with regard to section 1004, section 124 and Special Forces programs.
  
  Congress should require the DOD to provide a public annual report to the appropriate congressional committees on counternarcotics programs in Latin America, providing both country and functional breakdowns of expenditures.

• All foreign military training programs should be documented in a single, unified annual report to Congress, without respect to their funding authority. This report should include: the country receiving training, the number of students trained, courses attended and location of training. The report should provide this information for all other functionally-similar programs, even if they are funded out of different budget categories.

• Congress should review its end-use monitoring reports to see: a) what information is needed, b) if the information received is meeting its needs, c) whether there is sufficient funding available to carry out effective end-use monitoring, and d) how reports might be made in a timely fashion.

• There should be "after-training tracking" of foreign military personnel trained by the United States, to monitor the effectiveness of training. If soldiers are trained using section 1004 funds restricted to counternarcotics training, they should be monitored to ensure that, upon returning home, they use their acquired skills to carry out counternarcotics responsibilities. Furthermore, U.S. embassy personnel should use sources such as the reports of local and international human rights groups to monitor accusations of abuse by local militaries. If soldiers trained by the United States are credibly accused of human rights violations, the Leahy language should be implemented, regardless of the mechanism originally used to fund the training or assistance. U.S. training programs with a track record of graduating human rights abusers should be re-evaluated.

• Congress should take a closer look at Special Forces operations in Latin America. Though some of this information will be classified, an effort should be made to see that annual public reporting on Special Forces is made available, so that their role in the military relationship can be assessed.

• If Congress clearly expresses its intent to condition or restrict a program, such as training, the administration should respect that intent by applying the restriction to other functionally similar programs, even if funded from other accounts.

• Debate within the Congress on international counternarcotics issues needs to take place more actively within the Armed Services and National Security Committees, considering the significance of their role as funders of these programs.

• Since end-use monitoring is a critical oversight mechanism, Congress should consider making more resources available for defense personnel to perform end-use monitoring and reporting in a timely fashion.

• The non-governmental community must become more involved in the oversight of U.S. military programs with Latin America. Nongovernmental organizations must go beyond their traditional focus on foreign aid and begin analyzing defense programs. Foreign-policy analysts should not leave this field entirely to defense analysts, but should take a closer look at the military relationship with Latin America, a key component of U.S. foreign policy toward the region.