Leahy Law - Criticisms of The Law

Criticisms of The Law

Authors Doug Stokes and John Barry argue that there are major weaknesses to the law.

Stokes argues the law has four weaknesses which make it effectively useless.

First, the Colombian military and US embassy in Colombia have had procedures to circumvent the "vetting procedure" ever since human rights were attached to military funding in 1998. In a September 1997 letter to Senator Leahy, United States Ambassador to Colombia Curtis Warren Kamman stated that the list of potential units which would receive aid “was judged to be severely deficient.” An anonymous U.S. official told the Washington Post that "the Colombian army had difficulty finding any units without serious human rights violations, thus slowing the process. "The question is, is there anyone we can deal with out there?" the official asked." Five months later, in January and February 1998, the Colombian defense minister submitted a new list to the US ambassador. US Ambassador Kamman stated that the delay was because the brigade needed to transfer out two officers accused of human rights abuses. Simply transferring officers accused of human rights abuses to make a unit "clean" is a clear violation of the Leahy Law, which states, that aid is conditional on the Colombian government "taking effective measures to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice." Further, as Human Rights Watch discovered, if a unit is "considered important enough to drug war objectives…the U.S. will violate the Leahy Provision in order to continue funding and training it." For example, the US State Department informed the Colombian government that the US “will not consider providing assistance to the 17th Brigade until all significant human rights allegations involving the unit have been credibly addressed.” But the 18th brigade, which is stationed in the oil fields of Arauca, Colombia, and which is the focus of numerous human rights violation allegations, continues to receive US military aid.

The second way that the U.S. and Colombian government circumvent the Leahy law is by "by allowing vetted units to mix, coordinate logistics with, and share the facilities of suspended units".

The third way that the U.S. and Colombia government circumvent the Leahy law is that when a unit is vetted it is cleared, but once the unit has been vetted, new soldiers who come into the unit are not screened.

Finally, the Leahy law is circumvented by the US contacting with private contractors to avoid legal oversight. In September 2004, After Congress set a United States civilian contractor cap at 400, DynCorp, a weapons supplier for the military, hired foreign nationals to work in Colombia, which effectively circumvented Congressional authority. Also, the hundreds of DynCorp nonmilitary civilian war personnel are not counted under the Congressional cap. In 2001, DynCorp rescued a shot down Colombian helicopter crew. During this search and rescue, DynCorp was involved in a battle with rebels, and it was revealed for the first time that DynCorp had four helicopter gun ships. Despite this, the Bush administration continues to assert that civilian contractors are not involved in warfare. The former ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette explained why private mercenaries are so convenient, "It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the U.S. armed forces. Obviously, if somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces. Nobody wants to see American military men killed." This government-private sector partnership would therefore undermine the Leahy law, which only covers public money and official US equipment and soldiers, providing "plausible deniability" for the U.S. government.