Grassley Outlines Debacle Behind Marine Corps Audit Failure, Defense Department Office of Inspector General's Pivotal Role

Press Release

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today outlined in detail the failures of the Defense Department Office of Inspector General in issuing a clean bill of health on a Marine Corps financial audit. The clean opinion had to be withdrawn. The debacle is the subject of a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Grassley looked at the situation in detail as a long-time watchdog of the Defense Department's inability to account for the more than $500 billion it spends every year.

"Broken bookkeeping has plagued the Pentagon for years," Grassley said. "Under deadline pressure, the Marine Corps claimed to be ready for a clean audit. The Defense Department Office of Inspector General rushed to help and issued an opinion supporting a clean audit. Then work papers began to creep out, showing the clean opinion wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The inspector general was forced to withdraw the opinion.

"Now, the Government Accountability Office report exposes the flimsy basis for the clean bill of health. The report is an instruction manual for how not to jump to bogus conclusions. As hard as the inspector general's office tried, it couldn't produce any paper to support its conclusions. The Defense Department needs to follow every GAO recommendation to the letter. We need to get things back on track and prevent an embarrassing setback like this from ever happening again. The taxpayers deserve to know where their money goes, for defense and for everything else out of the federal government."

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