Drug Control

National Guard Counter-Drug Support to Law Enforcement Agencies Gao ID: NSIAD-91-113 May 3, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Office of the Secretary of Defense's (OSD) allocation of fiscal year (FY) 1989 and FY 1990 appropriations totalling $150 million to support an increased National Guard role in states' and territories' counter-drug activities.

GAO found that: (1) OSD allocated $35.5 million of its $40-million FY 1989 appropriation and prioritized funding to states with the most pressing counter-drug interdiction needs; (2) OSD did not use states' priority rankings or evaluate mission priority, since states' requests and the amount of available funding were relatively close; (3) because OSD provided the funds late in the fiscal year, states were unable to spend $12.4 million, which they returned to the U.S. Treasury; (4) in FY 1990, OSD initially allocated $67.7 million of the $83.1 million states requested, on the basis of a rank-order list of counter-drug missions and a relative priority for each state; (5) OSD allocated $51.5 million of that initial funding to 21 states it identified as top-priority states; (6) OSD allocated $111.9 million for operational costs of states' counter-drug activities for FY 1991; (7) OSD planned to require states to specify funding priorities among the missions included in their FY 1992 requests; (8) as of January 1991, the National Guard Bureau had committed $17.1 million for ground-based radars, $7.1 million for thermal imaging radars, and $4.3 million for communications equipment to support the high-priority missions that OSD was funding; (9) the Bureau and the states' Guard organizations have not determined the amount or type of equipment to be purchased with FY 1991 funds; and (10) law enforcement agencies could not quantify the impact of the Guard's expanded support for their counter-drug activities, since the Guard did not independently plan, control, or execute operations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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