Richmond Times-Dispatch - No more time to waste in building diplomatic security training facility at Fort Pickett

Op-Ed

By Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Randy Forbes, Robert Hurt and Rob Wittman

Well before the tragic attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, the U.S. Department of State identified the need for a dedicated facility to provide enhanced security training to U.S. Embassy personnel assigned to high-threat posts overseas.

The State Department was not alone in identifying this potential deficiency in its training protocols. In a 2011 report, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) cited the lack of a "consolidated training facility of its own" as one of the significant challenges the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security faces in carrying out its expanded mission abroad. After a highly competitive search process that included consideration of more than 70 sites, the State Department selected Fort Pickett, an Army National Guard base in Blackstone, Va., as the best location for a new Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC). Sadly, as the world has gotten more dangerous for U.S. personnel serving abroad, we are still awaiting construction of this critically important facility.

In 2012, the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, an independent panel convened in the wake of the tragedy, recommended urgently moving forward with FASTC at Fort Pickett to provide critical security training to prevent future tragedies. Even so, congressional pressure to consider an alternate site in Glynco, Ga., succeeded in significantly delaying the project. In 2013 and 2014, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) undertook a yearlong reassessment that came to the same conclusion as the State Department: that Fort Pickett is the best site. However, voices in Congress then demanded that the GAO conduct an additional study -- delaying the process, again, by yet another year.

It was no surprise to us that the GAO arrived at the same conclusion as the three previous evaluations, underlining and putting an exclamation point on the fact that Fort Pickett is the best location for a consolidated diplomatic training facility. While Fort Pickett meets all four operational requirements deemed critical for a new facility -- including 24/7 availability to allow for nighttime exercises and close proximity to Washington, D.C., and key training partners, such as the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group in Quantico, Va. -- the Georgia site meets none, according to the GAO. The study also found that over 10 years, it would cost taxpayers up to $120 million more to send embassy personnel to Georgia to train at an inferior site for the mission than it would to train them at Fort Pickett.

And yet, three years after the tragic Benghazi attack, and after evaluations by four different federal agencies and the Accountability Review Board, some in Congress are devising new strategies to require another study and delay the project further. In the meantime, we have evacuated our embassies in Libya and Yemen and our personnel and facilities have been attacked in Tunisia, Turkey and Afghanistan. What is it about embassy security and training that Congress doesn't support?

It is time to move forward with the Fort Pickett project. The land has been acquired. The environmental studies are complete. The construction contract has been let. More unnecessary delay dishonors the many brave Americans supporting our diplomatic mission overseas who risk their lives every day.