The Pentagon's internal auditor is investigating allegations that Defense Department officials tried to hide $20 million from Congress by temporarily putting the funds in the budget of the Special Operations Command, Defense officials said yesterday.
Officials at that secretive military headquarters, which oversees the Green Berets and other units that specialize in clandestine operations, were first asked to hide $40 million, but told Pentagon officials that they couldn't handle so large an amount, according to an article in yesterday's edition of the St. Petersburg Times.
The newspaper, quoting what it identified as internal documents from the command, said that an official in the office of the Pentagon's comptroller, or chief financial officer, called the command's comptroller, Elaine Kingston, and asked if she could "park" $40 million in Special Operations' proposed budget for fiscal 2003.
"They needed an answer in five minutes," Kingston later wrote in an e-mail the paper said it had obtained. "The agency they had parked it with had a problem and they couldn't do it." Kingston also allegedly coached colleagues not to bring the budgetary move to the attention of congressional staffers.
Army Col. Samuel Taylor, the spokesman for the command, said that Kingston was not available to comment, but that she didn't mean to indicate that the money was being hidden in her budget. " 'Parked' is a bad word to use," and Kingston "didn't mean it in that sense," he said.
The Pentagon's comptroller is Dov Zakheim, who during the 2000 presidential election was one of the Bush campaign's "Vulcans," or advisers on national security issues. He did not respond to calls to his office.
The amount of money involved is tiny relative to the Pentagon's annual budget of nearly $400 billion. But the allegation that the Pentagon sought to mislead Congress about any expenditures is explosive, especially because many legislators have complained that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has not been responsive to their concerns.
"Our job is to know where every dollar goes," said Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. If there was indeed an effort by Defense officials to mislead Congress about planned expenditures, he said, "it won't play well at all."
Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is expected to grill Rumsfeld about the alleged padding of the Special Operations Command's budget at a hearing today on the Bush administration's request for an additional $87 billion to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan. Young told the Times he wants to know "if it's common practice with the secretary."
Marine Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's inspector general, confirmed that "there is a current Department of Defense audit into allegations concerning financial issues."
She added, "U.S. SOCOM is cooperating fully with a team of DoD auditors as they conduct their audit." She said that the inquiry began with a complaint to the inspector general's hotline last summer.
Taylor, the Special Operations Command spokesman, said that a complaint was made internally at the command, perhaps by the same person.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19300-2003Sep29.html 30sep03
WASHINGTON (AP)—The Pentagon's chief investigator is looking into allegations that one of the U.S. military's major command headquarters inflated budget proposals at the Pentagon's request to hide $20 million from Congress, officials said Monday.
The Pentagon inspector general's office is conducting a preliminary inquiry into the allegations, which were reported to a Pentagon hot line for anonymous tips on fraud and abuse, the officials said. The audit will determine whether a full-scale investigation is launched.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Pentagon officials are conducting an audit at U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. She said she had no other details, including when the hot-line complaint was made.
The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, which was first to report on the charges, said it obtained documents which show Special Operations Command officials divided the $20 million among six projects in their 2003 budget so the money wouldn't attract attention from congressional overseers.
The plan, as described in the documents obtained by the Times, called for Special Operations Command to pad its proposed budget by $20 million so the money could be used later by the Pentagon for other purposes. It isn't yet clear what other purposes the Pentagon had in mind.
Federal law requires that money appropriated by Congress be used only for purposes authorized by Congress.
The newspaper report quoted from an e-mail sent by Special Operation Command comptroller Elaine Kingston to colleagues Feb. 11, 2002.
She wrote that a person in the Pentagon comptroller's office had asked if her office would "park" $40 million. "They needed an answer in five minutes," Kingston wrote. "The agency they had it parked with had a problem and couldn't do it." She added that her office determined it couldn't "park" $40 million but found six programs where they could add $20 million.
In her e-mail, Kingston advised colleagues that in budget briefings for congressional aides they should include the inflated figures but not highlight or discuss them.
Special Operations programs that already were getting spending increases were chosen to add the extra millions so they wouldn't stand out when reviewed by Congress, Kingston wrote.
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