In apparent move to really put the “war” in “drug war,” the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of Defense (DoD) teamed up to build a drug surveillance plane to use in Afghanistan.
It was supposed to cost $22 million and be ready to go in 2013. Here’s what happened instead:
The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Defense has spent more than $86 million on a drug-surveillance airplane that is four times over budget and has never left the ground, according to a federal audit report.
In 2008, the DEA spent more than $8.6 million to purchase an ATR 500 surveillance plane to conduct counternarcotics surveillance flights over combat zones in Afghanistan in the so-called Global Discovery program, according to a new audit released Wednesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The Defense Department spent an additional $67.9 million to modify the aircraft and to construct a hangar for it at Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan. The DEA has also spent nearly $10.1 million to modify the plane. …
The DEA now plans to use the plane, when it’s ready for flight, in operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
So this is an $86 million plane (that’s about 1,600 times the median household income in America, by the way) that has cost nearly quadruple its original price, has never flown, and will never be used for its intended purpose. Classic.
Maybe the situation is this ridiculous because there are two government agencies involved instead of one, so it’s double the bureaucracy, waste, and corruption?
Either way, this report is not particularly surprising. The war on drugs is not working in Afghanistan any more than it’s working here at home. And as I argued recently at The Week, the Pentagon itself is long overdue for a full audit, as its finances are in a state of persistent disarray that facilitates exactly this sort of debacle.
AP
