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The decree comes in a Jan. 30 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stating that trafficking in people “will not be facilitated in any way by the activities of our service members, civilian employees, indirect hires or DoD contract personnel.”

Trafficking involves criminal efforts to lure or kidnap people, usually young women, across borders, entrapping them and forcing them into prostitution.

Wolfowitz said trafficking in people “is a violation of human rights; it is cruel and demeaning; it is linked to organized crime; it undermines our peacekeeping efforts; and it is incompatible with military core values.”

The memo, sparked by a directive signed by President Bush Feb. 25, 2003, that mandated a “zero tolerance” for trafficking, was sent to all service secretaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and Defense Department inspectors and legal specialists. Pentagon officials confirmed Feb. 12 that it carries the “full weight and authority” of a directive.

Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., author of the nation’s two anti-trafficking laws, said he was “very pleased” to see senior defense officials “take a clear and uncompromising zero-tolerance stance against the brutal crime of human trafficking.”

The memo follows by 18 months a story in Navy Times that, along with other 2002 media reports, found widespread evidence of trafficked women, many of them working as sex slaves, in clubs frequented by U.S. troops and patrolled by U.S. military police in South Korea. The following year, the Defense Department inspector general said the U.S. command had taken “strong and effective action” to combat the illicit trade but that “some deficiencies [still] existed.”

Similar activity was documented near bases in Bosnia, where independent whistleblowers found evidence of involvement in the local sex trade by U.S. contract employees and even U.N. officials, according to congressional testimony.

The Wolfowitz memo aims to halt such activity by ordering authorities “at all levels” to look for opportunities to combat trafficking in people. It calls for:

•Educating all Defense Department personnel overseas on the trafficking issue.

•Increasing efforts by command and military police worldwide to pursue indicators of trafficking in people in clubs and other places frequented by Defense Department personnel, placing offending establishments off-limits and providing support to host-country authorities investigating trafficking, “within their authority to do so.”

•Incorporating provisions in overseas service contracts that prohibit contract employees from any activities “that support or promote trafficking in persons, and impose suitable penalties on contractors who fail to monitor” their employees’ conduct.

•Devising ways to evaluate such efforts as part of ongoing inspectors general reviews.