Tom Vanden Brook @tvandenbrook

USA TODAY

The Human Terrain System, the military's controversial effort to enhance understanding the cultures where troops are deployed, takes another hit on the op-ed pages of The New York Times Sunday.

Journalist Vanessa Gezari writes that the program, in which the military has sent civilian social scientists to battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, has noble aims but misses its targets badly.

"The Human Terrain System sought to bring a degree of anthropological and interpretive acumen to a military that badly needed it," she writes. "But it came too late, alienated too many anthropologists and was thrown together too quickly and sloppily to achieve many of its goals in Afghanistan. Taxpayers have spent more than $600 million on the deeply flawed program; it has occasionally benefited soldiers, but its slipshod construction and murky aims have also put Afghans and Americans at risk."

USA TODAY found many of the same issues in its investigation of the program in February. Internal Army investigations of the program, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, showed a program shot through with racism, sexism and fraud.

One soldier referred to an office for Human Terrain System administrators as the "ghetto" because of its black employees. An instructor propositioned a student asking for a little "tongue" with a kiss. Several former and current members of the program told investigators and the paper, on condition of anonymity, that they regularly filed for hours they didn't work, taking home more than $200,000 a year and months of comp time for little effort.

Equally troubling were dismissive comments from commanders in the field who found the reports of Human Terrain Teams to be worthless.

Beyond all that, many anthropologists hate it. They see the militarization of their field as an an ethical affront.

To be fair, the Army says that most of the abuses have been addressed. Supervisors have been trained on how to fill out time sheets properly, for example. A military researcher told us that the teams reports have improved and some commanders find them useful.

Gezari acknowledges that the Pentagon needs the cultural understanding that HTS should be providing. As the military withdraws from Afghanistan, she argues that policy makers have an opportunity to overhaul the Pentagon's "cultural-knowledge efforts."

Another opportunity, of a sort, to re-visit the program will probably come on Oct. 1. That's when another $52 billion in automatic spending cuts will come the Pentagon's way unless Congress and the White House reach a deal.

The Human Terrain System and its $250 million price tag for the year may provide an inviting target for budget cutters.