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GAO-01-440R 1 (2001-03-06)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaalol0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 March 6, 2001 The Honorable Henry J. Hyde Chairman, Committee on International Relations The Honorable Benjamin Gilman Chairman, Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia House of Representatives Subject: U.N. Peacekeeping: GAO's Access to Records on Executive Branch Decision-making This letter provides you information about the status of our efforts, as of March 5, 2001, to obtain access to executive branch records needed to complete the study requested by your committee. On November 18, 1999, as prior Chairman of the Committee, Congressman Benjamin Gilman requested a study of the process used by the executive branch to approve several U.N. peacekeeping operations and of its consultation with Congress about these decisions. In requesting this study, Congressman Gilman expressed concern about U.S. decisions to support new or expanded U.N. operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. His view was that these operations did not have clear end points and, over several years, could result in billions of dollars of U.N. peacekeeping assessments for the United States. As agreed with the prior Chairman's office, we began our study in March 2000.' We immediately sought access to records that documented the decision-making process for these operations from Departments of State and Defense and the National Security Council. These agencies have primary responsibility for making U.S. decisions about whether or not to support peacekeeping operations, and each agency has a critical role in the decision process, with either State or Defense taking the lead role in the decisions depending on the type of proposed peacekeeping operation. To provide a framework for the decision process, Presidential Decision Directive 25 requires executive branch officials to consider several factors when deciding whether to support new, expanded, or extended peacekeeping operations, such as whether proposed operations advance U.S. interests and have clear objectives and endpoints.2 Using this framework, State, Defense, and the National Security Council work through an interagency process and generate analyses and other records documenting their individual and joint consideration of 'In his November 1999 letter, the prior Chairman also requested a study of U.N. peacekeeping costs and we agreed with his office to focus first on conducting the cost study. We finished the cost study and issued our report in August 2000. See United Nations: Cost of Peacekeeping Is Likely to Exceed Current Estimate (GAO/NSIAD-00-228BR, Aug. 31, 2000). 2 This directive, entitled Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations, is a classified document. An unclassified summary also was issued in May 1994. GAO-01-440R Access to Executive Branch Records