Pentagon says no one should be held accountable for $34 million debacle
Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan was not a particularly hospitable base for the tens of thousands of U.S. Marines and other troops who surged there towards the end of the last decade. Sandstorms regularly swept through the treeless landscape, and attacks on the base by Taliban forces claimed lives. The base's initial name was "Tombstone."
So it was perhaps understandable when the Marines declared an “operational need” in 2010 for a huge headquarters building at the site, to be outfitted with air conditioning, plush seating and comfortable offices.
But the decision to construct a 64,000-foot command and control facility has since come to exemplify the U.S. military’s careless waste in Afghanistan. After $34 million was spent on its construction, the tall, windowless building was never, ever used, except perhaps for target practice by the Taliban, according to U.S. officials. The facility was officially turned over to the Afghan Army last fall, but it remains empty and lies in a part of Afghanistan where U.S. personnel rarely if ever travel now.
The question posed by the initial exposure of this costly debacle in July 2013 is, who was responsible? And will anyone in the military be held accountable?
After two internal investigations, and considerable hemming and hawing, the Pentagon’s definitive answer is finally available in a newly released federal report: No one in particular made a bad call, and if the question arose again under similar circumstances today, the same cavernous facility would be still be ordered up. Therefore, no one in the chain of command can or should be held responsible.
This reply has outraged several key lawmakers. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Sen. Armed Services committee, told the Center for Public Integrity in a written statement that the project was a “boondoggle” and that the Pentagon’s claim that its construction was prudent is “patently false.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a ranking member of the governmental affairs permanent investigations subcommittee, similarly called the facility’s construction “one of the most outrageous, deliberate, and wasteful misuses of taxpayer dollars.” She expressed shock that the Pentagon “completely failed to hold any officials accountable after all the facts came to light.”
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
