It's something that grew on itself the way bureaucracies tend to in Washington. As soon as it was outlawed there became a series of exemptions - for the DEA, the FBI, for maritime law, for public order in various countries - and all the police training outside the United States is now done not under a law authorizing it but under an exemption that makes it an exception to the rule.

Journalist Douglas Gillison reports on America's network of foreign police and military training programs around the globe - a phenomenon so vast and reliant on loopholes it operates outside the view of the American public and the oversight of the hundreds of agencies funding it - potentially (probably) providing assistance to human rights abusers abroad and sidestepping a law intended to prevent that very scenario.

Douglas is co-author of the 100 Reporters investigation Training the Planet: America’s Vast Global Network to Instruct Foreign Security Forces Gets Scant Oversight.