Neil Gordon – Investigator, POGO: “This week, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released its 26th Quarterly Report to Congress. The last quarter saw great accomplishments in Afghanistan, as well as a disturbing reminder of our government’s obsession with secrecy. The final three months of 2014 marked a milestone in Afghanistan, with NATO formally ending its 13-year combat mission. Combat forces were replaced by the Resolute Support Mission (RSM), a much smaller, U.S.-led NATO force that will train and advise the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), in which the U.S. has invested $65 billion. Congress has appropriated $107.5 billion for Afghanistan’s reconstruction since 2001, more than $15 billion of which has yet to be spent. The quarter also marked a more troubling milestone. For many years, SIGAR kept Congress and the public informed about our $65-billion investment in the ANSF by regularly reporting on the effectiveness of the Afghan military and police. That all changed this month when the RSM began to retroactively classify most ANSF data, including information about troop strength, salaries, training, equipment, and infrastructure projects. SIGAR will now publish this data in a classified appendix that only those with a high-level security clearance can read. RSM commander U.S. Army General John F. Campbell’s claim that releasing such information could endanger American and Afghan lives is ludicrous: this data, which is not considered a secret by the Afghans, has been included in every SIGAR quarterly report for the past six years. (We would be remiss if we didn’t point out the equally ludicrous practice by the Department of Defense Inspector General of keeping its assessments of the ANSF classified.)”