Whistleblowing at the Pentagon - Protections for the Brave

With whistleblowing in Washington now being headline news, a look at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) publication "Whistleblower Protection" is timely.  This report which provides taxpayers and politicians with an analysis of the Department of Defense's actions to improve both case timelines of issues raised and safeguard the confidentiality of whistleblowers who raise complaints about the Department of Defense.  In general, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DODIG) and the military service offices of the Inspector General (IG) met some but not all of the fiscal year 2018 timeliness and quality goals for handling the massive number of whistleblower complaints that were made throughout the year.

Here is a graphic showing how the Department of Defense processes whistleblower complaints:

Note that complaints about the Department of Defense come in from two sources; the DOD hotline which passed complains to DODIG and the military service IG hotline which passes complaints to the military service inspector general.

Here is a table showing the protections that are in place for civilian, contractor and military personnel whistleblowers at the Department of Defense:

These protections have been put into place to encourage whistleblowers to report wrongdoing without fear of reprisal.  Protection for whistleblowers' confidentiality is codified in federal law under the Inspector General Act of 1978 which restricts both DODIG and the Inspector General from disclosing a whistleblower's identity without the consent of the whistleblower unless it is unavoidable.

In fiscal 2018, DODIG's hotline received 12,470 contacts from potential whistleblowers related to fraud, waste, abuse employee misconduct or other violations.  Of these, 3,872 were referred to other entities for inquiry, unfortunately, as you will see in this posting, many of these will remain unresolved.  Over the past five years, the number of whistleblower reprisal cases reported by DODIG increased from 1,013 to 2,002, an increase of 98 percent.  Between the years 2013 and 2018, a total of 95,613 complaints with DODIG were registered.  Let's put that number into context -  5 years with a forty hour work week and a 48 week work year results in a total of 9600 working hours.  If you divide the number of working hours in a five year period into the 95,613 complaints, it works out to just under ten complaints every working hour. 

Let's look at the timeliness of DODIG's response to whistleblower allegations, paying particular attention to the investigations that senior official misconduct and what percentage of those complaints were handled in a timely fashion:

During fiscal 2018, DODIG did close 73 investigations including 13 senior official misconduct cases and 60 military, contractor and civilian reprisal cases leaving 85 percent of all cases not meeting the timeliness goals.  There are several reasons for DODIG's inability to meet its timeliness goals including the assumption of all sexual assault victim reprisal cases, the number of high-priority senior official cases concurrently open and the increasing scope and complexity of investigations.

Here is a graphic showing how many days it took for DODIG to complete its investigations of senior official misconduct and military, contractor and civilian reprisal cases for fiscal 2018:

Here is a graphic showing the timeliness of military service Inspector General senior official misconduct and reprisal investigation for the four branches of the military:

As you can see, only the Marine Corps Inspector General met to 180 timeliness goal and only for investigations involving misconduct by senior Marine Corps officials.

Let's take a brief look at issues of whistleblower confidentiality with one of the biggest problems being that whistleblower's data is available to personnel without a need to know.  Here is a table showing the accessibility issues identified by DODIG:

Here is a table showing the accessibility issues identified by military service Inspector Generals:

Between 2013 and 2018, DODIG identified 8 substantiated violations of whistleblower confidentiality and the Army IG identified 6 substantiated violations of whistleblower confidentiality.  The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps Inspector Generals were unable to provide data for such incidents since incidents of this type are not tracked.  Interestingly, in a survey of DODIG employees, 17 percent of respondents were aware that the identity of a complainant was avoidably disclosed by a fellow employee to an organization or individual without a need to know.  It's obvious that in both cases, employees access to sensitive whistleblower's information is not restricted to the point where confidentiality is maintained.

Let's close with this, keeping in mind that analysis suggests that the Department of Defense is unable to account for $21 trillion of taxpayers' money:

The existence of a Department of Defense hotline for reporting complaints is an interesting idea, however, the GAO report suggests that very few of these reports by whistleblowers are handled in a timely fashion and that whistleblowers face risks when reporting misdeeds by their employer and the military hierarchy.  As well, according to another GAO report from fiscal 2015, 1,094 out of 1,197 or 91 percent of whistleblowers' complaints closed by DODIG between fiscal 2013 and 2015 were closed without any investigation.  This suggests that the Department of Defense is either ill-prepared or doesn't care about any complaints that it receives about its operations, spending or senior personnel. 

America's Next Battleground and Our Dystopian Future

Let's open this posting with this video:

Rather sobering, isn't it?

This dystopian video entitled "Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity" was obtained by "The Intercept" under a Freedom of Information Act request.  The video was used as part of training at the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations University and was made for an internal military audience to assist in outlining the challenges of operating in urban areas with populations greater than 10 million people (i.e. megacities).  According to World Data, there are currently 18 megacities, however, if we look at the example of Tokyo in Japan (which comes in at number 19), the population of its metropolitan area is closer to 35 million than it is to the actual population of Tokyo which is just over 9.5 million as shown on this listing:

It is apparent that the U.S. military is very concerned about waging war in major urban areas.  The example of what happened to the U.S. military in Baghdad (population 8.765 million) is a prime example of how conventional military forces get bogged down in densely populated areas.  For 15 years, the U.S. military occupied the Green Zone, a 10 square kilometre area in downtown Baghdad, surrounded by concrete, blast-proof walls and razor wire as shown on this satellite photograph:

The Green Zone was defended with the aforementioned walls and razor wire which were augmented with earthen berms, armed checkpoints which were defended by M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and HUMVEES equipped with .50 caliber machine guns.  On December 10, 2018, parts of the Green Zone were finally opened to the public over a two week trial which allowed access to the area from 5:00 pm to 1:00 am along the 14th of July Road (the date that the Baathists began to rule Iraq) however, side roads still remain either closed or under heavy security.

While the video in this posting is, to put it mildly, sobering, the U.S. military seems to have a fixation with urban warfare.  In June 2014, the Chief of Staff of the Army, Strategic Studies released a publication entitled "Megacities and the United States Army - Preparing for a Complex and Uncertain Future" as shown here:

The publication opens with this:

"Cities with populations of ten million or more are given a special designation: megacity. There are currently over twenty megacities in the world, and by 2025 there will be close to forty.1 The trends are clear. Megacities are growing, they are becoming more connected, and the ability of host nation governments to effectively deal with their explosive growth and maintain security is, in many cases, diminishing...

Megacities are growing so fast that it is becoming increasingly difficult for host nation governments to keep up with infrastructure and resource requirements. Drivers of instability are already present and in many places are growing by the day."

According to the authors, while the United States will most likely be asked to step in and operate in one of the world's megacities, it is ill-prepared to do so:

"Megacities are a unique environment that the U.S. Army does not fully understand...

It is inevitable that at some point the United States Army will be asked to operate in a megacity and currently the Army is ill-prepared to do so...

The problems found in megacities (explosive growth rates, vast and growing income disparity and a security environment that is increasingly attractive to the politically dispossessed) are landpower problems. Solutions, therefore, will require boots on the ground." (my bolds)

The publication notes that megaurbanization will become an increasing problem in the near future:

"World-wide, a historic transition is underway. Over half of all people currently live in cities, and the rate of migration is accelerating. By 2030, cities will account for 60% of the world’s population and 70% of the worlds GDP.  Each day, an estimated 180,000 people across the globe migrate to cities. 3 In the next century, the urban environment will be the locus where drivers of instability will converge. By the year 2030, 60% of urban dwellers will be under the age of 18.

The cities that grow the fastest will be the most challenged. Urban areas are expected to grow by 1.4 billion in the next two decades, with that growth occurring almost entirely in developing world.  As resources become constrained, illicit networks could potentially fill the gap left by over-extended and under-capitalized governments.

The Army’s largest and most recent example of urban operations is small in comparison to the challenges ahead. In Baghdad, the Army fought for almost a decade in an urban environment with a population of 6.5 million people.  By 2030, there will be 37 cities across the world that are 200-400% larger than Baghdad."

And, we all know how long it has taken the U.S. military to extricate itself from the Baghdad nightmare, don't we?

Here is a graphic showing the geographic extent of the megacity problem:

The publication notes that historical methods of isolating cities no longer applies to megacities since the massive scale of megacities makes it impossible for traditional military forces to physically surround and isolate urban areas that contain tens of millions of people spread over an area of hundreds of square miles.  Additionally, the arrival of nearly ubiquitous cell phone and internet coverage makes it impossible to virtually isolate megacity environments as quoted here:

"Attempting to isolate one, as recommended by current doctrine, will be difficult and likely lead to unforeseen consequences. Instantaneous information transfer, robust international surface and air shipping, and mass migration (legal and illegal) connect the cities around the world in ways undreamed of only a decade ago. Robust and redundant external connectedness makes isolating a modern city nearly impossible. Indeed, recent attempts at shutting down social media in Turkey, Egypt and Libya illustrate how resilient modern communications systems are becoming."

According to the U.S. military, these megacities are highly vulnerable to instability for the following reasons:

1.) Population Growth and Migration - One of the hallmarks of megacities is rapid hetero and homogeneous population growth that outstrips city governance capability. Many emerging megacities are ill-prepared to accommodate the kind of explosive growth they are experiencing.

2.) Separation and Gentrification - Radical income disparity, and racial, ethnic and sub cultural separation are major drivers of instability in megacities. As these divisions become more pronounced they create delicate tensions, which if allowed to fester, may build over time, mobilize segments of the population, and erupt as triggers of instability.

3.) Environmental Vulnerability and Resource Competition - Unanticipated weather events and natural disasters can be powerful catalysts which can devastate city systems, interrupt- ing governance and service delivery. While natural cataclysms occur across the globe, and have through- out human history, these events will affect larger populations, densely packed into urban centers in ways and on a scale never before seen. Environmental disasters and resource scarcity (real or perceived) can produce relative resource disparity, competition, and instability which can rapidly exceed the capability of local authorities to address.

4.) Hostile Actors: If internal or foreign actors conducted offensive operations which exceeded a  city’s capacity to contain or defend against them, external intervention could be required to return the city to its previous state.  This would be especially true if the city is in an allied country or the threat is preparing to extend its hostilities to the U.S. homeland or its citizens abroad. 

Let's close with an analysis of three cities in the study with Lagos and Dhaka being examples of what can (and will) go wrong and New York City being an example of how megacities should evolve:

Here is a final quote from the video:

"This is the world of our future.  It is one we are not prepared to effectively operate within and it is unavoidable. The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined. The future is urban.”

And, the next war will likely be fought in an urban environment by a military that is likely to cause massive civilian casualties, just as it did in the case of Baghdad which is still resulting in civilian deaths nearly 16 years after the beginning of hostilities.

The Pentagon's Evolving Mission

A Trump Administration era change to the United States Department of Defense website provides us with an interesting insight into the minds that control the world's most powerful global police force.

On every page of the Department's website you will find this new mission statement located at the bottom left-hand corner of the webpage:

However, on the Department's "About" webpage, you find the original DoD mission as shown here:

Interestingly enough, the old and new missions even show up on the same "About" webpage, noting that the page has not been updated since January 27, 2017:

These two mission statements bear repeating:

New mission:

"The mission of the Department of Defense is to provide a lethal Joint Force to defend the security of our country and sustain American influence abroad."

Old mission:

"The mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country."

Note the difference?  It is no longer the job of the Department of Defense to "deter war", a rather ominous approach to protecting the American homeland and Washington's global reach.

Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, here's the same Department of Defense "About" webpage from December 2012 under the Obama Administration:

Here's the Department of Defense "About" page from December 2001 showing the Department's mission under the Bush II Administration when the DoD's web presence was called "DefenseLINK":

Lastly, here's the Department of Defense "About" page from February 1999 showing the Department's mission under the Clinton Administration:

Given October 2017 memorandum from Defense Secretary James Mattis to all Department of Defense staff:

...and, in particular, this quote:

"We are a Department of war"

...we shouldn't be terribly surprised that the mission of the Department of Defense has become less "kindly" and more lethal to anyone who dares to threaten the security of the United States and its control over the world.

Our Nuclear Future With Thanks to the Pentagon

Remember this?

Here are the pertinent lines from the speech given by former President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin:

"We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe….

Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons -- no matter how distant that dream may be.  And so, as President, I've strengthened our efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and reduced the number and role of America’s nuclear weapons.  Because of the New START Treaty, we’re on track to cut American and Russian deployed nuclear warheads to their lowest levels since the 1950s.

But we have more work to do.  So today, I’m announcing additional steps forward.  After a comprehensive review, I’ve determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third.  And I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.  

At the same time, we’ll work with our NATO allies to seek bold reductions in U.S. and Russian tactical weapons in Europe.  And we can forge a new international framework for peaceful nuclear power, and reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking. 

America will host a summit in 2016 to continue our efforts to secure nuclear materials around the world, and we will work to build support in the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and call on all nations to begin negotiations on a treaty that ends the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.  These are steps we can take to create a world of peace with justice." (my bold)

A recently released pre-decisional draft copy of the U.S. Department of Defense's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), conducted at the behest of Donald Trump, gives us a sense of the direction of America's nuclear weapons program under the new administration.  The document opens with the following paragraph:

The Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, goes on to not that "...America's strategic competitions have not followed our lead.  The world is more dangerous, not less." and that "...Russia has retained large numbers of non-strategic nuclear weapons and is, in fact, modernizing these weapons as well as its strategic systems."  The Secretary also states that Russia has adopted a military strategy that relies on nuclear escalation for its success, suggesting the following:

"These developments, coupled with Russia's invasion of Crimea and nuclear threats against our allies, mark Moscow's unabashed return to Great Power competition."

In case you should happen to think that China is getting off easily, here's what the Secretary has to say about China:

In other words, the Department of Defense feels threatened that it is unlikely to retain its position as the world's sole superpower thanks to moves by both Russia and China.  To meet these "threats", the Secretary suggests that a "...diverse set of nuclear capabilities provides an American President with flexibility to tailor the approach to deterring one or more potential adversaries in different circumstances....Our goal is to convince adversaries that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from using nuclear weapons."

According to the NPR, the possession of a nuclear weapons inventory satisfies the following objectives:

1.) Deterrence of nuclear and non-nuclear attack.

2.) Assurance of allies and partners.

3.) Achievement of U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.

4.) Capacity to hedge against an uncertain future.

From the NPR, here is an inventory of the Department of Defense's nuclear Triad which includes submarines, land-based ICBMs and strategic bombers carrying gravity bombs and air-launched cruise missiles:

So, what will this cost U.S. taxpayers?  According to the NPR, sustaining and upgrading America's nuclear weapons program will cost approximately 6.4 percent of the current Department of Defense budget.  Maintaining and opening the current gaining nuclear forces requires between 2 and 3 percent of the DoD budget and the cost to rebuild the nuclear Triad will cost an additional 4 percent of the total budget for several years.  And, as we all know, the Pentagon never underestimates/overspends.

Let's look at an excerpt from the document that shows how the Department of Defense expects to increase the deterrent effect of its nuclear arsenal.  The NPR states that "...to meet the emerging requirements of a U.S. strategy, the United States will now pursue select supplements to the replacement program to enhance the flexility and responsiveness of U.S. nuclear forces..."  This will be achieved through the use of non-strategic nuclear capabilities as follows:

By using low-yield, non-strategic nuclear weapons, the Department of Defense is hoping to use this relatively low-cost option to "...counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable "gap" in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities."  As I posted back in December, here are some of the past low-yield nuclear weapons options that were pursued by researchers at the Los Alamos Laboratory back in the early 1990s:

1.) Micronukes - have a yield equivalent to 10 tons of high explosive

2.) Mininukes - have a yield equivalent to 100 tons of high explosive

3.) Tinynukes - have a yield equivalent to 1000 tons of high explosive

These weapons have a yield that is far smaller than the first atomic weapon detonated over the city of Hiroshima in 1945 which had a yield of roughly 15,000 tons of TNT.  Starting in the late 1950s, scientists at Los Alamos developed the W54 series of nuclear weapons as shown here:

Lastly, here are the two pages which show how the Department of Defense plans to modernize America's nuclear weapons infrastructure:

With Donald Trump tweeting the following comment about America's nuclear weapons capabilities in December 2016:

...and with Hillary Clinton tweeting the following in October 2016:

...its pretty clear that Washington, whether controlled by the Republicans or the Democrats, is gunning for a fight and, at some point in the future, could well be looking for an opportunity to test drive its new inventory of low-yield nuclear "toys".  Keeping in mind that the draft version of the Nuclear Posture Review is just a preliminary copy of the final product, one way or another, it certainly appears that the Department of Defense is preparing itself to take the necessary steps to keep both China and Russia in their place as non-threatening, non-world powers.