Summary: Overseas activities of U.S. Special Operations Command forces have raised concerns on the part of Congress and others that U.S. forces may be training with foreign armies without adequate civilian oversight and engaging in activities that are inconsistent with U.S. policy. Human rights advocates have also questioned whether the United States may be training foreign military personnel who have committed human rights abuses. GAO's review of available files for joint combined exchange training, attendance at command training conferences, observations of pre-event meetings, and discussions with Defense Department (DOD) officials confirmed that DOD has complied with the statutory requirement that the primary purpose of joint combined exchange training is to train U.S. special operations forces. However, DOD has not accurately reported to Congress the number of joint combined exchange trainings that were done, their costs, or their relationships to counternarcotics and counterterrorism, as required by law. In the six countries GAO visited--Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand--DOD conducted training with the knowledge and support of U.S. ambassadors who believed that these activities were consistent with U.S. foreign policy objectives in each country. Despite the involvement of embassy officials, neither State Department nor DOD headquarters' officials routinely oversaw joint combined exchange training. Both the State Department and DOD have each issued guidance for implementing legislation that restricts the use of DOD funds to train with members of foreign security force units if credible evidence of human rights abuses exists.
