Americans spent more than 143 billion tax dollars to rebuild Afghanistan as the U.S. war against Islamic extremist terrorists was waged for 20 years. Approximately 30% or $43 billion dollars of our money was lost to waste, fraud, or abuse. That information was unearthed by Inspector General John Sopko, whom we’ve interviewed frequently on Full Measure. I recently spoke with him, planning a sort of Exit Interview, since he’d announced his agency was winding down early— now that the U.S. is no longer spending so much in Afghanistan. After our interview, he became one of 17 Inspectors Generals on the chopping block of the new Trump administration. A surprising move perhaps against a fierce auditor labelled by his detractors as “the Donald Trump of IGs.” Today, we look at more than 20 years of his work to save taxpayer money.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

The Islamic extremist Taliban terrorists running Afghanistan harbored Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. That drew the U.S. into what became a 20-year long war.

But even as American soldiers fought in Afghanistan, American taxpayers were forced to pour billions of tax dollars into Afghanistan for reconstruction.

That’s where John Sopko came in—appointed in 2012 by President Obama as Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. He unearthed billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

John Sopko: Well, we indicted and convicted over 150 people, for fraud, waste or abuse. We saved approximately $4 billion to the taxpayer.

Sharyl: Who made money off of all the spending?

Sopko: Oh, where do I start? I mean, our contractors made a heck of a lot of money. You know, they talk about the military industrial complex. Well, there’s also, I would call it the development complex. So you got people who are making tons of money working for various, large contractors who usually get the contracts for reconstruction, humanitarian assistance and all of that. They’re doing it right now. They’re making a ton of money. Those are basically the two big ones. And of course, a lot of Afghans who stole the money or made a profit while they were there. So that’s—everybody made money in Afghanistan.

When I recently interviewed him, Sopko had already announced an early closing of his agency now that the U.S. isn’t spending as much in Afghanistan anymore. Our interview was shortly before he and 16 other Inspectors General were fired by the new Trump administration. All recent presidents have exercised their right to replace IGs. Why Sopko? No explanation was immediately given. But his watchdog work made him powerful enemies among the U.S. agencies and contractors whose actions were sometimes exposed as fraudulent or wasteful. We covered many of those stories here on Full Measure.

Full Measure – July 2016:

Anyone flying through Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan’s capital city the past couple of years, might have seen this odd scene: a fleet of abandoned military planes parked off to the side.

Sopko: We actually asked the question, ‘What are those airplanes?’ Because you would see them right next to the main terminal in Kabul. They were all jumbled together with trees and grass growing in between them.

In October of 2014, Sopko discovered the military had scrapped the airplanes and sold the leftovers to an Afghan construction company for six cents a pound. A half-billion dollar investment of U.S. tax dollars whittled down to a measly $32,000.

Full Measure – August 2016:

Nicknamed 64K because of its size, Congress intended it to be headquarters for the 2010 U.S. military surge of 30,000 troops to fight Taliban Islamic extremists. There was just one problem:

Sopko: The Marine commander, the general on the ground running the surge said ‘I don’t want it, I don’t need it, don’t build it.’ And two other generals above him said the same thing. ‘Don’t build it, we don’t need it. We already have a headquarters. It’s a waste of money.’

Yet the project moved forward. A facility designed to be big enough for a staff of 1,200, complete with a war room and briefing theatre. But 64K never served as a surge headquarters. In fact, it was still under construction when the surge ended in 2012. Yet U.S. tax dollars continued to pour in for upgrades.

Sharyl: A couple of years ago in the press you were called the “Donald Trump of inspectors general”. I think that was intended as an insult. I’m not sure it’d be seen as that today by everybody.

Sopko: Yeah.

Sharyl: What are your thoughts of that? Are you the Donald Trump of the IGs?

Sopko: If it’s speaking truth to power, if it’s being a disruptor, which I think a lot of people accuse me of being a disruptor because I was actually telling, telling him that the Emperor had no clothes, yeah, probably am.

Sharyl: Your office was created under President Obama. So of course you worked with Obama and Trump under his first term and President Biden. What did you notice?

Sopko: The major difference was really with the Biden administration, because we had problems with the Biden administration on getting information from the State Department and USAID and I would have to say that they were the worst. I mean, we spent almost a year, year and a half trying to get information about what we were doing in Afghanistan. And we were doing it not for ourselves. We were doing it because Congress wanted that information. And the State Department’s position was the most, it was the worst position I’d ever seen on sharing information to, with a congressionally mandated request and with an inspector general. And so I’d have to say that.

Sharyl: What would you consider some of your top accomplishments?

Sopko: We were one of the first government agencies to start raising concerns, serious concerns about how the war was going. Because we were seeing it through the reconstruction, because part of reconstruction, just so your audience knows, we spent $86 billion to train the Afghan military and police. So we focused on that and we were seeing some horrible things there early on going back to almost the year I started, we started reporting on serious concerns.

One serious concern— outlined in the report Sopko did about “ghost soldiers.” We covered the story in 2017.

Full Measure – July 2017:

Sharyl: When you say “ghosts,” what are you referring to?

John Sopko: What we’re talking about are policemen, Afghan policemen, Afghan military, Afghan civil servants who don’t exist or they have multiple identity cards and we’re paying their salaries. By “we” I mean the United States and the international community.

Sharyl: What are some of the things you learned about the inner workings of our government as you tried to expose and prosecute potential crimes and wrongdoing?

Sopko: Well, what I learned is it doesn’t work and it doesn’t work very well. Our procurement system is broken, and it’s broken, not just in Afghanistan. It’s broken here in the United States. I mean, the Defense Department has been on the high-risk list for procurement and contracting as long as I’ve been in Washington. I mean, they can’t balance their books. They can’t give you an audited financial data. They’ve never been able to do it. We basically are not prepared. And that’s the that’s the lesson we should learn from Afghanistan. If we’re gonna do this again, and I believe we are, is that the countries may be different. But the way we do reconstruction in a war zone is the same. It’s the same lack of coordination, lack of planning. Most of the people went to Afghanistan, didn’t even know why they were there, our soldiers aid officials and whatever. So we really gotta change that. And the other thing is, we gotta require our people to speak the truth back to Congress and the American people about what’s going on. And that’s a major problem we’ve had.

Sharyl (on-camera): There was another IG who lost his job in the mass firings by the Trump administration, Mike Ware, the inspector general of the Small Business Administration who was tireless in unearthing COVID related fraud, no matter where the trail led. For Full Measure I’m Sharyl Attkisson. For more on this story and other Full Measure reports, listen to my podcast Full Measure After Hours wherever you like to listen.

Watch video here.