Five Shocking Findings of the Afghan Contractor Probe

(Oct. 8) -- A wide-ranging review of contracts given to private security operations in Afghanistan found an egregious lack of oversight, including one case where a company paid warlords linked to the Taliban. But that's not all.

The inquiry, conducted by the Senate Armed Services Committee, covers over 125 security contracts in Afghanistan, and the resulting 89-page report provides a wealth of information about a business rife with mishaps and misdeeds.

Among the most outrageous cases were:

1. Junk Weapons. The Senate report found repeated instances where Afghan guards were poorly equipped for security duties, or not equipped at all. The companies involved often appeared to be well-aware of these problems, describing the issues in graphic details. One company's site security manager acknowledged that his company was working with substandard weapons, writing: "I mean, I could shoot out to 1,000 yards myself, and I could barely hit the broad side of the barn with some of these weapons that we had."

2. No Weapons. In some cases, Afghan guards simply didn't have weapons, or engaged in a version of musical chairs with a limited supply of guns. In one audit of a contract to provide security at an unnamed forward operating base in Zabul, auditors found the company had provided only 10 weapons "that they rotate around." On another contract, for security at the Adraskan National Training Center, the contractor "failed to provide working weapons to the members of its guard force," the Senate report found. The company resorted to borrowing weapons from a "local strongman."

3. Drugs and Crime. The report details cases of Afghan guards using and selling drugs, as well as other crimes, like stealing and selling fuel from the bases they are supposed to protect. "Pretty much everyone knows the security contractors routinely use drugs and work their posts while high on drugs," one Marine said of guards working under one contract.

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4. No Training. In Ghazni province, investigators looked at a contract to provide convoy security and found that only $40 per guard had been allocated for training for the entire year. Not surprisingly, an audit found there wasn't enough ammunition to allow the guards to train adequately. In June 2009, the same company allowed 40 untrained guards to go on patrol with a convoy, which was then ambushed by over 100 insurgents. Such problems were found in other contracts as well. In one contract for security in e Farah province, a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service found untrained guards, including one who "the last time he fired a rifle was in the late 1980s when the Russians occupied Afghanistan."

5. Aligned With the Taliban. The report cites numerous instances where contracts may have indirectly funneled money to the Taliban, or employed guards sympathetic or aligned with the Taliban. In one contract for security in Nangarhar Province, an Afghan security guard was discovered to be "spreading Taliban propaganda" at the base. The same guard was also selling "opium and drugs," the audit found. The guard was subsequently fired.