It might be the world's most expensive gas station — not to mention a gross misuse of taxpayer money, according to a top government watchdog.

The lead oversight team monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan has found the Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost roughly $500,000. The discovery came as part of a broader investigation into allegations of criminal activity within the DOD's premiere program to kick-start the Afghan economy.

"It's fright-night at the Pentagon," John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), told FoxNews.com, calling the spending "outrageous to the taxpayer."

At issue is spending by the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations, known as TFBSO or the Task Force, which ended in March 2015. But most alarming, according to Sopko, is the DOD's failure to answer questions about the $800 million program and its claim the Task Force's employees no longer work for the DOD.

"I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a program," said Sopko, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President Obama in 2012 to watch over spending in Afghanistan.

"Who's in charge? Why won't they talk?" he said. "We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan."


In a report released Monday, SIGAR detailed how TFBSO's Downstream Gas Utilization Project set out to build a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station in the Afghan city of Sheberghan in 2011. The U.S. Geological Survey found in 2006 that northern Afghanistan is rich in natural gas reserves, and the Task Force sought to make the compressed natural gas commercially viable by constructing the facility -- and more broadly, helping to reduce the war-torn country's dependence on costly imported gas.

The Task Force struck a contract with Central Asian Engineering, which received just under $3 million from the U.S. government to construct the Sheberghan gas station. Sopko noted the cost of building a similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan is no more than $500,000.

But the final tab in Sheberghan would turn out to be astronomically higher.

The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station," the U.S. military told SIGAR -- with "approximately $12.3 million in direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."

Who approved all that funding and why are questions the DOD will not answer, according to Sopko.

In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Sopko asked why no one at the DOD could speak about the nearly-billion dollar TFBSO program, which had reported directly to Carter.

"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote. "Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."

Sopko was responding in part to a June 17 letter from Brian McKeon, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy. McKeon had told Sopko in response to earlier questions that "the closure of TFBSO in March 2015 and departure of all its employees have resulted in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) no longer possessing the personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD Executive Archive."

"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense," Sopko told FoxNews.com. "It’s almost like it's pixie dust."

SIGAR said it is unable to determine whether the CNG station in Sheberghan is currently operational. But government documents obtained by the oversight team show that Qashqari Oil and Gas Services -- the business that took over the station in 2014 -- did not renew its business license six months later, in November 2014.

The TFBSO was originally created by the DOD to revitalize Iraq's economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The program was redirected to Afghanistan in 2009 to lead projects supporting economic development.

Sopko said his office has received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity by the Task Force from former employees as well as "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors." He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the accusations.

A review by FoxNews.com shows at least one employee -- Joseph Catalino, the former head of the Task Force -- is still employed by the Defense Department in a senior role.

According to a congressional source, Catalino was in charge of TFBSO in Afghanistan before beginning work in June as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. The DOD's personnel office confirmed Catalino's employment and current job title.

A senior defense official, speaking on background, said Sopko and his team have access to extensive records archived with Washington Headquarters Services (WHS), and he disputed any suggestion of a deliberate effort by the DOD to conceal information.

The official, however, told FoxNews.com he could not name any current DOD employees with detailed knowledge of the gas station project and said decisions made on its construction predated Catalino’s time as head of the Task Force. The official said he did not know whether the gas station was currently functional.

Sopko said billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted to date in Afghanistan. In its quarterly report to Congress, released Friday, SIGAR said the U.S. has provided $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, yet the country remains the world's leading producer of opium.

SIGAR's report on the $43 million gas station spurred outrage among U.S. lawmakers in both parties who called for a thorough investigation into the program's finances.

"There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me."

"It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than 8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," said McCaskill, who penned a letter to Carter on Monday demanding information. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that’s been wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I’ll be thoroughly investigating."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed McCaskill's call for transparency and said, "Under the law, government employees are not authorized to spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices, receiving reports and payment vouchers."
"If those documents don't exist, that's a huge problem," Grassley said. "The Defense Department needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible for a colossal waste of tax dollars."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/02/afghanistan-43m-gas-station-colossal-waste-us-taxpayer-money/?intcmp=hpbt1

It's just more $25,000 hammers and $40,000 toilet seats

The "supposedly" hidden black budget funded by the peoples money that pays for the opium exports so it doesn't come out of the CIA's profits.

It's not new. Look at Hitlery's missing $60M while Sec of State......

Or Rumsfeld's $2T that came up missing on 9/10/2001 that was just swept under the rug after 9/11 when the accounting wing of the pentagon and the offices in the twin towers where the files were kept (on Enron and other large corp ponsi schemes too) were destroyed on 9/11

Or the dump truck full of gold bars found in the collapsed tunnel under the WTC after 9/11

But it's all just CT..... even though it made national news for a few days before forgotten...

Anyone still think another Bush or Clinton is a good idea?

again, and the libtards just keep being tards...


i wonder how much better that money would been for some of the people over here?

makes me sick.

How about a Cruz/Fiorina ticket?

i have an issue with that fiorina lady... she's a big part of the problem, not a solution...


when she was fired from HP, she accepted a 53 million dollar severance package...


and who payed for that? anyone that bought a HP computer, printer, ink, anything that says Hewitt Packard on it...

ok, how about a Cruz/Carson ticket?

i like carson... i'm not real sure about cruz

Carson too timid and inexperienced for potus but smart. Cruz, smart, experience and ain't afraid to standup for what he believes.
We have to get rid of Cornyn though, a frigin Rinho a$$.

carson impressed me with his intelligence, tho i'm not sure why you see him as timid...

cruz has never impressed me with anything, he just seems to be another politician saying what he thinks that will get him a few extra votes..

Maybe because Carson is soft spoken gives that impression to me. But, don't get me wrong, I like him and would vote for him. Cruz may seem that way too some but, unlike Trump, he knows of what he speaks.

Obama presidency to end with $20 trillion national debt -

Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/1/obama-presidency-to-end-with-20-trillion-national-/?page=all/

Cruz is NOT a natural born America, so he does not meet the requirements. (Born in Canada, two American parents).

Fiorina said Islam is the greatest religion that ever existed.

All the people in this country that are qualified.
And are choices suck.

This is quite serious but I'm curious, why panic now? the debt was unsustainable during the Bush presidency... I've been calling it "kicking the can down the road" for years now.

History shows how post war rebuilding contracts help the US recover after military conflicts, not so fast with Afghanistan & Iraq... Contracts have NOT been given to US corporations, there's just no money available in these still deteriorating war zones.

20 Trillion eh? consider there are only 4 trillion trees on planet earth

As a nation we have always been worried about the debt.. We had a few good years after WW-2, & then all down hill from there, IMO.
True, usually profit in war (except for people who do their dirty work).

'Kick the can' is funny but we have been hearing excuses from Obama since 2009, that he " inherited " everything negative. Geez.. He doubled it. It is one of his many legacies.
And after Friday...
The Kentuckian is accurate in his micic & criticism of Obama. This is Obama saying ' I will spend what ever I like, screw the further & your Presidents * my words *
There will be NO recovery.

In my opinion & a growing number
.... That was the plan all along
In the 1960's the USSR premier said, (not attempting to spell his name...:wink), that " America will destroy itself & rot from the inside out ".

Some of us, didn't have the polical/ media reaction of ' this guy is crazy as hell'
Some of us knew the first time Obama said his meaningless slogans ' It is all about change" & "Yes we can " & seen a political candidate with" Rock Star " admiration.......... ?

History repeating itself. IMO.
Fasten your seat belt world for the next step. Because 20 Trillion will not be our big problem... Just one of the excuses.

I want to see a Trump\Cruz ticket.

I dunno, he showed some backbone when he tore into the moderators at the debate.......

I don't know what to make of it but things don't add up

Ok Obama spent his way through... Possibly saving the US even more hardship?

maybe not

It's a hot potato from one Presidency to the next, It's the same up here
somethings gotta give

We're on par with Greece in per person debt at $35k each, are we so blind to think we're immune to financial trouble?

The US is almost double that figure to $70K per person and since we're attached to the hip with you guys geographically, you catch a cold, we get pneumonia lol

There's no easy solution and no superhero president can change that

ok gang we all know it's fubared.

how do we re verse the process?

i know there is no magic bullet,
but how do we apply brakes to get to stop so we can put it in reverse?

anybody got any realistic ideas?

Take the independent nation of Washington DC (or the corporate headquarters of the USA Corp as it is legally known), the private federal reserve bank that funds them at the peoples expense, their lawyers, lawmakers, courts and judges, and kick them out of the Republic of the USA...... and we might have a chance

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm

Ok. As a Canadian, with the luxury of watching U.S. politics from the outside, I'll provide some suggestions. You'll never implement them, but if you want to know that someone out there actually took the time to try and help, you can re-read this post. lol

1) Rule of Law-- Yeah, yeah. Everyone says it, but nobody goes to jail. Too many people being investigated simply refuse to co-operate, and those who know the truth, have no desire to come forward for fear of retribution. Congress issues a subpeona for documents, and a year later stuff that was never requested gets dumped on them to the tune of 10,000 pages worth. People are called to testify, and tell the press in advance they'll plead the fifth to every question, so why are we wasting each others time? In the case of 'big business' we had the mortgage crisis with hundreds of thousands of mortgages that never should have been written. Brokers wrote up mortgages with blatantly false numbers, and the banks didn't do credit checks. Did the brokers go to jail for fraud? Nope. Why? That little line of 'legal-eeze' on the bottom of the form that says "I hereby attest that all the information contained herein is truthful" and the signature of the homeowner who later defaulted, not the broker. So the broker is off the hook. The ex-homeowner is the fraudster because they signed the form.
2) Campaign reform--- Have all political donations go to a single fund. Parties get funded from this pool based on the average percentage of elected members they have in the Congress, Senate, and the percentage of the popular vote received in the last general election. Absolutely no money can be donated to individual candidates, or funneled from outside the country, and candidates 'books' must be open to surprise audits at any time during the campaign. ANY campaign law violations that prove money came from outside the U.S. illegally will immediately render the candidate disqualified.
3) Budget Reform-- The entire entitlement budget is up for review with no program beyond the reach of potential cuts. The gravy train has to end. Until you are serious about getting social program spending under control, the economy has no chance to recover.
4) Limited Line Item Veto-- The President will have a line item veto equal to 5% of the total budget dollar amount. Congress and the Senate with a 2/3 majority of each, can increase that veto percentage by 1% each year for the term of the President. An 8 year President could eventually have as much as 12% of the budget under a line item veto process. In any year where he does not receive this 2/3 vote, his veto percentage is frozen at the last amount he was approved for. He can also have his veto percentage lowered by 1% if the same 2/3 majority votes for the decrease.

So there's your start. Throw the corrupt politicians and fraudsters in jail. Clean up campaign donations and spending. Cut endless entitlements, and give any President a tightly regulated line item veto for the budget.