Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee- Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations

Interview

Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee- Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. HANK JOHNSON (R-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For Mrs. Ward and Ambassador Herbst, were both of your offices involved in the run-up for both Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom? In the run-up for those operations were your offices involved?

MR. HERBST: No.

MS. WARD: Actually, at that time, sir, my office didn't exist, and my office has actually recently been created in its current form as of December of this year. There was a Stability Operations office before. To my knowledge they were not involved in the planning and their task and purpose was a little different from what we do. One of the things we are trying to do is look at those operations and derive the lessons from them as we make prescriptions about capabilities needed in our military forces in the future. But we weren't involved in the initial planning process.

REP. JOHNSON: So you are at -- both offices now involved in the Provisional Reconstruction Teams (sic) now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan?

MS. WARD: Sir, on my side I do not have operational oversight of those. That is conducted by the regional offices in -- the Iraq and Afghanistan offices and OSD policy. But we are staying abreast of events in the PRTs and how they're organized and how it's going -- us again for the lessons learned process so that we can be thinking about civil-military teams in the future and make sure we understand what worked and what didn't work as well.

MR. HERBST: Our office does not have responsibility for the PRTs. What we have -- are right now engaged in Afghanistan with the request of General Rodriguez and we have helped a couple of the PRTs with their planning process, and we are now applying that to the rest of the PRTs in Afghanistan.

REP. JOHNSON: Is that a formal structure or kind of an informal process that's taken place within both of your offices?

MR. HERBST: Well, we were, you might say, formally asked to take on this job and we've taken it on, and we have several people out in the field doing it. But again, we are not overall responsible for PRTs in Afghanistan.

MS. WARD: It's more informal on our side sir, but we believe we have expertise to bring to the question -- the Stability Operations Capabilities Center of Excellence, if you will, in the Pentagon. So we believe we have something to add, but mostly we're trying to make sure we integrate the lessons from those situations.

REP. JOHNSON: Mm-hmm.

It would seem that these two opportunities are great to learn from the activities in Afghanistan and Iraq with respect to future Civilian Reserve Corps operations. Is there any particular reason why the integration of your office -- of your offices with these efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq by the Provisional -- I mean, by the PRTs -- are not more formalized?

MR. HERBST: Well, when S/CRS was created in June of 2004 -- when both Iraq and Afghanistan had been going on for some time, and the resources of our office are relatively modest and the resources going into both Iraq and Afghanistan are substantial. And a decision was taken at the time by then-Secretary Powell and my predecessor that we would not be engaged in a major way in either place. That has pretty much been true since then, although as Ms. Ward said, we have been in touch with people coming out of both places for lessons learned purposes and my office is staffed with a lot of folks who had been -- who had served in those PRTs and have come to us precisely because they want to devise a better way to do this.

MS. WARD: On that, sir, I would say that the organizational arrangements for managing those efforts sort of grew up before my office existed. We -- at this point, it might merely add a bureaucratic layer. But what we try to do is contribute the functional expertise and assist in those efforts where we can.

REP. JOHNSON: Any response from the GAO?

MR. CHRISTOFF: I mean, I would agree with your premise that there is a lot that one could take from the experiences in the PRTs and to bring us to the development of the interagency process. The mere fact that you -- military had opt provide a lot of the personnel for the initial staffing of the PRTs and we're still going through a three-phase process this year to try to replace some of the military personnel that were temporarily put in place in the PRT with civilian personnel. So I think the lessons learned from PRTs can bear on how we develop this interagency process and how we think through from the very beginning the makeup of these corps at the lowest level within a country and who's going to be responsible for what.

MS. ST. LAURENT: And I would add that I also agree that that issue's very important and that the lessons from the various models of PRTs need to be looked at very carefully. The military has a process that it goes through in designing organizations and units and developing capabilities. Their shorthand is Dot and OPF, but the things -- but I think it's reflective of the kinds of things that need to be looked at for the future. What kind of doctrine or what are the mission of these organizations should they be in the future if PRTs or something similar are going to be used?

O stands for organization. How should they be organized? What are the command and control relationships? Who do they report to? What kind of training do they need? What kind of materiel and resources to do they need? What kind of personnel -- both in terms of skill levels, where they come from, the mix of contractor versus DOD versus civilian personnel and logistic support? What is the concept for providing security force protection and all other kinds of logistic support? But I think that kind of a framework would be very useful to think about in analyzing the various models that have been used to date and then where we go for the future.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source