Second-Hand Carrots

Pentagon officials are asking Congress for the one-year renewal of a soon-to-expire authority under which officials may pay foreign tipsters through allied government representatives, according to a string of legislative proposals sent to lawmakers last week.

The years-old DOD Rewards program allows the defense secretary to "pay a monetary amount, or provide a payment-in-kind, to a person as a reward for providing United States Government personnel with information or nonlethal assistance" valuable in conducting operations or anticipating attacks against U.S. forces, according to law.

The Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, enacted early last year, gave DOD the additional authority to use foreign intermediaries to offer and pay these rewards -- up to $5 million. The authority to use intermediaries -- not the program as a whole -- is set to expire at the end of this fiscal year.

But defense officials only began transferring rewards through allied officials earlier this fiscal year, after guidance from former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England took effect in mid-September, a section-by-section analysis of the legislative proposals states.

Here is the key graph from the analysis:

"The authority to offer and make rewards by acting through government personnel of allied forces is currently in use in Afghanistan. The Commander, United States Central Command, is supportive and expects to expand this method of offering and making rewards. The authority was not implemented until fiscal year 2009 and requires more time to mature and develop based on adjusted national and theater strategies."