The one secret $43 million gas station the government doesn't want you to know about

'It's fright-night at the Pentagon'

In an alarming misuse of taxpayer dollars, the United States built a gas station in Afghanistan at the unbelievable cost of $43 million.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a single gas station in Afghanistan despite a $500,000 price tag to build the same station in Pakistan. 

The Task Force for Stability and Business Operations (TFBSO), which was supposed to be an $800,000 program, went well above it's allottment and when asked about the TFBSO, also called the Task Force, the DOD simply said TFBSO employees no longer work for the DOD. They also remained quiet when asked questions about the gas station program.

John Sopko, a special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) and former federal prosecutor to manage spending in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, said, "It's a fright-night at the Pentagon. I have never in my life seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a program. Who's in charge? Why won't they talk? We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan."

The United States military told SIGAR that the Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station [with] approximately $12.3 million in direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."

The questions Sopko asks are the same we all have: who approved of the funding and why is the DOD failing to answer direct questions?

Sopko sent Defense Secretary Ashton Carter a letter on October 22, writing, "Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago. Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."

In an interview with FoxNews, Sopko said, "It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense. It's almost like it's pixie dust."

The TFBSO was originally created to help Iraq's economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 but the program was redirected to Afghanistan in 2009. Sopko claims his office received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity linked to the Task Force's "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors."

An unnamed senior defense official claims he did not know any current DOD employees with knowledge of the gas station project and did not know if it was functional or not.

Sopko found it interesting that to date, billions of dollars have been wasted in Afghanistan and now a $43 million gas station is present in a country known as the world's leading producer of opium.

Sen. Claire McCaskill released a statement through FoxNews, saying, "There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop. But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me. 

"It's hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than 8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational. Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that's been wasted -an unacceptable lack of transparency that I'll be thoroughly investigating." 

Sen. Chuck Grassley pointed out that "[u]nder the law, government employees are not authorized to spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices, receiving reports and payment vouchers. If those documents don't exist, that's a huge problem. The Defense Department needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible for a colossal waste of tax dollars."

What do you think? Is there a link between the United States government and the production of opium? Is Sopko right in questioning the American government? How do you feel about the government's spending of your tax dollars? Let us know in the comments below.

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