Audit: Surplus military equipment mishandled
By LARA JAKES
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon may have mishandled or even lost track of thousands of surplus machine guns, armored vehicles and other pieces of demilitarized equipment sold or provided to foreign governments, according to an internal audit.
Some of the equipment was given to unauthorized nations, jeopardizing U.S. national security, according to the report by the Defense Department's inspector general.
The lax control over surplus items "increased the risk of providing foreign governments unauthorized property that could be used to threaten our national security," the Feb. 13 report concluded. A copy of it was obtained Thursday.
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The inspector general's report concluded:
-As many as 7,259 of 7,373 items, including M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns, and armored personnel carriers, were not properly tracked, safeguarded, accounted for, or reconciled.
-As many as 291 of 7,373 line items, including M-16s parts, were shipped to foreign governments that were not authorized to have those items.
-As many as 960 of 7,373 items were wrongly identified by how they should be demilitarized to prevent misuse.
The 7,373 items were valued in the report at $296 million. The value of the items sampled was not immediately clear.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152ap_lost_equipment.html
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