inspector general sopko for afghanistan reconstruction. weiss carver, inspector general for auditing from the department of defense, and mr. charlie lily, the deputy director of aviation, and head of aviation contracting activity from the defense logistics agency. thank you for about with us today. we'll begin with your opening statements, mr. sopko. >> thank you very much. chairwom chairwoman, ranking member speer and members of the subcommittee, i'm pleased to be here again to discuss cigar's activities in afghanistan and particularly, our review of dod's task for for business stability operations. commonly know as tfbso. and three specific aspects that the chairman asked me to look at or to comment on. the first one dealt with the construction of a compressed natural gas program in afghanistan. tfbso spent approximately $43 million to construct such a gas filling station and share afghanistan. the project was intended to take advantage of natural gas reserves and reduce the country's reliance on important gas. sigar has been unable to f

inspector general sopko for afghanistan reconstruction. weiss carver, inspector general for auditing from the department of defense, and mr. charlie lily, the deputy director of aviation, and head of aviation contracting activity from the defense logistics agency. thank you for about with us today. we'll begin with your opening statements, mr. sopko. >> thank you very much. chairwom chairwoman, ranking member speer and members of the subcommittee, i'm pleased to be here again to discuss cigar's activities in afghanistan and particularly, our review of dod's task for for business stability operations. commonly know as tfbso. and three specific aspects that the chairman asked me to look at or to comment on. the first one dealt with the construction of a compressed natural gas program in afghanistan. tfbso spent approximately $43 million to construct such a gas filling station and share afghanistan. the project was intended to take advantage of natural gas reserves and reduce the country's reliance on important gas. sigar has been unable to f

john sopko, the special inspector general for afghanistan's reconstruction. ms. jacqueline wiwicecarver, an mr. charlie lilli, the deputy director of aviation and head of aviation contracting activity from the defense logistics agency. thank you all for being with us here today. so we'll begin now with your opening statements. mr. sopko. >> thank you very much. cha chairwoman, ranking members and members of the subcommittee i'm pleased to be here to discuss sigar's activity in afghanistan and our review of dod's task force for business stability operations known as tfbso and three specific aspects of that operation that the chairwoman asked me to look at or to comment on. the first one dealt with the construction of a compressed natural gas program in afghanistan. tfbso spent approximately $43 million to construct such a gas filling station in afghanistan. the project was intended to take advantage of afghanistan's natural gas reserves and reduce the country's reliance on expensive imported gas. however, sigar has been unable to find any evidence that tfbso consi

inspector general sopko. you said in previous congressional testimony that data was missing from the hard drive provided by dod and forensic accountants were reviewing to determine if the data has been manipulated. has that review been concluded? >> yes, it has. and although we can't tell if it was manipulated, we think we don't have all of the data. and it could just be that the records are so poor that they just don't have the data. >> when the tfbso program wasn't doing well for a number of years, and yet it was on autopilot it seems to me based on your report, how from your perspective, how do we prevent the wasteful spending of almost a billion dollars on a program like tfbso when you know, a quarter of the way through, half of the way through, it's clear that it's not working? >> you know, that's a very good question. i don't have a great answer for it. reports were filed with congress. i'm not certain that those reports were accurate and were truthful and really reflected what was going on. and i'm cer

inspector general sopko, you want in previous congressional testimony that data was missing from theard drive provided by dod and forensic accountants were reviewing to determine if the data had been manipulated. has that review been concluded? simpts and although we can't tell if it was manipulated, we think we don't have the data. it could be the records are so poor, that they just don't have the data. >> when the tfsbo program wasn't doing well for a number of years, and yet it was on autopilot, it seems to me, based on your report, from your perspective, how do we prevent the wasteful spending of almost a billion on a program lie tfsbo when a quarter of the way through, half of the way through, it's clear it's not working? >> you know, that's a very good question. i don't have a great answer for it. reports were filed with consequence. i'm not sure they were truthful and really reflected what was going on. i'm shernt, you are inundated with reports. i think a critical problem you had with tfsbo, it was a new mission, and nobody planned to having extra oversight over that new miss

special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction john sopko, who was responsible for the report, said -- "fifteen years into an unfinished work of funding and fighting, we must indeed ask, 'what went wrong?'" since 2002, the u.s. has been 113 billion dollars on reconstruction efforts, more than the total spending on the marshall plan to rebuild europe after world war ii. fromsurprise visit secretary of state john kerry flew into baghdad today amidst increasing protests over the iraqi government corruption. iraqi prime minister haider al-abadi has vowed to replace most of his cabinet following weeks of demonstrations. this comes amid a continuing u.s.-airstrike campaign backing the iraqi military's attempts to retake control of mosul from isil militants. u.s. officials are also warning dam could collapse at any minute. if it collapses, hundreds of thousands of people would be at risk of drowning, and more than one million people would be displaced. in syria, activists say isil militants have kidnapped at least 170 cement factory workers in damascus. their whereabouts are unknown.