A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 , 2019
“OIG remains concerned that
Jordan is not able or willing to
provide adequate care for
working dogs without the
Department’s intervention,” the
report said, and “the
Department has conducted
minimal planning to ensure that
Jordanian officials can maintain
the health and welfare of the
dogs for the duration of their
lives.”
The inspector general urged
the U.S. government to stop
providing dogs to Jordan until a
sufficient plan is implemented to
ensure their health and welfare.
State agreed with other inspector
general recommendations, but
not that one.
“National security related
efforts focused on protecting
American interests and assisting
Jordan in combatting active
terrorist threats would be
negatively impacted by such a
move,” two State officials,
Michael T. Evanoff and Nathan
A. Sales, wrote in a memo to
Inspector General Steve Linick.
The Jordanian Embassy had
no comment.
State said it takes the report
“very seriously” and “has taken
steps to resolve the OIG’s
recommendations.” Although
State contends that the health
and welfare of the dogs in Jordan
has improved, the inspector
general was blunt:
“The dogs are still at risk.”
[email protected]supplied by the Bureau of
Alcohol, To bacco, Firearms and
Explosives, were working in 10
foreign countries. That’s an
estimate because the report says
investigators were “unable to
determine the exact number of
canines due to insufficient and
contradictory documentation.”
State “did not produce any
written policies, procedures, or
written standards of care”
requested by the inspector
general’s office until a draft of its
report was completed.
Jordan, with 89 dogs, is the
largest and most offensive
partner. With a canine program
in “dire straits,” at least 10 dogs
died from 2008 through 2016 of
various medical conditions. A
State Department team found
the police in Jordan “are losing
canines frequently to the
[parvovirus] disease and do not
have the medical care required
to treat it, or even maintain
healthy canines.”
State provided some help. In
2017, its Office of Antiterrorism
Assistance sent two mentors to
assist the Jordanians for three
years, at a cost of $500,000
annually. Last year, a
veterinarian and a veterinary
technician were assigned to
Jordan at a cost of $540,000 for
one year. Nonetheless, in
Athena’s case, her “health went
unnoticed” by two mentors, until
a U.S. veterinary team sounded
the alarm.the effort for 20 years. The
training is conducted at State’s
Canine Validation Center in
Winchester, Va., about 75 miles
west of the District.
“Canines are one of the best
means of detecting explosives
and deterring terrorism,”
according to the report, but not
if they are treated poorly. Poor
treatment leads to poor
performance. “They are also
living creatures that deserve
appropriate attention to their
safety and well-being,” the report
added.
As of a year ago, more than
160 dogs, including thosefight against terrorism. It
includes providing training,
personnel and resources to other
governments. Trained bomb
detection dogs have been part ofinto a whistleblower’s hotline
allegations that explosive
detection canines provided to
foreign nations were dying
because of poor health care and
shoddy living and working
conditions.
Inspectors found those
conditions — particularly in
Jordan — were abetted by sloppy
oversight by the State
Department.
The department “has
expended millions of dollars in
antiterrorism assistance funds
for the [canine program], but it
does not ensure the health and
welfare of the dogs after
deployment,” OIG found. “This
threatens the dogs’ ability to
properly perform detection work
and also creates risks to their
well-being.”
It urged a halt to the supply of
detection dogs to Jordan. State
refused, citing national security
concerns.
“OIG found an overall lack of
policies and standards governing
the program,” said the report,
issued last week. “The
Department routinely provides
dogs to foreign partners without
signed written agreements that
outline standards for minimum
care, retirement, and use of the
canines, and the Department
conducts health and welfare
follow-ups infrequently and
inconsistently.”
The canine program is part of
the government’s internationalWhy does the U.S.
government allow
foreign countries
to treat highly
trained American
anti-terrorism
investigators like
dogs?
They are dogs
— but that’s
beside the point
because they also
are bomb detection experts.
Consider the case of Athena, a
2-year-old female Belgian
Malinois — a breed known for its
strong work ethic — sent to
Jordan in May 2017. Less than a
year later, a State Department
veterinary team found her
“severely emaciated” and living
in a filthy kennel littered with
feces, according to a report by
the department’s Office of
Inspector General (OIG).
After being sent back to the
United States, Athena was
properly fed and nursed back to
health, and made a full recovery.
Mencey was not as fortunate.
The 3-year-old male Belgian
Malinois fell seriously ill with a
tick-borne disease in February
2018, seven months after
arriving in Jordan. He was sent
back to the States, where he was
diagnosed with an ailment
transmitted by sand flies that
caused renal failure. Mencey was
euthanized.
These are two examples from
the inspector general’s probe
PowerPost
INTELLIGENCE FOR LEADERS WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POWERPOSTU.S.-provided bomb-sni∞ng dogs were neglected overseas, IG report finds
Federal
Insider
JOE
DAVIDSON
STATE DEPARTMENT
Athena, a Belgian Malinois, was emaciated less than a year after
she was sent from the United States to Jordan, the report says.Snap is attempting to shed more
light on which political players
are using its platform to reach
voters as the 2020 campaign
ramps up. It’s the latest move by
a big social media company to
police itself as Washington
struggles to figure out what role,
if any, it should play in
regulating political ads on such
platforms.
Snap told The Washington
Post it has launched a political
ad library in recent days that will
list all political and advocacy ads
on its platform; so far, the
library includes more than 1,000
ads purchased in 2019
promoting President Trump, as
well as those for 2020 rivals
former vice president Joe Bidenand Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-
Mass.) The database also
includes third-party ads
touching on hot-button issues,
including advertising from
Planned Parenthood and even
about criminal-justice
restructuring from the ice cream
company Ben and Jerry’s.
The library includes how
much each advertiser is
spending on its ad buy.
Snap is just the latest firm toproactively create a database of
its political ads as the 2020
campaign gets underway. Snap
said it didn’t find evidence that
Russian actors bought ads on its
platform after an internal audit
following the 2016 election, so it
hasn’t confronted the same
political blowback in
Washington as larger platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter and
Google, which previously have
rolled out similar databases.
But it highlights a growing
awareness that smaller social
media companies are targets of
malign influence operations and
need to be regulated like
everyone else when it comes to
political activity, according to
lawmakers. Right now,
companies are left to their own
devices in policing such ads, and
their individual rules are
inconsistent and vary in quality.
Brendan Fischer, director of
federal reform at the
nonpartisan Campaign Legal
Center, said Snap’s database is a
“positive step.” But he warned of
the general inconsistency
governing such efforts. “The big
shortcoming in any... self-
regulatory efforts is that any
effort by a particular platform is
not going to apply to any other
platform,” he said.
That’s worrying lawmakers on
Capitol Hill who have been
trying to pass the bipartisan
Honest Ads Act, which would
force social media companies to
abide by the same rules that
apply to political ads on
television and radio, and require
large companies to keep a public
file of the political ads they’re
selling.
One senator co-sponsoring the
bill says Snap’s new library
doesn’t go far enough. “It’s
commendable that more
companies are increasing
transparency when it comes to
political advertising; however, apatchwork of voluntary
measures from tech companies
isn’t sufficient — we need to pass
the Honest Ads Act,” said Sen.
Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), also a
2020 presidential candidate.
“The goal of my legislation is
to ensure that all major
platforms that sell political
advertisements are held to the
same rules of the road,
something that is already
required for television, radio and
print political advertising.
Americans have a right to know
who is paying to influence them
regardless of where ads are sold,”
she said.
Klobuchar introduced her
legislation in 2017 with Sens.
Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and John
McCain (R-Ariz.) in response to
findings that Russian actors
targeted American voters with
social media ads designed
to influence the outcome of the
2016 election. Some ads attacked
Hillary Clinton or boosted
Trump, but others sought to
exploit divisive social issues.
Klobuchar said Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
has blocked the bill from coming
up for a vote.
Fischer warns that without
government regulation, there is
no accountability for smaller
social media companies that
might be selling political
ads. “A ds on platforms other
than those big four are not going
to be disclosed,” he said.
There is some evidence
Russia also influenced smaller
social networks in 2016
including Pinterest, where
Americans unwittingly posted
political content created by
Russian operatives. Pinterest
and other emerging social
networks such as TikTok have
policies that prohibit the sale of
political ads on their platforms.
But other platforms, such as
Reddit, continue to allow suchsales — under tight rules that
require the company to
preapprove political ads and
require the advertiser to disclose
who paid for them. But the
company does not maintain any
sort of ongoing library of ads.
“Under the Honest Ads Act,
the threshold is a site having at
least 50 million monthly active
users, and to the extent Reddit
sells political ads, it should
follow the lead of other large
platforms and establish a
political ad library,” Warner said.
Researchers and journalists
also argue that databases
maintained by Facebook, Twitter
and Google are imperfect. They
have encountered technical
challenges with Facebook’s tool,
as the New York Times first
reported. Andy Stone, a
Facebook spokesman, said since
that story was published, the
company has made changes to
improve its developer tool,
including fixing bugs.
Laura Edelson, a PhD
candidate at New York
University, says that Google has
one of the best ad libraries from
a technical perspective but that
it doesn’t include as many ads as
other platforms. Google’s library
includes only ads related to
current federal officeholders or
people running for federal offices
such as the presidency and
Congress, so it’s missing key
issue ads and those related to
local elections.
Google spokeswoman
Charlotte Smith said the
company is “working with
experts in the U.S. and around
the world to explore tools that
capture a wider range of political
ads — including issue ads, state
and local election ads, and
political ads in other countries.”
Twitter’s ad library doesn’t
allow researchers to download
the full data set.
[email protected]Snap launches political ads library, but lawmakers say uniform rules are needed
The Technology 202
CAT ZAKRZEWSKI
ROBYN BECK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Snap’s database will list all political and advocacy ads on its platform, including more than 1,000 so far
this year promoting President Trump. Facebook, Twitter and Google have introduced similar libraries.“OIG found an overall
lack of policies and
standards governing the
program.”
State Department’s Office of
Inspector GeneralSEE WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY! washingtonpost.com/postpoints
S0714 3x10.5Enter to Win a Season of Opera!One lucky winner will win a subscription for two
to Washington National Opera’s 2019–2020 season.
To enter, visit washingtonpost.com/postpoints
No purchase necessary. Contest is open to members of The Washington Post’s loyalty program, PostPoints, who are 18 years of age or older and live in Washington,
D.C., Maryland or Virginia at the time of entry. Contest runs from September 2, 2019–September 21, 2019 and is sponsored by The Washington Post and Companies
d/b/a The Washington Post. Odds of winning depend on number of entries. Void where prohibited by law. For complete rules visit washingtonpost.com/postpoints.September 7–22, 2019Join us for 16 days of creativity in action at the REACH—where
nearly 500 events across our newly expanded campus, indoors
and outdoors, are FREE!David M. Rubenstein
Cornerstone of the REACHTheKennedyCenteriscelebratingtheopeningoftheREACH,itsfirst-ever
expansion.Thisbrand-new campusofinnovativeindoorandoutdoorspacesputs
YOU atthecenteroftheart—whereyoucanchartyourown courseandconnect
whatmovesyoutocreativeexperiencesbeyondimagination.Free timed-entry passes required.
Passes and full schedule at Kennedy-Center.org/REACHPhoto by Richard Barnes