The Pentagon failed its seventh audit, according to press reports on Friday. The agency could not account for $824 billion in money and equipment; see Pentagon Flunks Seventh Straight Audit, Can't Fully Account for $824 Billion Budget. Sadly, this is not unusual. In 2023, the sixth audit of the Pentagon produced basically the same thing; Pentagon Would Hit Panic Button As It Fails 6th Audit in a Row If Anyone Cared. When the Department of Defense was tasked to report on its role in Dr. Anthony Fauci's gain-of-function fetish, it couldn't determine if it had helped fund the project; see DOD Inspector General Not Sure If We Spent $50 Million in Chinese Labs for Gain-of-Function Research.
This should be a scandal, but the people involved don't see anything wrong. Comedian and dyed-in-the-wool leftist Jon Stewart interviewed Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks on the subject of DOD failing seven audits in a row. The encounter shows what happens when someone who would like to defend the organization meets someone who has huffed the Drano of Defense spending.
STEWART: There is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse within a system…
HICKS: Audits and waste, fraud, and abuse are not the same thing, so let's decompose these pieces for a moment.
STEWART: Then please educate me on what the difference is.
HICKS: Sure, so an audit is exactly what you just described, which is, do I know what was delivered to which place?
STEWART: Right.
HICKS: The ability to pass an audit or the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false right there.
STEWART: So what is it suggestive of?
HICKS: It's suggestive that we don't have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where. That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred.
STEWART: So, in my world, that's waste.
HICKS: How is that waste?
STEWART: If I give you a billion dollars and you can't tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible. But if you can't tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think? And when there has been reporting, I mean, this is not, look, I'm not saying this is on you and that you caused this, but I think it's a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for. And especially when they see food insecurity on military bases, and they see-
HICKS: You wanna talk about that? Cause that's a good...we should be talking...I mean, I'm trying to understand where you're trying to go other than the dollars, which really bother you.
STEWART: I think it doesn't really bother me. I think it's all connected.
HICKS: Okay, tell me that story. Tell me how you're thinking about that.
STEWART: Well, when I see a state department get a certain amount of money, and a military budget be 10 times that, and I see a struggle within government to get people like more basic services, and then that, uh, department that got that... I mean, we got out of 20 years of war, and the Pentagon got a 50 billion dollar raise that's shocking to me. Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs and...and the incredible, uh, magic of an audit, but I'm a human being who lives on the earth and can't figure out how 850 billion dollars to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. Like, to me, that's fucking corruption. I'm sorry. And if, like, if that blows your mind, and if you think like, that's like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that's institutional thinking and that it's not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest fighting force in the world. So I just, again, I get back to this idea of, like, I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, that the reaction to these questions are, you don't know what an audit is, bucko. That's just weird to me.
HICKS: Okay.
Between Hicks' giggles, it is obvious that she is spinning a lie she hopes Stewart will bite. For instance, "It's suggestive that we don't have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where. That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred."
In my post on the Pentagon's sixth audit, I write this:
In fairness, the audit is not strictly a dollars-in-dollars-out affair, though that gets most of the focus. Like when the Navy discovered nearly $1 billion worth of spare parts it didn't know it had.
That is textbook "waste." What happens when you have $1 billion in spare parts that aren't in your inventory system? You order more spare parts.
Stewart's comment about "institutional thinking" is spot-on. Hicks is looking at the audit as an annoyance that she can ignore. In reality, failing multiple audits in a row should mean that dozens of careers come to an abrupt halt.
This video should put Pete Hegseth on notice that when he is confirmed, he will lead a morally broken Department of Defense that believes it is allowed to play by its own rules. He needs to take office in a way that makes Genghis Khan look like the Tooth Fairy. He needs to use the results of the last two audits to remove or reassign senior bureaucrats who can't be bothered to care what happens to the national wealth with which they are entrusted.