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- WASHINGTON -- Congress says
in a new report that the Pentagon defied the law and the Constitution by
spending hundreds of millions of dollars on military projects that lawmakers
never approved, including a super-secret Air Force program. The Pentagon
acknowledged some of the accusations Wednesday night, saying honest mistakes
led to its failure to notify Congress about the way it was spending money.
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- The House Appropriations Committee, expressing anger
and astonishment in a report that accompanied this year's military spending
bill, which is scheduled to be debated by the House on Thursday, said the
practice had eroded trust between the nation's lawmakers and military commanders.
Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California and chairman of the
committee's defense spending panel, said the Pentagon's actions showed
its belief "that it can even move money to a program Congress has
closed down, maybe presuming, 'Oh, well, nobody will know.' "
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- "What do we have to do to make them understand what
we mean when we say no?" Lewis asked.
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- The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, said Wednesday
night that the failure to notify Congress about the military's redirecting
of appropriated funds had taken place. "We work very hard to respond
to the directives Congress gives us," Bacon said. "Do we get
it right 100 percent of the time? Of course not."
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- He acknowledged that the Air Force wrongfully started
and financed a highly classified, still-secret project, known as a "black
program," without informing Congress last year. The committee said
that act was illegal. It also raises questions about civilian control of
black programs, whose costs and nature are the most highly classified secrets
in the Pentagon. Military officials refused to discuss any details of the
black program.
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- The committee's 313-page report says the Air Force tried
to buy an $800 million military communications satellite without lawful
authority, and illegally diverted from an unspecified program hundreds
of millions of dollars to update its C-5 transport plane. It also says
the Pentagon spent millions of dollars on a "Star Wars" missile
defense program that was previously canceled by Congress.
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- The report cited three other examples involving military
trucks, missiles and tanks. It did not provide specific cost figures, but
committee staff members said these practices were a chronic and worsening
problem adding up to billions of dollars spent improperly and illegally
over the past decade, particularly in the last year or so as military officials
have tried to finance more and more expensive programs.
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- Addressing the specific charges other than the Air Force
black program, Bacon said the military had on occasion failed to notify
lawmakers about the way it spent money on these and other military projects.
But he said these were honest errors, and not open defiance.
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- As for the military satellite, he said there were legitimate
disputes over whether caches of research money should be segregated from
money to the satellite. Bacon said the several hundred million dollars
transferred to the C-5 program involved a misunderstanding between the
Pentagon and Congress, and the "Star Wars" program was a controversy
over whether the program had been completely canceled.
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- The law and Pentagon procedures allow military officials
to shift funds from one account to another, but not without telling Congress.
They cannot finance programs Congress never approved, or use money for
a purpose that lawmakers never intended. But they have done so for years,
the committee's report and its staff members said.
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- "The Constitution is pretty clear on this,"
Lewis said. It says: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but
in Consequence of Appropriations made by law." That means the Pentagon
cannot spend money unless Congress authorizes it for specific programs.
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- Congress struggles every year over the military's budget
and the costs of weapons. But the Pentagon now consumes half of the available
funds in the Federal budget, and some senior Republican lawmakers, mindful
that their party is cutting billions of dollars from domestic programs,
are trying to be more vigilant about military spending.
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- The Pentagon spending battle has been joined this year
in the House on two fronts: the accountability of Pentagon officials and
the cost of weapons, including the $70 billion F-22 fighter jet program.
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- The committee has withheld $1.8 billion sought to produce
the first six F-22's, saying the money would be better spent on pilots
and present-day planes. The F-22 is supposed to be the flagship of the
21st century Air Force. The decision has produced howls of protest from
the Pentagon. "We can fund the F-22," President Clinton said
today. "It would be a mistake to abandon the project."
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- The Senate's defense bill finances the first six F-22's.
But Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the
Armed Services Committee, told Defense Secretary William S. Cohen this
week that "we can't be giving you a blank check."
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- The House Appropriations Committee report noted that
the Air Force was trying to write its own checks for the F-22. It said
the Air Force requested hundreds of millions of dollars that was supposed
to help buy the first F-22's, but Air Force officials, "in violation
of specific Congressional direction," earmarked the money for additional
research and development. The Air Force, in a statement, said it "had
not misled Congress or misused appropriated funds." It called the
committee's report a product of "misunderstanding or misinterpretation,"
and said it would "work with Congress to clear this up."
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- That may take some doing. The committee called the Air
Force's "lack of accountability astonishing."
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- Its report said the Air Force broke the law with a new
program to update electronics and software on the C-5 transport plane.
This program, "which the Congress never formally approved," cost
several hundred million dollars. The money was obtained "by diverting
funds specifically provided by the Congress for another program,"
the report said.
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- The committee said the Air Force has been taking money
out of research funds to help finance a new $800 million Milstar military
communications satellite. One of the satellites was lost in space this
spring, but because appropriated money was diverted, the Air Force cannot
say how much a replacement will cost taxpayers, the report said.
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- "This committee is little short of amazed,"
the report said in accusing Pentagon and missile-defense officials of illegally
financing a "Star Wars" system known as the Medium Altitude Air
Defense program.
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- The system has cost $100 million but produced nothing,
the committee said. It was canceled last year by Congress. But it received
at least $2 million diverted by Pentagon and missile-defense officials
from another missile-defense program to help keep it alive, the report
said.
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- Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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- http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/072299pentagon-spend.html
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