reaches the point at which it does not have sufficient time to obligate all the funding by the end of the fiscal year, there were only two ways to discontinue obligation of usai, a president directed recision or dod directed reprogramming action, either of which would need to be notified to congress. i never heard either was being pursued. second wine was in communication with the dod assistance implementing community to try to understand exactly when they would reach the point at which they would be unable to obligate all the funds by the end of the fiscal year. i received a series of updates. in a serptember 5th update i an other senior leaders were informed over 100 million could not be obligated by september 30th and, third, i was advocating with levels with the president to explain why
the funding on contract. that contract starting the process. those contracts will be fulfilled fourth quarter perhaps or whatever it was? sir, i have to say, i m a policy official, i am not a contracting expert. but my understanding is we will be able to make up for lost time in the contracting process. fantastic. you go through three or four steps you went through because you disagreed with the hold being placed on the assistance and i certainly agree with that. did you get any kind of criticism with the folks you dealt with because you were going against omb s direction for putting a hold on that? did you get criticized for that? absolutely not. my entire chain of command was supportive of advocating for removing the hold on the funds? you weren t restricted on full throating advocating getting this hold lifted, were you? no, sir. i faced no restrictions.
support for resuming the funding in the u.s. national security interests, is that right? that s correct, sir. i guess i take a little question with resuming because we don t want to resume as is, would that be correct? because as is would not include javelin? sir, i m not sure i m following. i m just saying, the previous administration, javelins were not provided, even though they could have been, president obama stopped the javelins. he could have delivered javelins, let s put it that way. i think i should clarify what i meant by that statement. resuming was just referring to the fact omb had placed a hold on the assistance so we weren t spending and i wanted to resume the spending so that we could maintain this policy, maintain the strength. maintain the policy, but i guess what i m asking, there is a difference, i think under
defense works with the state department and other agencies to establish anti-corruption benchmarks and determine whether ukraine has efficiently met those bench marks, correct? that s correct. that provision pertains to the ukraine security assistance initiative. that s a legally specified process. that s not the president in the oval office manifesting general skepticism of foreign aid, is that right? it is a congressionally mandated process, yes, sir. did that process take place for the dod funding held up in july? the process that took place for the certification took place prior to the may certification to the u.s. congress. so, right. not only did it take place before, as required by law, months before president trump froze the money, the department of testifies, in consultation with state, sent a letter to congress certifying, you said
discussions that i am aware of related to that series of interagency meetings. the sub-pcc, we called it, the pcc, policy coordination committee, and deputy small group. in those meetings, participants did discuss the degree to which corruption was a concern, and the degree to which there was progress. my recollection of what the participants said in these meetings was that there was a very positive sense that progress was being made. so you have these meetings, progress is being made, nothing really changes from may until september that would then trigger the release of the money, except a whistleblower came forward. ma am, i do not know what triggered the release of the funding. all right.