Secret Report of $125Bln Wasted by Pentagon Prompts Demand for Congress Probe

An internal Department of Defense audit that reportedly showed $125 million wasted by the agency’s bloated bureaucracy is being sought for an investigation by Congress, according to a press release issued by US Senator Claire McCaskill on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Earlier it was reported that the effort went awry when auditors discovered $125 billion in waste — an amount so large that Defense Department officials decided to kill the report and hush up the audit.

"If this is true, the Pentagon played Congress and the American public for fools," McCaskill said in the release. "It would mean that while some in Congress were busy debating cuts to vital services… the Department of Defense literally knew it could save the American people billions and billions of dollars in bureaucratic waste."

In January, McCaskill will become the ranking minority member of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, according to the release. She is also a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCaskill’s call for an investigation was prompted by a newspaper report earlier on Tuesday of a Pentagon-ordered study that was intended to make the agency’s bureaucracy more efficient and use the savings to support combat troops.

McCaskill’s release noted that her office had contacted the Defense Department to demand a full copy of the buried study along with the background data.