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GAO-07-893R 1 (2007-06-07)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptavlx0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SGAO Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 June 7, 2007 The Honorable Tom Lantos Chairman The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ranking Member Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives The Honorable Thelma Drake House of Representatives Subject: State Department: The July 2006 Evacuation of American Citizens from Lebanon The evacuation of nearly 15,000 American citizens from Lebanon during July and August 2006 was one of the largest overseas evacuations of American citizens in recent history. The Department of State (State) has the lead responsibility for evacuating American citizens from overseas locations in times of crisis. However, the size and unforeseen nature of the Lebanon evacuation required the assistance of the Defense Department (DOD). Specifically, State needed DOD's ability to secure safe passage for American citizens in a war zone, as well as DOD's expertise and resources in providing sea and air transportation for large numbers of people. At your request, we have been conducting an ongoing review of State's efforts to plan for, execute, and recover from the evacuation of U.S. government personnel and American citizens from overseas posts. As part of this review, we collected information on State and DOD's efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens from Lebanon in July and August 2006. To address your questions about the Lebanon evacuation, we briefed members of your staff on April 30, 2007, on (1) how State and DOD prepare for evacuations; (2) how State and DOD carried out the Lebanon evacuation; and (3) our observations on State and DOD's successes and challenges in implementing the evacuation. This letter summarizes the main points from our presentation. See Enclosure II for a copy of the briefing slides from that presentation, which we have updated based on technical comments from State and DOD. To answer our three objectives, we met with State and DOD officials in Beirut, Lebanon; Nicosia, Cyprus; Washington D.C.; and at DOD's Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) headquarters in Illinois. In addition, we reviewed State and DOD documents on preparing for evacuations and other crises, as well as documentation related to the Lebanon evacuation that we obtained from these locations. We performed our work from July 2006 to April 2007 in accordance with generally GAO-07-893R U.S. Evacuation from Lebanon

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