the corruption level that we are talking about? >> thank you sir. when we look at corruption, we are looking at the whole enchilada. we are looking at those sites, the american side as well is the afghan side. currently, given that most of the money, probably as much as 80% of it, that we have invested or are investing in afghanistan is not channeled through the government of afghistan. it is channeled through the implementing indices othe united states, the department of defense and the department of state. and then from tere to various-- and other entities to help to make use of this money for the purposes for which it was in fact appropriated. so, the work of our audit as well as our investigations considers both sides, with some degree of emphasis of course on the u.s. side in what we are doing to properly prevent waste, fraud and abuse. >> mr. chairman, i think is subject actually deserves a lot more time than we are going to be able to give it today. i would suggest to you that we bring the general back sometime soon after we have studied your reports and there are some areas that i would really like to get into very deeply and we do not have the time to do it today. there is a major address before congress, before the president of mexico i believe that we are going to, and it would seem to me that for example, i would like to ask the general's analysis of whether the military teams, the prt's, hether that is the way that we should focus on delivering aid and what we have found in the effectiveness of those teams compared to contractors at the loca level, and there are a number of questions specifically like that need to be addressed and i would hope that we could bring him back. >> i concur, and powerpoint today is i think to give us an overview of the work that the inspector general is doing, and certainly i expect they are going to be a number of specific issues we are going to want to dig into. now i want to recognize mr. ellison for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you general for being here and sharing your illuminating insight about these issues we are facing here in the reconstruction of afghanistan. last month general mcchrystal questions our reliance on the private contracto in afghanistan. in fact he is quoted as to have said the following. i actually think we would be better to reduce the number of ntractors involved. he went on to say, i tink it doesn't save money, and then he further elaborated by sayg quote, we have created in ourselves a dependency on contractors that i think is greater than it ought to be. according to the gao, in early 2010, there was approximately 107,000 contractors supporting the united states and allied efforts in afghanistan. i guess my question is, do you share general mcchrystal's concerns expressed in these quotes or how do you react to them? >> thank you very much sir. i think what general mcchrystal is saying is generally true from the standpoint of our dependence on the contracting community. but, we also have been engaged with contractors for quite some time. this is not the first time in a conflict in the interest of the strategic election of the united states that we have had such a dependence on contractors. we did it during world war ii, korea, certainly vietnam and now afghanistan. and of course in ira as well. but i do feel and agree with general mcchrystal that we have come to depend too much on contractors. they are the liability to this. we either build the resources that are now being provided by the contracting community within the defense mechanism and structure are we continue to defend-- depend upon contractors. >> can i follow-up on that general? >> absolutely. >> we are paying these contractors quite a bit of money so that the u.s. military developed capacity to perform the same functions internally, isn't it likely that we could do it cheaper? >> i would say so that some aspects of what we are currently doing could the done cheaper if the resources were in fact a part of the uniform defense establishment. but i'm not inclined to say that that would necessarily in the long run be in the best interest of the american taxpayer. i do feel so that we could perhaps reduce our dependency on contractors by taking more full advantage of resources that we could have within the more conventional establishment of the u.s. military environment. >> but general, if we are spending say 1 dollar to hire a contractor to do any given task, and at that task is necessary to be done, and given some of the concerns we have had about the expense of contractors and the difficulty of imposing accountability, i mean the dollar to the contractor and a dollar spent internally is the same dollar isn't it? i mean, isn't it conceivable that we could do better? where would we not do better if we were to build capacity internally because we are spending the same money anyway, either way. >> well, let me say sir that the resources that the contracting community brgs to a very complex environment such as afghanistan is good. i do not wish to characterize all contractors as taking advantage of the american taxpayer. yes they arebusinesses and certainly there is a profit margin that they seek to find, but having done this work for the past coming up on two years, i have considerable respect for the contracting community. they are operating in a very dangerous environment and folks are not necessarily lining up to go to the edge of the battlefield if you will such as our contractors. even folks that i would wish to hire into my organization with the intent to spend quite a bit of time in dangerous places and corners in that in a stand, it is difficult for me as well. there are contracrs being killed on the battlefield out there. it is very complex. >> general we certainly want to thank all the contracts for the meritorious service but this is not really a question of the contractors being good people are bad eople. is a question of how do we get the most out of our dollar spent as the american taxpayer and might we do these things more cost effectively internally and might we also have a better ability to demand accountability if they are done internally? those are the points and i just want to agree with you that people who have gone over and service contractors at done good work and certainly we don't want to denigrate their work, but i think some of these issu remained important and i thank you for your testimony today. >> thank you very much sir. >> i want to thank the gentleman and while we still have additional time i think we are just going to do a second round of questions, and i want to follow up where i left off with -- we really didn't get time to get your full answer i think in terms of the look back before the special inspector general's office was stood up. again, give me a description of the process that is in place to evaluate that and a timeframe when you think w will have some better answe, because as we evaluate these additional investments going forward, the kind of information that we need >> thank you mr. chairman. i am pleased to have with me at the table today in their brim two of my personal staff. my insistence-- assistant inspector general and acting deputy inspector general for audits, mr. john brummet. he is a career, former career member of the government accountability office, gao and i also have with me the assistant inspector general for investigations, a career member of the federal bureau of investigations, mr. reagan nuncio. i would like to respectfully ask if mr. john someone can roll in on that question of looking back particularly with emphasis on the forensic work that he and his auditors are doing at this time? >> i recognize him to do so and again, if you could give us a description of the process and the timeline, again as we look at these substantial new investments going forward, i think that is a very critical part of understanding that we have done in the past. >> yes mr. chairman. it is very hard to look back. it would have been much easier if we had been set up a long time ago. when we look back at his hard to find the documentation and it is hard to find the people responsible for the various programs because of the length of two or in afghanistan. so looking back is a difficult thing. what we are trying to do is gather transaction data from all the reconstruction programs d use some datamining techniques to identify potential anomalies like duplicate payments or instances where the person that approved the payment is the same person that received the payment to get suspect transactions and then through audits and her their investigations try to track those down. but, it is a difficult process and getting precision in terms of the amount of wasted or funds subject to fraud will be a very very difficult task but i cannot even imagine how difficult that wouldbe. but, having all a blessed knowledge, when do you think we could have and again i no we are not going to get precision on this but when do you think we can get some even ballpark ideas on where that stands looking back? >> i would think that over the course of the next six months, as we complete another 10 to 12 audit reports we will be in a muh bter position to make an estimate along the lines that mr. bowen was able to make after he had spent five years of doing audits. and i think the figure on our estimate will be considerable. >> that will be very important again going forward, but i now want to go to more of the prese. in your report, ou talk about the new funding that has been requested, three force of this new budget request is going for training of the afghan national army and the police. i think everyone from our military people on the ground to the people on the hill believe that the success on the ground is critical th military and police in afghanistan be stood up but it's also critical to be able to get our troops he. so i would like you to address the police training, the military training aspect and in particular, you mentioned the afghanistan ctract and audit office, and problems they are with their having insufficient independence, authority and qualified staff to actually do their job. if we are spending these large amounts of money on something that clearly there is a consensus that this is something that has to done and done well, we need to be able to track how that is going and again part of that is money as you mentioned, but i would also like you to address the capability milestone rating system which can really talk about theffectiveness ad when you expect that purport to be prepared because again, i think going forward for considering these new budget request, that is going to be critical. >> thank you mr. chairman. let me address the capability milestone's report. to answer part of your question sir, we hope to have completed that report and releas it publicly by this june, so next month that report should be posted on our web site and briefed as appropriate to the leadership here in the congress. that report will identify some serious issues. the most serious is that we have been using for years now this capability milestone or cm ratings process to determine where it was or where it is that the afghanistan security forces stand reticular leg and specifically afghanistan national army as well as the afghanistan national police, and they are building to do what they are being stood up to do, for which the american taxyer has thus far potentially spent about $27 billion with another $14.2 billion to come as a part of the president's most recent request for additional funds to train the security apparatus of afghanistan. we found flaws in the cm rating or capability milestone's rating scheme. as i mentioned in my opening statement, this flaw were these flaws have been recognized by the most senior leadership of our military forces and trainers in afghanistan and they are taking corrective action to remedy this, but i am amazed that really, over over the period that we have been spending so much money training and equipping this force, that we have just come to realize that we had an inadequate system of measuring their progress. in terms of the ceo, that is the control and audit office, very similar to our control officer in the united states in the high office of oversight, those are the two mechanisms within the government of afghanistan designed to fight corruption. we believe of course that in order to be successful both in terms of standing up the security forces, we have to have good systems, institutions in place in afghanistan. the ceo and the h. o. o. are very significanin that regard. our audit recently released both of the cao and the hoo so those offices are currently inadequate to do that for which they have been put in place, and the embassy in kabul is working with thegovernment of afghanistan as well as with other representatives of the international community to remedy this. and i want to point out that president karzai has taken some action himself to help remedy this by decreeing that this office specifically for high office of oversight, be provided more independence so that it can really do its work. >> thank you are going i want to yield five minutes to mr. rohrabacher. rohrabacher. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and again i think we are going to have to in the weeks ahead, we might have to have the general back or in the months ahead we might have to have the general back and i am very happy that you are they are general. if we are going to talk about contractors, i thought i would just go on the record because it seems to be a lot of focus on contractors here. a lot of people want to vilify contractors because of the natural iclination to sggest, if there's a problem we are going to blame it on somebody. we are going to blame it on the military uniform people and l-lima, contractors. i think that by and large contractors have done a good job, but we must make sure that they are not corrupt and they are not going there and just exploiting the situation for-profit. let me just say that there are people who deserve our banks and deserve to be honored among these contractors. like water for example has been a contractor who has been vilified, and i would say the vilification of blackwater and contractors like like water is a black mark on a lot of people in this town. blackwater has lost a lot of men in iraq and afghanistan. just several months ago when a cia post was blown up, and we said that we had lost, it was reported that six cia operatives were lost in that explosion. in fact, there weren't eight operatives laws. there were six black water contractors who were lost along with two cia operatives, and that didn't happen to get reported. they have done a good job. blackwatehas done a terrific job, yet we see that organization targeted to try to find any little thing that they have done to try to bring them down. that is outrageous and i think the american people need to know the sacrifices that almost all the blackwater people are former special forces and i might add marines, who have retired and areow using their expertise to try to accompsh our goals. so i think the vilification of the contractors is misplaced and something that we should really think about. these people, most of them deserve our place-- praise. why do we use contractors? just to note, if a contractor can co food for our troops get is actually more cost-effective to have a cook who was not in uniform and is not a military person to be there cooking for our troops and providing food services to our troops because it cost us $1 million per person and per uniformed military personnel and that combat area. it is costing a million dollars a year. it shouldn't cost us a million dollars a year in order to provide a cook. but perhaps putting someone who is willing to go into harm's way and our soldiers and marines, that is the type of expenditure we have to have. general, i want to get back to my defense of the contractors. i think it is necessary and i think they are being abused and people should be ashamed that they are abusing some of these heroic people like blackwater who have done great jobs for us. with that said, i would like to go back to this initial question about comparing whether the military itself is able to involve itself in an economy building operation versus having the usaid and other agencies and contractors come into do that job. i am just requting you now of-- i don't want you to do this off the top of your head. i would like you to prepare a report for this committee, comparing the effectiveness and let us know the effectiveness of the prt's which our military units in afghanistan as compared to perhaps the operation of contractors and other elements of our government in terms of building up local economy and the success they have had. so i am going to ask you to do that for this committee. it wouldn't have to be an expense report for just a general analysis of how that is working, and they see that i time is up mr. chairman and i hope if we have time for another round i do have a couple more questions and i yield. >> thank you, and i wanted to, in my next round of questions get into again looking forward with some of the activiti. you mentioned of course the donor conference in london. we have the upcoming 29th o this month and the kabul conference in july. can you address for the committee some of your expectations from those conferences and in particular the importance of having really a broad-based involvement of men and womenn those compasses and how that is going to improvethe effectiveness of what we are able to do on the ground? >> sir, i applaud the fact that these conferences are in fact taking place. much of the work that will be done at these forthcoming conferences are braley, is really born out of the 28 january conference hosted in london in support of the reconstruction efforts in afghanistan. there were certain decisions made at that conference, and now the international community is coming together to assist the government of afghanistan in making sure that those recommendations agreed upon are in fact put into place. week, in terms of the involvement of women, the level of involvement of women will be at the level of which i think thamerican people would deeply ecc. we can reflect on the work we have done, which i think is an example of what i'm trying to say here regarding women in afghanistan that we conduct an audit associated with the recent elections, and while not completely disenfranchised, nonetheless, the women did not fare well in terms of the basic rights for expectations as would otherwise be expected among the male population of afghanistan. we also are conducting an audit to determine that what has happened to about -3/4 of a billion dollars mr. chairman, that this congress has made available for women and girls in afghanistan during the course of the past several years. we are lking to find if there is evidence if that money s first of all used for the purposes for which it was made available and to what extent has it helps to advance women and girls in afghanistan? the extent to which that money perhaps in other donor contributions have been effective will certainly be reflected in the extent to which women participate to any influential level and these forthcoming conferences. >> let me next ask about the development of the agricultural sector. during our visit a few weeks ago it was one of the things that was highlighted. 80% of the country is rural and agriculturally driven. they have great opportunities in developing pomegranate, fruit, nuts, grapes and that is going to be critical to their economic growth. we heard some good success stories about the way our civilian teams were partnering with farmers. also the farm income in the areas we vised in kandahar have triple