Pentagon’s bosses thwart accurate audit of DOD’s main accounting office

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/22/209356/pentagons-bosses-thwart-accurate.html



Pentagon’s bosses thwart accurate audit of DOD’s main accounting office
By James Rosen and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Washington Bureau
November 22, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s central payroll and accounting office, which pays out tens of billions of dollars a year to U.S. service members and defense contractors worldwide, likes to boast of a decade worth of clean audits by outside firms hired to check its books.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service was created in 1991 by Dick Cheney, then the secretary of defense, to help the government’s biggest agency get on top of its spending after President Ronald Reagan had overseen a massive military buildup the previous decade to counter the Soviet Union. Cheney also sought to prevent repeats of the $435 hammers, $37 screws and other embarrassing disclosures of excessive spending.

But more than two decades later – after another big military buildup, this time in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks – a McClatchy investigation has found troubling signs that the system set up to strengthen accountability for Pentagon spending is broken.

Among the signs of dysfunction, according to interviews with key players, internal emails, memos and other documents obtained by McClatchy, are:

– Outside audits by a certified public accounting firm of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s books turned out to be shoddy, according to the Pentagon’s own accountants, although that same CPA firm had endorsed the agency’s previous fiscal records for years.

[MADem]

1. I agree with this criticism.

If the disbursing/payroll/accounting people who are personally and pecuniarily accountable for the funds aren't doing their own auditing, plus being audited regularly by someone immediately senior in their chain of command, on a regular basis, and the results of the audits verified and documented, it is all too easy to bullshit an outside firm.

That said, a lot of bullshit goes on at the appropriations end of that shitty stick, as well. When you spend money on dumb shit, or allow cost-overruns to continue unchecked without sanctioning the provider in any way, you're asking for trouble...