From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Watchdog Report: Countering Piracy off the Horn of Africa

Audio interview by GAO staff with Stephen Caldwell, Director, Homeland Security
& Justice

Related GAO Work: GAO-10-856, Maritime Security: Actions Needed to Assess and
Update Plan and Enhance Collaboration among
Partners Involved in Countering Piracy off the Horn of Africa

Released on: October 7, 2010

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability
Office. It's October 7th, 2010. Since 2007, Somali pirates, operating off the
Horn of Africa, have attacked more than 450
ships and taken nearly 2,400 hostages. A group led by Steve Caldwell, Director
in GAO's Homeland Security and Justice
team, recently evaluated the U.S. government’s counter-piracy planning. GAO's
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Steve to learn
more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] In order to help steer the government's response to piracy
off the Horn of Africa, the National
Security Council developed an interagency action plan. Can you tell us a little
bit about this plan?

[ Stephen Caldwell: ] Yeah this was a plan that was agreed to by several of the
different key agencies in the government
and had three major lines of effort and 14 specific tasks. And the major lines
of effort were first to prevent piracy by
reducing the vulnerabilities of shipping. The second one was to respond to
pirate attacks through an interdiction fleet or
some other capability out off the Horn of Africa. And then the third one was to
hold pirates accountable through
prosecution to hopefully make a deterrent so that they wouldn't continue their
piratical acts.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] One of the major points your report makes is that the nature
of the piracy threat has changed
significantly, even just since the release of the action plan. Can you talk a
little bit about how this threat has
changed?

[ Stephen Caldwell: ] Well the pirate threat, when the action plan came out, was
pretty limited to the narrow Gulf of
Aden, which is an area that the action plan talked about actually putting a
coalition Naval force in to run basically
convoys to protect ships. Since that time the pirates have changed their
tactics. They've moved away from that area, very
broadly out into the Indian Ocean. They've also had problems since that time in
terms of a lot of the pirates, even when
they've been captured, have been released, so obviously we're not creating a
very good deterrent. One of the interesting
things in our report is actually we have a map, an interactive map, that shows
the expansion of the pirate attacks through
the years. One of the other things that's happened is pirates are becoming a
little more sophisticated and organized and
so their financial networks are probably more sophisticated than they were
initially.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are some of the federal agencies that are responsible
for working to prevent and disrupt piracy?

[ Stephen Caldwell: ] So there's a number of agencies involved. There's the
State Department, which has an overall
diplomatic role in terms of cooperation with other countries. There's the
Department of Defense, which has the Navy out
there which is actually leading an international coalition of naval ships to
combat piracy. You have the Department of
Homeland Security with the Coast Guard that's working with U.S. shippers as well
as also contributing ships and people,
for the effort out in the Gulf of Aden. You’ve got the Department of Justice,
obviously responsible for criminal
prosecutions as well as responsible for building capacity for other countries to
prosecute in the region. You've got the
Department of Treasury, which can track financing of pirates. And then you've
got the Department of Transportation, which
like the Coast Guard works with industry to try to reduce the vulnerability of
shippers to piracy.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] In light of all these different agencies with varying
responsibilities, what is GAO recommending be
done to improve the effectiveness of U.S. counter-piracy efforts?

[ Stephen Caldwell: ] GAO recommends that the plan better define the roles and
responsibilities of the different federal
agencies involved. Of the 14 tasks that are laid out in the action plan, only
one of them lays out which agencies are
responsible for them. So there can certainly be some uncertainty over which
agency should take the lead and a lot of these
actually require multiple agency action. We also require that the different
agencies try to measure their results in terms
of both what's going on with the pirates as well as their costs, so that somehow
can measure cost effectiveness of their
efforts. And then also revise the plan as appropriate to account for the
changing pirate tactics.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Are there any other significant issues that the report
raises?

[ Stephen Caldwell: ] There's two other points that are pretty important. One is
that the collaboration, generally within
the U.S. government and across the international community, has been very
strong. And then the other point is that U.S.
interests are pretty limited there. There's very few U.S. flag, U.S. cruise
ships that actually go through those areas,
maybe three on any given day out of the thousands and thousands of ships that go
through there. And a lot of the vessel
traffic that is of interest to the U.S. going through there, and this would be
mainly oil tankers and container ships,
those ships tend to be less vulnerable to piracy because they ride high out of
the water and they travel quickly, at
higher speeds. So it's harder for the pirates to get alongside them and board
them.

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] To learn more visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov and be sure to tune
in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog
Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability
Office.