Although the audit only covered a portion of the Corps' 2012 accounts, the Defense Department celebrated the feat with a ceremony in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, normally used to bestow medals of honor.
Then, in March 2015, a little more than year after the ceremony, the Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General, the Pentagon's independent auditor, withdrew its "unqualified" approval of the Marine Corps' accounts.
The inspector general’s office said it retracted the opinion because of new information that cast doubt on the reliability of the audit.
In reality, the inspector general team overseeing the audit determined in December that the Marine Corps’ books were not deserving of the clean opinion that would be issued months later, Reuters found.
The inspector general's team overseeing the audit found gaps in documentation and inaccuracies in the work of the outside accounting firm hired to do it, Grant Thornton LLP.
The team members determined that the Corps had flunked the audit, and recommended that the inspector general issue a "qualified" opinion – equivalent to a failing grade. An "unqualified," or clean, opinion means an auditor certifies that the books are up to snuff.
But the team members were continually overruled by Daniel Blair, deputy inspector general for auditing.
In an August 14, 2013, email obtained by Reuters, Cecilia Ball, a subordinate of Blair and head of the inspector general's team overseeing the audit, wrote to other team members:
"Dan [Blair] believes that GT [Grant Thornton] has supported an unqualified opinion, we have to do what it takes to reach the same conclusions as GT and he believes USMC [United States Marine Corps] has earned an unqualified opinion."
That message raises new questions about the independence of the inspector general’s office, an agency required by law to serve as an impartial watchdog.
The Defense Department is the only federal agency that has not complied with the 1992 law that requires annual audits of all government departments, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, the DOD's more than $500 billion annual budget is by far the largest of any government agency.
In 2009, Congress mandated that the entire Defense Department be audit-ready by 2017. As Reuters pointed out: "The Marine Corps audit shows just how hard that’s going to be."
