On the recordMay 25, 2011
On February 19, 2010, a constituent of mine, Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Birchfield of Westville, Indiana, was shot and killed while on patrol by a local Afghan security contractor who had been hired, with six other colleagues, to guard a nearby construction project and road. The construction project and the security contractor were funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. While the shooter was immediately apprehended and would later admit to the shooting and be sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Afghan court, I am deeply troubled by the fact that insufficient contract oversight by our government may have lead to this tragedy. According to NCIS documents obtained by the Birchfield family through a Freedom of Information Act request, the seven Afghan guards taken into custody were found in possession of five ounces of opium and some of them were presenting symptoms of opium withdrawal. Several of the guards admitted that they had little to no training, and most of them stated they had none of the permits required for their jobs. Their employer, a subcontractor providing security for the project, admitted his employees were not properly licensed and that he did not know where he was supposed to obtain licenses. Last month, the Department of Defense confirmed to me that the project these security guards were subcontracted under was funded by U.S.…
