The Trump administration failed to assess the risk of civilian deaths when it approved the sale of bombs and other weapons to Saudi Arabia last year, according to a report by the government watchdog published Tuesday.
But the State Department did not violate the arms export law when it declared a “need” to bypass Congress and push through the $ 8.1 billion arms transfer, the report said.
The State Department Inspector General’s Office “found that the department has not assessed any risks and implemented mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated with the transfer of PGMs included in the May 2019 emergency certification,” it said. report, referring to precisely guided ammunition.
Congress asked the Inspector General to examine President Donald Trump’s decision of May 2019 to take the extraordinary step of weighing the need for a 30-day congressional review of a major arms sale. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the rarely used facility to bypass Congress, declaring a state of emergency due to tensions with Iran.
The Inspector General’s report did not assess whether the emergency declaration was fair, noting that the State Department has broad discretion under the Arms Exports Act and how an emergency defense should be defined.
The probe into the Saudi armed deal played a role in Trump’s abrupt dismissal in May of then-Inspector General Steve Linick, who conducted the investigation, NBC News previously reported.
Lawmakers have launched an investigation into his arson and raised alarms about the dismissal of other generals by the government inspector, accusing the president of trying to undermine oversight of the executive branch.
The State Department said in a statement released Monday that the Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s report represented a justification for the department and that it had complied with the law.
“The transitions were essential to support the security of the Gulf region and our ally Israel against the sharp increase in Iranian aggression in 2019,” it said.
“During the OIG’s 13-month inquisition, the OIG interviewed 46 employees of the department – an astonishing expenditure of resources for taxpayers,” the department said.
Now that the report is out, the department said it hopes Democrats in Congress “and media outlets that refute their baseless allegations will publicly accept the findings of the report they have requested from the OIG and withdraw their statements immediately. . “
The report included a number of editorials, including details on the timeline of the state department’s decision-making process in the run-up to the emergency declaration in late May.
NBC News received an unedited version of the report that revealed that the State Department was considering an April 3 statement, more than a month before Pompeo informed Congress of Iran’s threats and before the emergency decision was issued on May 24.
The inspector general found that State Department officials proposed a possible emergency declaration after Pompeo asked for options on how to obtain approval for the arms transfers. On May 4, Pompeo asked “the Bureaus of Political-Military and Legislative Affairs to complete the process of certifying the emergency response by May 24, 2019,” according to the unredacted version of the report.
On May 21, Pompeo met with lawmakers to inform them about threats coming from Iran, the report said. But Democratic members later said the secretary made no mention of a possible emergency statement to clear the way for the armed deal.
“Although the potential use of the emergency authorities in the department was closely monitored, additional staff of the department, including lawyers from the Legal Adviser’s Office, were consulted prior to the secretary’s formal decision,” he said. it.
After the statement was issued in May 2019, precision-tuned bombs were among the first articles to be delivered, the unredacted report said.
But only a fraction of the armed deal was carried out at the time of the inspector general’s investigation, despite the administration’s argument that the sale was a matter of urgency, according to the report.
“At the time of OIG’s assessment, foreign partners had taken full delivery of 4 of the cases of 22 weapons transfers recorded in the 2019 emergency,” the unredacted report said.
At the time of the Inspector General’s probe, only $ 20 million in foreign military sales were included in the emergency decision entered into a general deal worth billions of dollars, the unredacted report said.
The State Department also estimates that five of the 22 cases included in the emergency decision would not start delivering until 2020 or even later, according to the unredacted report.
Lawmakers had blocked several proposed outlets of precision-guided bombs and other hardware produced by Raytheon Technologies, claiming that the U.S.-made weapon could contribute to the growing civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in Yemen’s five-year civil war.
Democrats question the declaration of emergency and accuse the administration of failing to provide evidence as to why long-standing tensions with Iran required an urgent sale of smart bombs to the Saudis.
The Saudi-led coalition has come under fire several times over its air war in Yemen by human rights groups and the United Nations.
According to UN estimates, from March 2015 to November 2018, there were 17,640 combat-related civilian casualties in Yemen, and 10,852 were caused by Saudi-led bombings.
In September last year, the United Nations said coalition strikes on a mosque and a family home killed 22 civilians. In October 2019, coalition airstrikes hit a water system supported by the United Nations that serves 12,000 people, in the fourth such strike since 2016.
