NPR: Report: Using the War on Terror to Get U.S. Aid

Report: Using the War on Terror to Get U.S. Aid

Many U.S. allies in the war on terror supported the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies in an effort to get more foreign aid, according to a new series of reports in the Center For Public Integrity's ongoing series "Collateral Damage."

This new wave of foreign lobbying, combined with an emphasis "on counterterrorism objectives over broader human rights concerns," has cost the United States both financially and politically, according to the center's reports.

Countries like Poland and Romania -- two of the European countries accused of hosting secret CIA prisons where terrorism suspects could be held and possibly tortured -- saw the level of their foreign aid from the United States skyrocket after the Sept. 11 attack.

In the three years before 9/11, Poland received just over $33 million in U.S. military training and assistance. Three years after, the amount was nearly tenfold, more than $300 million in mostly Coalition Support Funds to reimburse expenses incurred by Polish forces in Iraq, according to ICIJ's database of military training and assistance. Since 1998, Romania has received more than $100 million in U.S. military aid, primarily from the Foreign Military Financing program, which provides grants to buy U.S. military equipment and services.

According to the reports, many of the countries that received increases in U.S. foreign aid also saw an increase in human rights violations.

Collateral Damage involved 10 investigative journalists working on four continents "who examined U.S. military assistance and foreign lobbying expenditures and human rights abuses after 9/11." The center's team combed through thousands of Department of Justice lobbying records and human rights reports and used Freedom of Information Act requests to get information on U.S. funding for the countries covered in the series.

5:21 PM ET | 05-24-2007 | permalink

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