GAO Report Discloses Problems With State Department Nonproliferation Program

A Department of State program that Congress intended be used for emergency nonproliferation aid is instead being used to support some long-term programs, a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report found.

The GAO report, released April 30, evaluated the legality of the activities implemented through the State Department’s Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR). The GAO said that activities funded through the Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund (NDF) were legal but “appear to be inconsistent with expectations about the scope of the program’s mission.”

The NDF is intended to be a flexible contingency fund that can be used to react to pressing, unanticipated nonproliferation needs, not longer-term goals such as export controls, the GAO said. Apparently contravening the intent of Congress, however, a significant portion of the NDF budget has been used to fund an export control system called Tracker, as well as other preplanned and longer-term programs. In fact, at least 20 percent of the NDF’s annual budget has been allocated to the Tracker export control system, the agency found.

This comes as lawmakers, such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), have complained that NDF funds are inadequate for short-term emergencies, such as the recent initial steps to disarm Libya’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and long-range missile programs.

During a February hearing, Lugar said that “NDF is a relatively small program geared for short-term emergencies” and does not have the capacity to “undertake long-term nonproliferation efforts.”

The GAO released its findings as funding for the NDF has increased. The $34.5 million requested for NDF for fiscal year 2005 was nearly $4.5 million more than the 2004 budget and more than twice as much as NDF’s fiscal year 2003 budget. (See ACT, March 2004.)