U.S. Doesn’t Vet or Assure Departure of Counterterrorism Trainees from Developing Nations

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The U.S. government spends upward of $100 million annually to provide foreign security and law enforcement personnel from developing nations with counterterrorism training but fails to vet them or assure they depart the county upon completion of the course. In some cases, the foreign nationals leave the training program unauthorized and the U.S. doesn’t bother tracking their whereabouts. Since the candidates weren’t properly screened in the first place, there’s no telling the kind of national security threat they could present.

The program is known as Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) and the U.S. State Department funds it. From fiscal year 2012 to 2017, the agency doled out $715 million to train about 56,000 security force officials from dozens of “partner nations.” Nearly 3,000 of those participants were trained at facilities in the United States with anemic oversight from the government. The goal is to enhance the capability of foreign partners to prevent acts of terrorism, address terrorism incidents and capture and prosecute individuals involved in terrorist acts. The problem is that the program itself is vulnerable from a security standpoint, according to a federal audit released this month. Participant data is inaccurate or incomplete and training facilities are susceptible to breaches and attacks, the probe found.

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