October 01, 2003
MacDill slush fund investigated
Worldandnation: Defense says it didn't deceive
Pentagon officials denied Tuesday that they had instructed the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa to inflate budget proposals last year to hide $20-million from Congress.Posted by Norwood at October 1, 2003 06:55 AMIn response to a series of questions by House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said it is not Pentagon policy to deceive Congress.
"We do not do that kind of thing in a sleight-of-hand way," said Zakheim, who fielded Young's questions at the request of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who sat at his side. "Neither I nor my deputy, nor his deputy, instructed anybody to hide from the staff anything."
But in an e-mail dated Feb. 11, 2002, Elaine Kingston, the Special Operations comptroller, told colleagues she had received a call from Zakheim's office asking if the command could "park" $40-million in research and development funds in its budget for fiscal year 2003, which ended Tuesday.
"They needed an answer in five minutes," she wrote, without identifying the caller who contacted her office. "The agency they had it parked with had a problem and couldn't do it."
According to defense officials and documents obtained by the St. Petersburg Times, Special Operations officials divided $20-million among six projects so the money would not attract attention. They also instructed their own budget analysts not to mention it during briefings with congressional aides.
