VICE (2013) s02e01 Episode Script
Afghan Money Pit & The Pacification of Rio
[Explosion.]
That's an IED? SHANE, VOICE-OVER: This week on "Vice," $100 billion of taxpayer money goes down the drain in Afghanistan.
MAN, VOICE-OVER: For some reason, when you're a bureaucrat, losing $40 million, $50 million, you'll get a promotion.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Then, the battle to clean up Rio before the Olympics.
_ [Speaking native language.]
[Speaking native language.]
[Cheering.]
MAN: Uhh! MAN, VOICE-OVER: These helicopters don't dare fly over here because two years ago, one was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun.
So, if you didn't do a patrol for one day, they would put a bomb.
MAN: Yeah.
SHANE: Let's get out of here.
At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forced a defeated Germany to pay severe war reparations as punishment.
However, the weight of these payments led to total economic collapse, political chaos, and intense nationalism, which in turn led to the rise of Hitler and ultimately the start of the Second World War.
So, after Germany's defeat in World War II, the U.
S.
and its allies took on the burden of rebuilding a ruined Europe, because after the lessons of World War I, we were determined not to make the same mistakes twice.
Ever since then, we have adopted this seemingly counter-intuitive policy of promptly rebuilding the countries that we just destroyed.
And the latest country on the receiving end of our "you break it, you buy it" philosophy is Afghanistan.
_ We're here in Washington, D.
C.
, at the offices of SIGAR, which stands for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Now, the Inspector General's name is John Sopko, and he's been stirring up a hornet's nest here in Washington because he's exposing a lot of corruption, waste, and mismanagement in Afghanistan and has caused quite a scandal.
Now, before being appointed by the president to gauge the actual scope of fraud and waste in Afghanistan, John Sopko was a famously tenacious prosecutor, renowned for helping take down large parts of organized crime here in America.
And today, he is cutting a swath through the Pentagon, using the same "take no prisoners" methods he used while fighting the Mob.
SOPKO: What's interesting here in Afghanistan, we're actually spending more money on reconstruction in little Afghanistan, it's about the size of Texas, as we did for any other country in the history of the United States, including Germany.
To date, that's been around $100 billion.
Yeah, that's about what we've spent.
More money spent on Afghanistan, nearly $100 billion, how's it going? Not well.
_ We're talking about the most corrupt country in the world.
We're finding problems time and time again by DoD, USAID, or any other government agency.
SHANE: Even cases of our tax dollars being used or falling into the hands of the Taliban.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: One of the biggest problems facing Afghanistan is electricity, because just one in 7 Afghans has any kind of regular access to electric power.
And as such, creating a national power grid has been a top priority for the government.
And as part of its reconstruction mandate, America has funded hundreds of millions of dollars to try to bring more electricity to Afghanistan.
So, upon arriving in Kabul, we went to see just how this money has been spent.
SHANE: How much did it cost? _ $300 million.
_ And how many of the power blocks are running right now? _ Right.
Now, everything's quiet, but this is humming.
What's happening here? _ From _ So, all of it is being brought in from outside.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: So, we spent over $300 million to build a power plant to power Kabul but today 100% of the power in Kabul actually comes from outside the country.
In fact, the power to run the actual power plant that we just built is being imported.
SHANE: So, it's AHMADZAI: Yes.
What runs it? _ Diesel.
Yeah.
_ Here? 9 million liters.
And this is Power House A.
_ How much is diesel per liter? I don't even know.
_ And if it's $1.
00 a liter, that means you have $9 million of fuel there.
Yeah.
But we're getting more diesel.
_ Yeah.
So, $10 million more.
Whew.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, what they're saying here is that not only did we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build the actual power plant, but that we have to buy close to $20 million worth of fuel to run the power plant that we don't use.
Why? Because it's too expensive.
_ _ _ _ So, diesel is so expensive that if you give energy to Kabul, you lose 16 cents per kilowatt.
So, it's backup.
_ Because if you run it, you lose too much money.
Got it.
Understood.
You're spending a lot of money.
[Laughter.]
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, all of this might seem like a joke, if it weren't for the fact that not only do we build power plants that we can't actually use, but in many cases we don't even collect the bills we are owed for providing the electricity.
Why? Because after and almost a trillion dollars spent on this conflict, many parts of Afghanistan are still much too dangerous for the government bill collectors to even go there.
So, who collects the money instead? The Taliban.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ SHANE: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you know we invaded Afghanistan with the sole purpose of getting the Taliban out.
And now we're building infrastructure for the Taliban to take over.
That epitomizes the problem.
A lot of times, as the U.
S.
military pulls out, the Taliban are right behind them.
Then the buildings just turn over to the insurgency.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: In an effort to see just how bad things have gotten in Afghanistan, we traveled south to Kandahar, where stories of corruption and waste have reached astronomical proportions.
SHANE: We're going into the Air Force base just outside of Kandahar, which is the home of the Taliban, where they bought Russian helicopters for about a billion dollars that don't work.
So, we're gonna go see if we can go see them right now.
I think the worst case so far of just stupid waste has been the purchase of the helicopters and the airplanes for the Afghan air wing.
It's clearly risking that those planes and those helicopters are just gonna end up on the tarmac rusting.
_ Ah, is that an older helicopter there? _ So, how many of the new Russian helicopters does he have? _ _ And America bought the helicopters.
_ Does he think that everybody's ready for when the Americans pull out to protect the area? _ _ Good answer.
No.
They can't even use the planes they currently have.
Only 7 of the 47 pilots that we found could actually do counterterrorism missions, because they weren't night flight capable.
Over 70% of the maintenance is being done by U.
S.
contractors, not by the Afghans.
They don't have the pilots, they don't haze the ground crews, they don't have the workers to So, why are we buying them? That's a good question.
That's 700-some million, almost a billion.
that the Afghans can't support, can't fly, can't use.
Yeah.
OK, that's bad.
That's bad.
And this is the dirty little secret: the Afghan government raises about $2 billion a year.
In taxes.
In taxes.
The amount of money you need, just to support the Afghan National Security forces every year, is over 4 billion.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: So, these helicopters, which don't even fly now because there aren't enough crews, cost almost half the total amount that Afghanistan collects for their entire country.
Which begs the question, "What in God's name is going to happen to them when we leave?" In fact, as America pulls out of Afghanistan, more and more of our aid projects are losing any possibility of oversight whatsoever.
And when you travel outside the urban centers, far away from the scrutiny of our shrinking forces on the ground there, you don't have to look very far to find the extent of fraud and corruption that American taxes are paying for every day.
The Afghan Border Police took us to a scrapyard outside of Kandahar that they told us was a well-known front for black market American equipment.
And because it's a very quote unquote hot area, far away from any coalition forces, they advised us to wear local garb, as just being seen in American clothes is enough to make you a target.
Are there containers from America here? _ _ _ SHANE: These are all engines? _ MAN: And they just cut it from here.
Cut it.
Cut it.
That's why they just don't need it.
SHANE: So, they have mountains of engines that they cut.
I mean, you can see the cut marks so that they can, "A," sell the engine and then "B," get a new engine so that they can invoice for another engine.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Upon seeing Border Police and foreigners and film crews, the director of the scrapyard came out to talk to us and convince us that he was actually running a legitimate business.
_ Hello.
Nice to meet you.
_ _ Oh, thank you very much.
Removal operations from the Kandahar region.
So, basically, this is the contract from the Department of Defense saying that this is all OK, that this is a DLA Disposition Services.
Who buys the, the, the _ From Afghanistan? From Pakistan? _ _ _ So, the Border Police are saying that it is going to Pakistan.
_ _ Well, where's that tire? Here, can you come here for one second? Because when we see brand-new engines that have just been cut or a brand-new tire and you can see right here that they've just got an arc welder and cut a circle around it.
_ SHANE: Military or contractors? _ So, the contractors are destroying their own equipment? Why are they cutting it? _ Why? _ _ But it's bad.
They're, they're taking material, they're breaking it so they can sell it.
So, the American people are giving money and it's being thrown away.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, whether or not the contractors are deliberately sabotaging their own gear in order to fraudulently re-invoice or they're indeed trying to destroy American war material so as not to be used by the enemy, the end result is the same because the engines, the tires, the generators, and other raw materials that we are dumping are in many cases being sent to Pakistan.
_ _ So, they sell the metal to Pakistan and Pakistan then makes weapons from it.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: And in this region when people say Pakistan, in most cases what they really mean is the Taliban.
Because the Pakistani Taliban runs much of the tribal regions that butt up against Kandahar province.
So, the materials that the contractors are destroying and selling to the Pakistanis end up coming right back across the border in many forms, the most insidious of which are IEDs.
SHANE: How many IEDs do they get around here every week? _ _ SHANE: In the last 6 months, you had 9,000 IEDs.
[Explosion.]
That's an IED? _ SHANE, VOICE-OVER: IEDs account for more deaths than any other cause in the Afghan war.
And the most common place the Taliban put them is in the culverts that run beneath the transport roads.
We got wind of a problem with the culvert denial system.
It's not that sophisticated.
It's basically you got a culvert, you got a hole, water runs underneath a road or a little bridge.
And that was a perfect place for the bad guys to put bombs, so, it's logical you would set up a system where you would have bars or grates so people couldn't the water could come through but the bombers couldn't.
SHANE: So, this is one of the major roads out of Kandahar, which is a hot city, the founding place of the Taliban.
This culvert, it used to have bars on it and now they've just taken the bars off.
So, this is prime for an IED.
[Horn honking.]
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: And when the Investigator General and his team went to check on the status of the culvert denial grates, almost all of them had either been removed or never even been installed.
SHANE: So, there were bars there, they took out the bars, but now this is a very busy road in a very dangerous city, you could put an IED in there.
_ _ It really highlights the fact that fraud kills.
We have no idea what culverts had been fixed because the record keeping is so poorly done.
Which seems minor until Our coalition forces go over it and a bomb goes off.
MAN ON RADIO: 9-2, think we just hit an IED.
I'll copy.
Have there been IEDs on this road before? _ _ _ _ So, if you didn't do a patrol for one day, they would put a bomb.
MAN: Yeah.
OK, let's get out of here.
Thank you.
When's the last time somebody lost a star, if he's a general.
When's the last time a bureaucrat lost a pay raise even, or he lost his job, for losing 50 million or screwing up.
There's no personal accountability.
If you lost $35 million, you would lose your job.
SHANE: Yeah.
If I lost $3 million, I'd lose my job.
Yeah.
For some reason when you're a general, for some reason when you're a bureaucrat in our foreign assistance program, losing $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, - $100 million, $700 million, you'll get a promotion.
- Right.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, despite our ridiculously poor track record of aid in Afghanistan, and even though America is continually losing its ability to oversee these aid projects in any way whatsoever, the U.
S.
government has recently pledged to continue funding reconstruction at the same levels as today until at least 2017.
Thereby almost assuring the fact that tens of billions of dollars more will be sunk into this mire of corruption, fraud, and waste.
In the next few years, Brazil is set to host two of largest international sporting events on earth.
In 2014, they will be hosting the World Cup, which is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, and in 2016, Rio de Janeiro will be home to the Summer Olympics.
Now, the Brazilian government, in an effort to present a modern and safe city, is racing to confront Rio's devastating levels of poverty and crime before hundreds and thousands of spectators from all over the world arrive in Rio for both events.
So, in an effort to clean up the hyper-violent slums, or as they are known in Brazil, the "favelas," that encircle the entire city, the government has launched an aggressive crackdown or, as they call it, a pacification, of the well-armed drug lords that still rule over huge swaths of the city.
So, we sent Ben Anderson to the slums of Rio to see firsthand how this effort is going, and how safe the city will actually be for the upcoming World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
_ _ This favela was pacified over 18 months ago and the shock troops-- the police special forces-- are still walking around like it's Fallujah at the height of the Iraq war.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: This Police Pacification Unit is patrolling the Rocinha favela, which was supposedly pacified over 17 months ago.
One of about 1,000 favelas in Rio, these slums, home to 1.
4 million people, are a cobbled together, densely packed patchwork of tiny houses that surround the entire city.
These favelas are the source of Rio's overwhelming problem of gangs, drugs, violence, and murder.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ This is definitely a serious, heavy-handed military occupation.
This isn't, um--there's no hearts and minds or community outreach here.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: BOPE are the police special forces and they don't shy away from describing what it is they do in the favelas.
BEN: So, is this a military occupation, or are you here with the consent of the population? _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: But some in Rio claim that the strong-armed tactics of the pacification go too far and can even, at times, be lethal.
So, this is in a favela called Rocinha, which is being pacified.
The main problem seems to be, although the major drug traffickers are removed, sometimes the police can be just as bad.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: We met up with one of pacification's most outspoken critics, Marcelo Freixo, a former teacher turned politician and now whistleblower, who at times has been forced into hiding for claiming that this program has led to the abuse of power, torture, or even the sudden disappearance of suspected criminals.
Officially they're saying that because of pacification the homicide rate is going down.
Is that true? _ _ _ _ _ _ So, are you saying the homicide rate could actually be going up, but the figures are hidden in missing bodies and death by undetermined causes? _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: Although the official murder rates are down, the number of people going missing has gone through the roof, leaving some to speculate that one statistic is just making up for the other.
And when a body is actually found, the homicide police are often not quite sure where the killing originally took place, which seems likely with this man found in the trunk of a stolen car.
BEN: So, every time she finds a bullet hole, she's putting a cotton bud in there.
And he's got 1, 2, at least in his back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: But as we discovered, when it comes to the favelas of Rio, the drug dealers aren't the only possible suspects.
The government has only pacified about 20% of Rio's favelas, those surrounding the tourist sites and wealthy neighborhoods.
Many of the remaining favelas are left to the mercy of militias.
These Mafialike gangs made up of corrupt ex- and current policemen keep their areas in line and drug free through extortion, excising their own tax on residents, for things like electricity and water, and many times, through unrestrained violence.
We had the chance to speak with one militia leader about Rio's drug and murder problem if we agreed to hide both his identity and the favela he controls.
BEN: So, is it fair to say that the state is taking control of the favelas closest to the middle class areas, the rich areas, and the tourist areas, and they're leaving the rest to you and the traffickers? _ _ _ So, what would happen if you caught me selling marijuana in this neighborhood? _ _ _ And when you've taken an area, how do you keep control of it? _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: The remaining 350 favelas that have not been pacified by the government and are not ruled by militias are completely in the hands of the drug gangs.
Their control over these neighborhoods is absolute.
Traffickers can import, cut, and bag huge amounts of drugs without fear.
_ _ So, they're cutting two bricks of pure coke with about a kilogram of baking soda, so, it's going to be strong.
While they're doing it, they're definitely all getting high off their own supply.
[Chatter.]
BEN: Do you have any fear that the police will come and raid this place? _ _ I've never seen so much coke in my life.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: The drugs are then sold openly on the streets.
The flow of business on this corner was constant.
BEN: No one seems even vaguely scared that the police are gonna come.
Why is that? _ _ _ _ They pay the police not to come.
_ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: Although the dealers are known for their ultraviolent drug battles, unlike the shock troops and the militias, who rely ultimately on fear to secure their favelas, the drug lords win local support by throwing massive, all night dance parties with the best sound systems and famous singers and emcees.
So, we're at a massive street party.
There's grandparents here, there's little kids here.
It feels safe.
It feels like everyone's happy.
It feels like a real great community.
It feels like it'd be a fun place to live.
Until you bump into a teenager with an assault rifle on his shoulder, it's easy to forget where you are.
Even police helicopters don't dare fly over here, because two years ago, one was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: As you make your way through the massive party, it's clear that the drug dealing business is alive and well in Rio.
And although the Government is trying to hide the drugs, crime, and violence from the tourists, as I found out the next morning, it isn't completely contained.
Only two blocks away from one of the most famous beaches in the world, I stumbled upon a grisly crime scene.
BEN: It's, uh, about 7:30 in the morning.
We're one block away from Copacabana Beach.
Scene of all the images you see in the promotion of Rio, Brazil and the World Cup and the Olympics, and there's a young boy in the street who looks like he's been shot in the head.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: With hundreds and thousands about to descend on Rio for the World Cup and Olympics, hopefully the government has done enough to make sure visitors are safe.
But for the people who live here, they know it's just as bad as ever because just over the hill, the ugly side of Rio remains as bloody and corrupt as ever.
And as the militia leader told us _ _ _
That's an IED? SHANE, VOICE-OVER: This week on "Vice," $100 billion of taxpayer money goes down the drain in Afghanistan.
MAN, VOICE-OVER: For some reason, when you're a bureaucrat, losing $40 million, $50 million, you'll get a promotion.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Then, the battle to clean up Rio before the Olympics.
_ [Speaking native language.]
[Speaking native language.]
[Cheering.]
MAN: Uhh! MAN, VOICE-OVER: These helicopters don't dare fly over here because two years ago, one was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun.
So, if you didn't do a patrol for one day, they would put a bomb.
MAN: Yeah.
SHANE: Let's get out of here.
At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forced a defeated Germany to pay severe war reparations as punishment.
However, the weight of these payments led to total economic collapse, political chaos, and intense nationalism, which in turn led to the rise of Hitler and ultimately the start of the Second World War.
So, after Germany's defeat in World War II, the U.
S.
and its allies took on the burden of rebuilding a ruined Europe, because after the lessons of World War I, we were determined not to make the same mistakes twice.
Ever since then, we have adopted this seemingly counter-intuitive policy of promptly rebuilding the countries that we just destroyed.
And the latest country on the receiving end of our "you break it, you buy it" philosophy is Afghanistan.
_ We're here in Washington, D.
C.
, at the offices of SIGAR, which stands for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Now, the Inspector General's name is John Sopko, and he's been stirring up a hornet's nest here in Washington because he's exposing a lot of corruption, waste, and mismanagement in Afghanistan and has caused quite a scandal.
Now, before being appointed by the president to gauge the actual scope of fraud and waste in Afghanistan, John Sopko was a famously tenacious prosecutor, renowned for helping take down large parts of organized crime here in America.
And today, he is cutting a swath through the Pentagon, using the same "take no prisoners" methods he used while fighting the Mob.
SOPKO: What's interesting here in Afghanistan, we're actually spending more money on reconstruction in little Afghanistan, it's about the size of Texas, as we did for any other country in the history of the United States, including Germany.
To date, that's been around $100 billion.
Yeah, that's about what we've spent.
More money spent on Afghanistan, nearly $100 billion, how's it going? Not well.
_ We're talking about the most corrupt country in the world.
We're finding problems time and time again by DoD, USAID, or any other government agency.
SHANE: Even cases of our tax dollars being used or falling into the hands of the Taliban.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: One of the biggest problems facing Afghanistan is electricity, because just one in 7 Afghans has any kind of regular access to electric power.
And as such, creating a national power grid has been a top priority for the government.
And as part of its reconstruction mandate, America has funded hundreds of millions of dollars to try to bring more electricity to Afghanistan.
So, upon arriving in Kabul, we went to see just how this money has been spent.
SHANE: How much did it cost? _ $300 million.
_ And how many of the power blocks are running right now? _ Right.
Now, everything's quiet, but this is humming.
What's happening here? _ From _ So, all of it is being brought in from outside.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: So, we spent over $300 million to build a power plant to power Kabul but today 100% of the power in Kabul actually comes from outside the country.
In fact, the power to run the actual power plant that we just built is being imported.
SHANE: So, it's AHMADZAI: Yes.
What runs it? _ Diesel.
Yeah.
_ Here? 9 million liters.
And this is Power House A.
_ How much is diesel per liter? I don't even know.
_ And if it's $1.
00 a liter, that means you have $9 million of fuel there.
Yeah.
But we're getting more diesel.
_ Yeah.
So, $10 million more.
Whew.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, what they're saying here is that not only did we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build the actual power plant, but that we have to buy close to $20 million worth of fuel to run the power plant that we don't use.
Why? Because it's too expensive.
_ _ _ _ So, diesel is so expensive that if you give energy to Kabul, you lose 16 cents per kilowatt.
So, it's backup.
_ Because if you run it, you lose too much money.
Got it.
Understood.
You're spending a lot of money.
[Laughter.]
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, all of this might seem like a joke, if it weren't for the fact that not only do we build power plants that we can't actually use, but in many cases we don't even collect the bills we are owed for providing the electricity.
Why? Because after and almost a trillion dollars spent on this conflict, many parts of Afghanistan are still much too dangerous for the government bill collectors to even go there.
So, who collects the money instead? The Taliban.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ SHANE: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you know we invaded Afghanistan with the sole purpose of getting the Taliban out.
And now we're building infrastructure for the Taliban to take over.
That epitomizes the problem.
A lot of times, as the U.
S.
military pulls out, the Taliban are right behind them.
Then the buildings just turn over to the insurgency.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: In an effort to see just how bad things have gotten in Afghanistan, we traveled south to Kandahar, where stories of corruption and waste have reached astronomical proportions.
SHANE: We're going into the Air Force base just outside of Kandahar, which is the home of the Taliban, where they bought Russian helicopters for about a billion dollars that don't work.
So, we're gonna go see if we can go see them right now.
I think the worst case so far of just stupid waste has been the purchase of the helicopters and the airplanes for the Afghan air wing.
It's clearly risking that those planes and those helicopters are just gonna end up on the tarmac rusting.
_ Ah, is that an older helicopter there? _ So, how many of the new Russian helicopters does he have? _ _ And America bought the helicopters.
_ Does he think that everybody's ready for when the Americans pull out to protect the area? _ _ Good answer.
No.
They can't even use the planes they currently have.
Only 7 of the 47 pilots that we found could actually do counterterrorism missions, because they weren't night flight capable.
Over 70% of the maintenance is being done by U.
S.
contractors, not by the Afghans.
They don't have the pilots, they don't haze the ground crews, they don't have the workers to So, why are we buying them? That's a good question.
That's 700-some million, almost a billion.
that the Afghans can't support, can't fly, can't use.
Yeah.
OK, that's bad.
That's bad.
And this is the dirty little secret: the Afghan government raises about $2 billion a year.
In taxes.
In taxes.
The amount of money you need, just to support the Afghan National Security forces every year, is over 4 billion.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: So, these helicopters, which don't even fly now because there aren't enough crews, cost almost half the total amount that Afghanistan collects for their entire country.
Which begs the question, "What in God's name is going to happen to them when we leave?" In fact, as America pulls out of Afghanistan, more and more of our aid projects are losing any possibility of oversight whatsoever.
And when you travel outside the urban centers, far away from the scrutiny of our shrinking forces on the ground there, you don't have to look very far to find the extent of fraud and corruption that American taxes are paying for every day.
The Afghan Border Police took us to a scrapyard outside of Kandahar that they told us was a well-known front for black market American equipment.
And because it's a very quote unquote hot area, far away from any coalition forces, they advised us to wear local garb, as just being seen in American clothes is enough to make you a target.
Are there containers from America here? _ _ _ SHANE: These are all engines? _ MAN: And they just cut it from here.
Cut it.
Cut it.
That's why they just don't need it.
SHANE: So, they have mountains of engines that they cut.
I mean, you can see the cut marks so that they can, "A," sell the engine and then "B," get a new engine so that they can invoice for another engine.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Upon seeing Border Police and foreigners and film crews, the director of the scrapyard came out to talk to us and convince us that he was actually running a legitimate business.
_ Hello.
Nice to meet you.
_ _ Oh, thank you very much.
Removal operations from the Kandahar region.
So, basically, this is the contract from the Department of Defense saying that this is all OK, that this is a DLA Disposition Services.
Who buys the, the, the _ From Afghanistan? From Pakistan? _ _ _ So, the Border Police are saying that it is going to Pakistan.
_ _ Well, where's that tire? Here, can you come here for one second? Because when we see brand-new engines that have just been cut or a brand-new tire and you can see right here that they've just got an arc welder and cut a circle around it.
_ SHANE: Military or contractors? _ So, the contractors are destroying their own equipment? Why are they cutting it? _ Why? _ _ But it's bad.
They're, they're taking material, they're breaking it so they can sell it.
So, the American people are giving money and it's being thrown away.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, whether or not the contractors are deliberately sabotaging their own gear in order to fraudulently re-invoice or they're indeed trying to destroy American war material so as not to be used by the enemy, the end result is the same because the engines, the tires, the generators, and other raw materials that we are dumping are in many cases being sent to Pakistan.
_ _ So, they sell the metal to Pakistan and Pakistan then makes weapons from it.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: And in this region when people say Pakistan, in most cases what they really mean is the Taliban.
Because the Pakistani Taliban runs much of the tribal regions that butt up against Kandahar province.
So, the materials that the contractors are destroying and selling to the Pakistanis end up coming right back across the border in many forms, the most insidious of which are IEDs.
SHANE: How many IEDs do they get around here every week? _ _ SHANE: In the last 6 months, you had 9,000 IEDs.
[Explosion.]
That's an IED? _ SHANE, VOICE-OVER: IEDs account for more deaths than any other cause in the Afghan war.
And the most common place the Taliban put them is in the culverts that run beneath the transport roads.
We got wind of a problem with the culvert denial system.
It's not that sophisticated.
It's basically you got a culvert, you got a hole, water runs underneath a road or a little bridge.
And that was a perfect place for the bad guys to put bombs, so, it's logical you would set up a system where you would have bars or grates so people couldn't the water could come through but the bombers couldn't.
SHANE: So, this is one of the major roads out of Kandahar, which is a hot city, the founding place of the Taliban.
This culvert, it used to have bars on it and now they've just taken the bars off.
So, this is prime for an IED.
[Horn honking.]
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: And when the Investigator General and his team went to check on the status of the culvert denial grates, almost all of them had either been removed or never even been installed.
SHANE: So, there were bars there, they took out the bars, but now this is a very busy road in a very dangerous city, you could put an IED in there.
_ _ It really highlights the fact that fraud kills.
We have no idea what culverts had been fixed because the record keeping is so poorly done.
Which seems minor until Our coalition forces go over it and a bomb goes off.
MAN ON RADIO: 9-2, think we just hit an IED.
I'll copy.
Have there been IEDs on this road before? _ _ _ _ So, if you didn't do a patrol for one day, they would put a bomb.
MAN: Yeah.
OK, let's get out of here.
Thank you.
When's the last time somebody lost a star, if he's a general.
When's the last time a bureaucrat lost a pay raise even, or he lost his job, for losing 50 million or screwing up.
There's no personal accountability.
If you lost $35 million, you would lose your job.
SHANE: Yeah.
If I lost $3 million, I'd lose my job.
Yeah.
For some reason when you're a general, for some reason when you're a bureaucrat in our foreign assistance program, losing $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, - $100 million, $700 million, you'll get a promotion.
- Right.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: Now, despite our ridiculously poor track record of aid in Afghanistan, and even though America is continually losing its ability to oversee these aid projects in any way whatsoever, the U.
S.
government has recently pledged to continue funding reconstruction at the same levels as today until at least 2017.
Thereby almost assuring the fact that tens of billions of dollars more will be sunk into this mire of corruption, fraud, and waste.
In the next few years, Brazil is set to host two of largest international sporting events on earth.
In 2014, they will be hosting the World Cup, which is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, and in 2016, Rio de Janeiro will be home to the Summer Olympics.
Now, the Brazilian government, in an effort to present a modern and safe city, is racing to confront Rio's devastating levels of poverty and crime before hundreds and thousands of spectators from all over the world arrive in Rio for both events.
So, in an effort to clean up the hyper-violent slums, or as they are known in Brazil, the "favelas," that encircle the entire city, the government has launched an aggressive crackdown or, as they call it, a pacification, of the well-armed drug lords that still rule over huge swaths of the city.
So, we sent Ben Anderson to the slums of Rio to see firsthand how this effort is going, and how safe the city will actually be for the upcoming World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
_ _ This favela was pacified over 18 months ago and the shock troops-- the police special forces-- are still walking around like it's Fallujah at the height of the Iraq war.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: This Police Pacification Unit is patrolling the Rocinha favela, which was supposedly pacified over 17 months ago.
One of about 1,000 favelas in Rio, these slums, home to 1.
4 million people, are a cobbled together, densely packed patchwork of tiny houses that surround the entire city.
These favelas are the source of Rio's overwhelming problem of gangs, drugs, violence, and murder.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ This is definitely a serious, heavy-handed military occupation.
This isn't, um--there's no hearts and minds or community outreach here.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: BOPE are the police special forces and they don't shy away from describing what it is they do in the favelas.
BEN: So, is this a military occupation, or are you here with the consent of the population? _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: But some in Rio claim that the strong-armed tactics of the pacification go too far and can even, at times, be lethal.
So, this is in a favela called Rocinha, which is being pacified.
The main problem seems to be, although the major drug traffickers are removed, sometimes the police can be just as bad.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: We met up with one of pacification's most outspoken critics, Marcelo Freixo, a former teacher turned politician and now whistleblower, who at times has been forced into hiding for claiming that this program has led to the abuse of power, torture, or even the sudden disappearance of suspected criminals.
Officially they're saying that because of pacification the homicide rate is going down.
Is that true? _ _ _ _ _ _ So, are you saying the homicide rate could actually be going up, but the figures are hidden in missing bodies and death by undetermined causes? _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: Although the official murder rates are down, the number of people going missing has gone through the roof, leaving some to speculate that one statistic is just making up for the other.
And when a body is actually found, the homicide police are often not quite sure where the killing originally took place, which seems likely with this man found in the trunk of a stolen car.
BEN: So, every time she finds a bullet hole, she's putting a cotton bud in there.
And he's got 1, 2, at least in his back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: But as we discovered, when it comes to the favelas of Rio, the drug dealers aren't the only possible suspects.
The government has only pacified about 20% of Rio's favelas, those surrounding the tourist sites and wealthy neighborhoods.
Many of the remaining favelas are left to the mercy of militias.
These Mafialike gangs made up of corrupt ex- and current policemen keep their areas in line and drug free through extortion, excising their own tax on residents, for things like electricity and water, and many times, through unrestrained violence.
We had the chance to speak with one militia leader about Rio's drug and murder problem if we agreed to hide both his identity and the favela he controls.
BEN: So, is it fair to say that the state is taking control of the favelas closest to the middle class areas, the rich areas, and the tourist areas, and they're leaving the rest to you and the traffickers? _ _ _ So, what would happen if you caught me selling marijuana in this neighborhood? _ _ _ And when you've taken an area, how do you keep control of it? _ _ _ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: The remaining 350 favelas that have not been pacified by the government and are not ruled by militias are completely in the hands of the drug gangs.
Their control over these neighborhoods is absolute.
Traffickers can import, cut, and bag huge amounts of drugs without fear.
_ _ So, they're cutting two bricks of pure coke with about a kilogram of baking soda, so, it's going to be strong.
While they're doing it, they're definitely all getting high off their own supply.
[Chatter.]
BEN: Do you have any fear that the police will come and raid this place? _ _ I've never seen so much coke in my life.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: The drugs are then sold openly on the streets.
The flow of business on this corner was constant.
BEN: No one seems even vaguely scared that the police are gonna come.
Why is that? _ _ _ _ They pay the police not to come.
_ _ _ BEN, VOICE-OVER: Although the dealers are known for their ultraviolent drug battles, unlike the shock troops and the militias, who rely ultimately on fear to secure their favelas, the drug lords win local support by throwing massive, all night dance parties with the best sound systems and famous singers and emcees.
So, we're at a massive street party.
There's grandparents here, there's little kids here.
It feels safe.
It feels like everyone's happy.
It feels like a real great community.
It feels like it'd be a fun place to live.
Until you bump into a teenager with an assault rifle on his shoulder, it's easy to forget where you are.
Even police helicopters don't dare fly over here, because two years ago, one was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: As you make your way through the massive party, it's clear that the drug dealing business is alive and well in Rio.
And although the Government is trying to hide the drugs, crime, and violence from the tourists, as I found out the next morning, it isn't completely contained.
Only two blocks away from one of the most famous beaches in the world, I stumbled upon a grisly crime scene.
BEN: It's, uh, about 7:30 in the morning.
We're one block away from Copacabana Beach.
Scene of all the images you see in the promotion of Rio, Brazil and the World Cup and the Olympics, and there's a young boy in the street who looks like he's been shot in the head.
BEN, VOICE-OVER: With hundreds and thousands about to descend on Rio for the World Cup and Olympics, hopefully the government has done enough to make sure visitors are safe.
But for the people who live here, they know it's just as bad as ever because just over the hill, the ugly side of Rio remains as bloody and corrupt as ever.
And as the militia leader told us _ _ _