following the ceremony, stadium exit gates will open immediately after the end of the thunderbird performance. we ask you remain in your seats until the announcement is made that the gates have been opened. we are live in colorado springs. president trump will be speaking to the 61st graduating class from the u.s. air force academy. until the ceremony begins here in colorado springs, we will bring you a portion of today's washington journal. this is the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction joining us to talk about efforts afghanistan. remind people about your job specifically. guest: i am the inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction. spenthat means, we have $132 billion over the last 18 years trying to rebuild that

country, to make it self-sufficient so we could keep the taliban and terrorists out and never be a launching point. i don't do the reconstruction, i have a staff of about 200 auditors, criminal investigators, accountants, et cetera afghanistan,e in the rest are in the united states and we try to prevent fraud, waste and abuse. host: are we closer to that goal? guest: are we -- we are getting there. not as close as we would like it to be. we have accomplished a lot over those 18 years. agencycy is a temporary that will eventually go out of existence. job.uld have done a better andve been here before cited some examples of the horror stories but at least we

have an inspector general who works full-time in our staff does a pretty good job of trying to prevent fraud. host: party your job is to put out reports on the status. one of the reports that just came out, you say when it comes to the possibility of peace, you write the return of spring heralds renewal and in afghanistan, the return of a traditional fighting season between the afghan government and the taliban resurgence he. spring 2019 may see a break in the clouds. can you expand on that? guest: this is the first time we are getting close to a negotiated peace. we support it. i think all americans and afghans would like to have a lasting and fair sustainable peace. we have negotiators negotiating with the taliban that have met with -- that have met a number of times. the difficulty is the afghan government is not participating

because the taliban don't want them there. there are a lot of tricky issues that have to be resolved and we highlight them in a report i think you are alluding to. we list the risks for the first time of reconstruction and also the piece, if we don't take care of some of these problems. host: when it comes to the taliban itself, is this idea of reintegrating them in government and society? guest: absolutely. is theree first things will still be a need for security forces in afghanistan and the afghans have been fighting hard but they have been losing territory. they have been fighting for years. you are going to have to have security even if you have peace. the taliban are not monolithic. it is not one organization where everyone follows the rules. you also have other terrorist groups out there.

you have to reintegrate those 60,000 plus tell who have been fighting the government into -- taliban who have been fighting the government into society. that is going to cost money. host: our guest here until 10:00 to answer your questions about afghanistan, particularly reconstruction efforts. if you want to ask a question, (202)-748-8000 for democrats, (202)-748-8001 for republicans,. (202)-748-8002 for independents. comment on to reconstruction specifically, you can call us at (202)-748-8003. yet saying no breakthrough and they are also taking place in moscow. talk about russia's role in this. guest: i don't really know what is going on, other than the press reports. it is interesting that the

russians are involved. we all know the former soviet union invaded afghanistan and had to leave. a report you put out noted it was high risk and widespread insecurity. tell us why. guest: there are 30 some terrorist groups operating in afghanistan. even if you negotiate with the taliban, you still have to deal with isis. you still have a problem of corruption, a problem of narcotics. it is the largest producer of heroin in the world. we also have to deal with the issue of how the taliban are going to treat women. of us in they goal coalition, to improve the lives of women and girls in afghanistan. today aftereven

spending billions of dollars, it is still a very poor place to be if you are a woman. the taliban, we know from their activities in the past, this is really, this could destroy everything if they go back to their evil ways and that is one of the risks we highlight, because the coalition is not going to support -- they may not support financially the afghan government, even if the taliban is part of it, if they are allowed to go back to their evil ways of how they treated women. host: under the topic of insecurity, you talk about the civil policing capability. where are we with the investment? guest: the police in afghanistan is one of the more corrupt agencies. we devoted a lot of time and toort to training the police be paramilitary police, not to

do normal policing. they will be the face of the afghan government. that is one of the areas where you have to reform the policing. host: what is the biggest hurdle? guest: the training. rampant corruption. do simpleot able to law enforcement functions. the military is a little better, but they have not been trained in the rule of law and governance. host: is that the job of u.s. forces or are there other factors? guest: it has been a function of the u.s. government. we have a report coming out. the problem is nobody really handles police training that well. this is a nato operation. there are some countries in nato which can do it better and have done it in the past but they have not been involved as much. but that a deal killer is something we have to focus on. for your listeners and viewers,

what we are saying is don't allme once there is peace, of these problems disappear miraculously. you still have to deal with the security situation, with corruption, with narcotics, with women -- the issue about how women are being treated. you still have to deal with oversight which is very difficult for the u.s. and coalition to oversee how the money is being spent. we don't disappear. plan now, not the day after the peace treaty. we should be planning now and that is why we issued that report. host: what level of planning is there now? guest: there is planning being done and we are glad to hear it, by dod but congress has to be involved. congress appropriates the money and oversees how the money is being spent. everyone needs to focus on these

high-risk, plan how you will handle them. our standing goal is lasting peace. a lasting fair peace treaty in afghanistan. you have to address these issues. host: our guest is with us until 10:00. our first caller from silver spring, maryland. you are on. caller: i have a question. once the united states decides to leave afghanistan, who is going to control the billions of dollars in minerals that afghanistan has? guest: i did not hear that. host: who will control the billions of dollars in minerals. guest: we hope the afghan government will. on wase caller honed in a very important risk and that is economic development. those minerals are in the ground. they are not worth anything in the ground. you have to get them out and

process them. the problem is that most of those minerals are in areas where the terrorists control the terrain. that is why we talk about security and economic development. afghanistan could be a wealthy country, self-sufficient, if it can control the minerals and allow foreign investment in. right now many foreigners do not want to invest enough in a stand because of the security situation, because of poor laws and corruption, but if they can address those three, those minerals will help in a stand pay for their peace. host: so they don't have the infrastructure for that currently. guest: they don't. roads,d railroads, safe laws that protect investors. the investors have to come from somewhere else. who is going to invest enough in a stand if your rule of law is

precarious -- in -- invest in afghanistan if your rule of law is precarious? these are all interconnected. risksare some of the high we have identified. host: does oil fall into that? guest: it is not so much oil as heavy minerals. there is some oil and natural gas but that is not the big one. host: let's hear from steve, afghan war vet. caller: good morning. i want to say i was there in 2008, 2009, 10 and 11 as part of the reconstruction team. i understand this immensely. i admire your work.

said, what i carried back from me and still haunts me lost where the people trying to do nationbuilding and supporting the military-industrial complex. generals get more stars because they spend more money and the state department gets more powerful because they are spending more money. that is something i regret. i came home with a great anger toward my government that my guys died trying to build a nation. what do you want this country to look like? 1920's america? 1980's america? 2011 america? what year do you want us to make this resemble in government, industry, and how many trillions of dollars spent? we need to come home. when it came to the taliban, i

had cease-fires with a tele-band in my third tour, having finally come to understand what it is we need to do, to the point that general petraeus was sending his people to find out one of my doing to get these fires lit. if he just understood his enemy. a tele-man one of two parties and frankly i did lots of deals with a tele-band and i would trust them more than the karzai gang that we put in power. at least the tele-would give you a straight honest answer and adhere to what it is they said they would do. if they didn't like us, they were suited us but if they said they would do it, you could count on it. host: we will have to leave it there. guest: first of all, i want to thank you as a fellow american for your service, dedicated service. i also think you hit a lot of important points.

i can't really address the issue of the military-industrial complex. i don't think i agree with you totally on that one but i am concerned and i think our reports highlight the problem of been aanning, that has problem from day one, and not really knowing what we wanted to accomplish. the third thing is, we may have tried to turn this country into little america. you talked about whether it should be 1880's, 1940's or 2010. we did not really go in with a true understanding of what we wanted to accomplish and devoted our resources. we spend a lot of our time looking at programs which make absolutely no sense. part of it is because there is poor planning and part of it is because we start spending the money and once you start

spending, it is hard to stop it. i understand your feelings. i understand why there is a desire to get out. i don't do policy. no inspector general does policy. we get the policy from congress and the president and then we see how well we are doing to meet that goal. the goal now is to get in a peace treaty with the taliban and the other terrorists so we have a lasting peace in kenaston -- in afghanistan so we can start withdrawing our troops. we are looking at that and i think we all agree that that is a good goal, a lasting peace in afghanistan. host: you talked about issues of planning and preparation. what does that mean for the teams that are there? is it -- is there job hobbled by

that -- is their job hobbled by that? guest: yes. i know soldiers who went out there and people in the embassy, they say we have a program here but it does not make sense. i know contractors have come to me saying this contract is -- stupid, i will perform it, but it makes no sense. dollars millions of transporting rare white italian goats biplane to have them breed with afghan goats. that made no sense. we talked to expert that breeds goats and he said this was ridiculous, but somebody had this idea that sounded good on paper and spent the money. timeould have spent more talking to the afghans and more time listening before we spent

all the money. host: this is from marilyn, independent line, stephen -- maryland, independent line, stephen. caller: i have seen you a lot of times on c-span, i appreciate everything. , how just wondering effective has the money that has been spent to eradicate the i am trade or control -- not sure how they are defining it. how effective has that been and has there been any fallout from the child succeed to be -- child sex abuse report that came out a couple years ago? guest: thank you, two good questions. our countery it but narcotics program has been the greatest failure. we spent over $8 billion and we have little to show. government will come back and tell you, but we

have made arrests and seizures. ultimatelyat, but the amount of opium that is produced and the amount of heroin that is exported is bigger now than when we started. i look at inputs, outputs and outcomes. the outcomes have been horrendous. we have failed miserably. i am not pollyanna shabbat this. -- this is a tough job. i worked on the hill with others who have looked at fighting drugs down in columbia and and peru anduador those have taken years to do. turning to the issue, talking at the report we issued request of about 140 members of congress, wanting to see how well the lahey act was being up

lamented in afghanistan. the lahey acts, is named after senator lahey, current senator from vermont, rightly so, and congress passed it sometime ago, that no money, no federal u.s. assistance money could be spent by military foreign military units or foreign police units who violate human rights. in afghanistan, there is this horrible practice which most afghans hate but is a practice and unfortunately out in the hinterlands, it is prevalent, of predationsentation -- on little boys. dididn't assessment -- we an assessment. the u.s. did not have good

policies in place to enforce the lahey act. they have improved. whether thathas -- is still going on, i can't say because in part we don't have a presence out in the countryside where many of these actions occur. that is how i can answer that question. it is a very good statute. it should be enforced and i think our military is trying to enforce it as best they can but it is ultimately up to the afghans and the afghan government. this is a human rights elevation -- violation, the rape of small boys and of kenaston. host: how much money have we invested in that? over $1 billion, the coalition has spent that much or more. e issue,ole bocce boz i don't know how much was spent. most of it is to train our soldiers and state department and eight officials to see it, report it and investigate it.

host: for the money spent on women, what does that go to? guest: the biggest chunk of money went to a program called promote. it was rolled out by the prior administration with great fanfare that it would be the largest women's program that the unit states had ever conducted in the world -- united states had ever conducted in the world. it was going to train tens of thousands of women and improve their lives. we did an audit for it. i recommend anyone interested and go online and look at the promote audit. it was a failure. it oversold. it did not focus on the afghan imen, did not really -- remember talking to the president's wife about it and she was beside herself about how

foolish the program was because it was designed by americans in northern virginia and did not reflect the reality on the ground. the reality on the ground is an afghan woman in some village once the right to walk out of her -- wants the right to walk out of her house by herself, not get a certificate that says you attended a training program. the main focus was to westernize women, afghan women in the major cities. that is not where 80% of the afghan women live. the president's wife said if you want to do an afghan women's program, you should train the men, because the men are the problem. the women want their rights. they want to be lifted up. it is the men who are suppressing the rights of women. host: how does it get that far that if you know going in that the planning for this program won't result in the end result,

how does that get that far? guest: that is the question we ask every time. we asked what were they thinking, and the problem is the decisions in washington, a lot of it is just the way our government works. the two-year budget cycle. you come up with a program and by the time it is designed, two years or more have gone down the pipe. nobody really considers about asking the afghans. that was one of the first things. i've been doing this for seven years. i came there and was amazed at the number of projects we built where the afghans did not know about it until we gave them the keys to the building. that is how ridiculous it was. part of it is our reward system. the individuals designing this get rewarded for designing the program whether it works or not. i have had a number of contracting officers, u.s.

contracting officers, dedicated contracting officers. we tend to pooh-pooh contractors, but there have been more contractors killed in afghanistan who worked for american companies, then american soldiers -- than american soldiers. they are in the front lines carrying this out. i have had contractors telling bylook, i don't get rewarded raising concerns about how stupid a program is. i get rewarded by implementing or fulfilling the contract whether it succeeds or not. the system or the way we do work in the government is really at fault. host: this is the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction. our next caller is thomas in maryland, independent line. caller: ima retired senior am aary officer -- i

retired senior military officer. i am a behavioral therapist. i can't help but hear you talk about who gets rewarded. why are we not relentlessly linking the programs we think are of value, if we are able to pitch them, to either their economic reward or the contingency of something they want? if they say we are not interested in improving women's welfare in afghanistan or it seems they are not and i say this as a social worker, why don't we sort of put on the big boi britches and say there seems to be a cultural or religious difference of opinion and we are not going to do well here? why don't we be honest about the point that if we don't continue to stay of -- stay in afghanistan, china will be glad to take that territory and not give a darn about human rights?

iraq, iin iran and agree with the caller that said we need to dispense with nationbuilding and go behavioral early with what we want from a country. we are not as honest as the british were. we are not into colonialism but we have this allusion that we can democratize, something they are not interested in. they have a religion itself that does not promote the idea of being straightforward with someone that is a current or future enemy. can you address that? thank you for your service. guest: i have to agree with almost everything you said. of the new head of dfid. that is the british aid program and they are the gold standard on development. there is a member of parliament who i met and he wrote a book

called the place between. afghanistanross right after the taliban were kicked out. i am not getting a percentage of his royalties but read that book and he raises every issue you do. it is a bit of this hubris we have, that we can turn another country into little america. point that isond the mendacity. those of the two words i would describe our experience in afghanistan. hubris and mendacity. we lie to ourselves and to the american people. we came in and oversold what we could do in a short time. like that thing with the goats. we sold congress that we were going to change the industry for raising goats in six months, nine months, because we have a

two-year probation cycle. the person we interviewed who was an expert on it, who was hired by this program and then quit discussed said it takes 20 years to do that. ,he way our system is set up you go to afghanistan for a year, maybe. you have to show success because you want a promotion. every year someone will go over and say this program before was horrible but it is going to succeed because i want to show it. the problem and this is why i go back to what i said before, many of the problems we see in afghanistan are problems that we create. we shoot ourselves in the foot because we have an hr system, human relations system, how we hire and fire people is broken. how we procure things is broken and not just in it in a stand

but here in the united states. how we design programs is broken. how we reward people is broken. we just do it again in afghanistan and it is like on steroids. have $130 billion we slated for reconstruction. guest: it is actually a bargain. host: how much goes to the government or does it -- how does it get to the government? guest: that is another good point. , we of the money we spend do the contracting. then there is money we call on budget. when we cut a check to the afghan ministry of finance and they do the contracting, it is the on budget money. if you think we are bad in our contracting, if you think our incentives are bad, go into afghan government contracting and holy mackerel. you have never seen anything

like afghan contracting. improving but we lose visibility. , and wer thing is i have law enforcement authority, fbi, irs agents who can actually make arrests. i lose my legal authority to do that if the money goes on budget. because ofrisks afghans committing crimes on afghans with u.s. money, i lose my jurisdiction. that is what one of our risks are as we go into a peace negotiation and a piece is developed, they will be fewer americans there to mind the store, watch the money. there is a tendency that we are going to ship more of that money on budget to the afghan government and to me, we don't have the controls in place and i

testified before a house committee that why don't you just pile up the money in a circle and burn it because it will be totally useless or almost useless to us except we will feel good that we gave the money but it will be totally useless to the afghans. host: a war veteran from afghanistan in florida. jack is next. caller: i appreciate your spirit and spunk. why is that the words you say don't get illuminated? i am back from afghanistan because i am trying to get money owed to afghans from government contractors. lakeshore's, the government contracted money that was not given to the afghans. areyou tell me why we hurting ourselves, shooting ourselves in the foot by not allowing the money that is owed to afghans and builders who did

not get paid as the contractors? how can we get to the -- how can we get the money to them? give them a do not penny is a day they become a bad guy. we are there to make more good guys but we are making more bad guys. guest: you hit a good point and we are doing research on that. we have done some investigations in the past about afghan subcontractors not being paid. i would love to talk to you more personally and if you want to go on our hotline and mention my name and mention this, we will get back and talk to you about how we can help. you are correct. if an afghan contractor does not get paid, he is screwed by a american or foreign contractor, then we just turned somebody into a taliban recruit. you're absolutely correct about that.

hotline -- please contact me. i would like to follow up, as well as some of the other callers who called in. we don't have a monopoly on good ideas and we don't have a monopoly on facts and information. if any of your callers have facts or information, served in afghanistan or solve problems or are suspicious because a colleague of theirs came back and all of a sudden he is driving around in a mercedes and he shouldn't be, call us because we can try to do something. we will reach out to those people who have stolen money from the american taxpayer. host: is that a real situation you got from this tip line? guest: yes. we get a lot of information from that tip line and afghanistan. host: give me an instance.

guest: one had to do with a soldier who came back and all of a sudden his neighbor saw him driving and fancy cars and buying fancy guns and buying a new house. somebody picked up the phone and called us and said this is suspicious. we have had ex-spouse is talking about, you should have seen the money that came back in the mail or for different occasions. we had some guy sending some of his ill-gotten gains back. he took hundreds of thousands in bribes and would hum -- hide the money in electronics and ship them back so it looked like he of radio and it was full of cash. annex spouse said -- an ex-spouse said do you want to follow that up, and we did. we have 30 some people in

afghanistan and we are better known ineptness stand -- better known in afghanistan than we are here. host: this is from virginia. ko. are on with john sop caller: i know you talked about afghan women. i am an afghan woman and i lived that life before the taliban as a child. and young a teenager woman during the time that the taliban were gone. women not going back. trying. you guys hear them that they are not liking this tea stuff -- this piece talk and they are not even a part of it and no one hears them. at the same time, you say you

have spent so much money on women and child. how much did you spend on education, which is the base of any kind of successful situation in any country? it is the root of it. spend onmoney did you women's health and hygiene? how much did you spend on stopping child marriage? put onh focus did you women's equality and running the government, to be part of the government? government is saying you did not even involve them in the piece talk. it is kind of like between the u.s. government and the taliban. the second point i was whog to say, do you know supports them?

get militaryy support, the money, the guns? i just want to know about these things. host: thank you for your call. callerlet me correct the 's question a little. i don't give up money in afghanistan. we oversee it. the question is not how much money have we spent, it is how much the united states and coalition have spent. we have spent billions of dollars on education and health care. those have been two key elements of the usaid and the donor community. i don't have those figures offhand. if you go to our website and look at our quarterly reports, we total those numbers up but it is into the billions. we are also spending money on

paying for doctors, nurses, paying for salaries for teachers. that is a big portion of the assistance. quite a bit of money was spent. whether it was well spent, we have some questions about that. where to question is the tell a man or terrorists get their funding. they get a lot of funding from extortion, kidnapping and narcotics right in afghanistan. they do get funding from outside afghanistan. they get support from other organizations. i don't really do counterterrorism per se, so i think you could probably find those numbers in testimony if it comes out from either our military or state department or intelligence agencies. california,in republican line.

thatr: they say afghanistan is the graveyard of empires since alexander the great. i guess that is wire -- that is where america is heading as long as we stay there. they also say that when they build a road, they blow it up and we build a school, they blow it up. it will always be like this. as far as the boys thing is reenactmenthat is a of if you read the koran, it is a description of islamic version of paradise. you will see where the boys come from. virgin boys are highly prized in the muslim paradise. read the koran. you will see where that comes from. guest: i don't know what the question is. int: we do have a comment from twitter.

guest: i am not part of the negotiating team. my office does not do that. what i hear from afghans. i go over there a lot and what i hear from the press is that they are not at the table. that is a concern. i know a lot of afghan women and men have expressed to me that they are not at the table being heard. the afghan government is not at the table either. host: you said when it comes to data collection, one of the things that will not be part of that is how much control is by the taliban. can you expand on that? guest: that is a concern we have. weour quarterly report, noted this is the first time the u.s. government is not collecting information on the territorydistricts or

that is controlled by the taliban or the afghan government. nor are they collecting information on the population under control of the afghan government or taliban. why is this significant? this is significant because last year or the year before last, our senior military officer, general nicholson, a great guy, a great military leader, articulated to congress and the twoican people that the tests for success or failure in afghanistan are the amount of territory controlled by the afghan government and the population. he said you could judge our work in afghanistan by looking at territory and population. by 2019, the afghan government

will control 80%. that was the goal and he said that is the test to hold us to. now all of a sudden we are not collecting data on it. me the samed question at a hearing in congress. i said to me, you have to ask the government why they are not collecting data because we don't collect the data. it is like going to a football game and halfway through they turn off the scoreboard and say the score is not important. , and iuses us concern believe in transparency and i believe in what lincoln said. give the american people the facts and we will be free. i think the american people have a right to know how well we are spending your money, my money. these indications of success or failure are now

classified or we are not collecting it. the american people, when they read our quarterly reports or they hear testimony, they don't know how well we are doing the fault inhat to me is a becauseican government, the american taxpayer has a right to know how their money is being spent. host: from fort lauderdale, florida, independent line. caller: hello there. i guess it isko, kind of love-hate because whenever i hear him tell about these boondoggles and money that goes to waste, it also makes me sick but i am glad to hear about it. the main reason for my call is because the women shelter has come up a couple of times this morning. do you remember that back before the russian invasion, when we

chose the taliban or the guys that were fighting the russians tooth and nail as our allies, at least in the cities, afghanistan, the women were living and getting modernized. they had jobs, they did not have to wear those hoods. they were making progress if not already having had made progress. once the russians came in and destroyed their society and we kind of handed it to the taliban and let them run wild after the russians were gone, that is when this happened. these religious people in the middle east, those people don't want to modernize. any place that did modernize generally was with a strong hand like a rock. -- like iraq. they were pretty secularized but

we did not like the guy who was doing it. you look at saudi arabia and they don't give their women any freedom there and we give them billions of dollars in arms because they kind of support us. host: what would you like our guest to address? caller: how is it that this agency keeps running considering how our government hates whistleblowers and doesn't like it when they get exposed for doing stupid things like throwing billions of dollars into wasteful projects and then get caught? asked that glad you question. it is something that you should be proud of and we should all be proud of as americans. i am an inspector general. i am an independent inspector general. i may be more independent than others and that is because --