We wrote a lot last year and early this year about serious problems within the State Department's embassy-building unit, the bureau of Overseas Building Operations, particularly those involving the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and its prime contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co. So we were eager to read a new report by the State Department's Inspector General that arrived in our email in-box this morning. (Thanks to an anonymous helper....)

The report presents a mixed picture of the state of affairs at OBO, as the bureau is known, but a couple of things jump out at us:

_ The IG report finds that State's ambitious plans to construct 150 new embassies worldwide by 2018, at a cost of $17.5 billion, may be in peril. The modern new facilities are meant to replace aging, less secure posts in the wake of the East Africa embassy bombings a decade ago.

But the report warns that "Escalating construction, commodity, labor costs, and the depreciation of the dollar threaten to prevent the attainment of that very important goal. Either the program must be scaled back, additional resources identified, or the program streteched beyond 2018." It cites an internal OBO memorandum citing a dramatic increase in the cost of overseas construction.

Since the program began in 2004, 56 new facilities have been completed, and another 34 are under construction. (Those figures are as of February 2008).

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Charles Williams, who resigned as OBO's head at the end of last year in the wake of the Embassy Baghdad problems, is given a lot of credit by State Department and congressional officials for getting so many buildings built -- and a lot of criticism for his imperious and closed management style. (More on that in a sec....).

_ The report also highlights troubles for a couple of projects we've been keeping our eye on, the new Embassy in Libreville, Gabon and a consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia. Both were being built by a Rockville, Md-based firm named Grunley-Walsh LLC in conjunction with ... you guessed it ... First Kuwaiti, the firm harshly criticized for its construction of $740 million Embassy Baghdad.

US diplomats in Gabon told the Inspector General that the "contractor, on site 11 months, had been unable to complete temporary facilities and was struggling through the rainy season." The project in Indonesia "was three months behind schedule after the U.S. contractor was sold."

This gets a bit convoluted, but as we wrote a year ago, Grunley-Walsh's international business was sold to a group that included a former senior First Kuwaiti operations manager. The outifit has since been named Aurora LLC, but employees there seem to be still using Grunley-Walsh e-mail addresses.

(Aurora bid this year to build a new U.S. mission in Dubai, but was not awarded the contract).

_ Finally, the report gives high marks to Richard Shinnick, who took over as OBO's interim director, after Gen. Williams' resignation. "He quickly corrected a number of organizational deficiencies and improved coordination and communication between regional bureaus, overseas posts, and other agencies," the 208-page document says.

There are some kind words for Williams, too, but also some implied criticism of the former director, although not by name. "The previous Director brought much needed discipline to the overseas buildings organization, but was perceived as not tolerating dissent or criticism," it says in part.

Read the whole report. I especially like the bit (Page 168) about the embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which lacks a reliable water source. When crews went to drill a well, the underground aquifer shown in pre-construction reports "unfortunately ... was not found." The Embassy relies on trucked-in water to supply 6,000 gallons daily to operate chillers for the embassy's air conditioning system. OBO, in a comment on the report, said it has begun a world-wide initiative to replace some water-cooled AC chillers with air-cooled ones, and "installation is currently underway" in Freetown. 

   For some time, U.S. government agencies have been using data-mining _ computerized searches of personal information stored in massive online corporate and government data bases _ to detect potential terrorist plots.

   The idea is that examinations of email, telephone, credit card, tax, travel, medical records and other information might detect patterns indicating terrorist activity, especially given how al Qaida and other extremist groups rely on the Internet to communicate.

   But data-mining of personal data also raises profound issues of personal privacy and lawfulness, and a new report by the National Research Council, a leading advisory body to the government, also questions the effectiveness of such techniques.

   "Successfully identifying signs of terrorist activity in these masses of data is extremely difficult," says the 352-page report entitled "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists." It is the product of an exhaustive two-year study by scientists, legal experts, engineers and other experts that was commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security and National Science Foundation.

  The report, written by a committee co-chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry, offers  a framework that government agencies can use to assess their data-mining programs.

  "The information sought by analysts must be filtered out of the huge quantity of data available (the needle in the haystack problem)" and "terrorist groups will make calculated efforts to conceal their identity and mask their behaviors, and will use various strategies such as encryption, code words, and multiple identities to obfuscate the data they are generating and exchanging," the report continues.

   "Because the data being analyzed are primarily about ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses, false positives can result in invasion of their privacy," the report warns. "Such intrusions raise valid concerns about the misuse and abuse of data, about the accuracy of data and manner in which the data are aggregated, and about the possibility that the government could . . . inappropriately influence individuals' conduct."

   Then there's the danger that such intrusions might be unconstitutional.

   The report makes recommendations for protecting individual rights, including systematic evaluations by agencies that use data-mining for counter-terrorism of the effectiveness, lawfulness and privacy impacts of their programs. It also urges Congress to review existing law to determine ways to safeguard privacy and to restrict how personal data is used.

   "Even under the pressure of threats as serious as terrorism, the privacy rights and civil liberties that are the cherished core values of our nation must not be destroyed," the report asserts.

   Some Bush administration officials, especially those working for Vice President Cheney, might disagree.

  Webcast of press briefing:

  http://www.nap.edu/webcast/webcast_detail.php?webcast_id=353

Just the mention of Gen. David Petraeus’ name in this town will send soldiers, pols and journalists alike scurrying toward his direction. And so it was when someone in the Pentagon press area mentioned this morning that the former MNF-I commander would be speaking at the State Department. We all ran over to our desks and turned on the Pentagon channel to watch as Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker received the Distinguished Service Award, the State Department’s highest honor. 

While we were all hanging on every word Petraeus uttered, it was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who made the most interesting comment of the ceremony: “Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is certain in this life. And success in Iraq is not a sure thing.”

Why did she drop that statement into her comments, I wondered. If violence is down and political progress is taking shape, why is one of the chief backer of this war now expressing doubt? Perhaps she was reinforcing Petraeus’ long-held view that the situation in Iraq is “fragile and reversible.”

Or maybe it was a subtle reference to campaign rhetoric. After all, one of the biggest differences between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain is over the war and whether the U.S. is on the path to success.  McCain has said the U.S. winning; Obama is not as convinced.  Perhaps Rice was calling for a more sophisticated discussion on the future policy in Iraq.

She then went on to define success: “We can now see a glimpse of what success will look like: an Iraq at peace with itself, secure in its region, with a democratic government that can defend itself and sustain itself eventually without international support. This has been our goal all along, and now it is emerging -- slowly, imperfectly, but it is emerging. And the triumph of peace and freedom in Iraq will be a beacon of hope in the broader Middle East.”

But if Iraq does not reach this level of success, then what will be an acceptable level of violence, security and political progress for the U.S. to leave, I wondered.  Is there one? And at that point, can the U.S. claim success? What Rice’s comments told me is that this nation is still debating what success in Iraq really means.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Gen. David McKiernan as commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. On its face, this does not seem like big news. After all, Gen. McKiernan has been the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan for four months, and all this confirmation does is change his title.

But at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan, this was long-awaited good news. Because, believe or not, up until yesterday, McKiernan was not actually in command of all U.S. troops there. That’s right-- the top U.S. commander didn’t actually command some U.S. troops.

With more than 40 nations serving in Afghanistan, the force structure set up somehow evolved into a complex matrix. There are forces under ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) control, others under U.S. control. And nothing is a simple as it seems. Some of the 101st Airborne soldiers serving in Afghanistan reported to ISAF; others answered to McKiernan. And sometimes McKiernan answered to U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the region and other times he reported to U.S. European Command, which is in charge of NATO. It was so confusing that top officials at the Pentagon often got it wrong, especially when describing future deployments. Listen to Pentagon officials talk about it long enough and you will think they have switched topics and are describing Afghanistan’s complex, nuanced tribal system.

The Pentagon was eager to streamline the organizational chart and put McKiernan is charge of all U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It submitted its proposal to Congress Sept. 8. The hope was that this change would happen a few days after that. But then the bailout crisis happened and the Senate delayed the vote to debate the pending financial bill. 

But now, finally, McKiernan will only wear one hat and U.S. troops will answer to one commander. Now, if only they could streamline the strategy.

A Spanish radio station has published on its web site what it says is a 2005 Spanish Defense Ministry intelligence report _ replete with official insignia and stamped "confidential" _ that says Pakistan's premier intelligence service supplied the Taliban with explosives with which to assassinate senior Afghan officials.

News reports say the Spanish government declined to comment on the document. Such silences usually speak for themselves.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have long privately alleged that officials of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate continued supporting the Taliban after Islamabad officially ended its patronage of the Islamic movement following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The document published on the web site of Cadena Ser, Spain's main station for news and information, appears to be the first official report to enter the public domain that makes that allegation. There are more than 700 Spanish troops with NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied ISI complicity with the Taliban post-Sept. 11, although the agency's director was replaced this week under pressure from the United States. The shakeup follows charges by unnamed U.S. officials that ISI operatives were involved in the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. The Afghan government also accused the ISI of complicity in a June 2008 attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai.

The document published by Cadena Ser is dated August 2005. It says that the ISI supplied improvised explosive devices to the Taliban "to assassinate high-level" Afghan government officials "from a distance."

"They (Taliban) are going to place them (bombs) in vehicles although their targets have not been specified," says the document.

The document says it "is possible" that the ISI was training Taliban fighters to use improvised explosive devices at camps inside Pakistan.

The use of the devices in Afghanistan was "inspired" by the use of similar bombs in Iraq, it says.