Chuck Grassley: “I wrote this letter to Mr. Lynn and asked him two questions: Who at Dayton--that means the financial center at Dayton…”

“I wrote this letter to Mr. Lynn and asked him two questions: Who at Dayton--that means the financial center at Dayton-- had knowledge of the Castle Air Force Base report on Miller? Who in the finance center management was responsible for totally ignoring this very dangerous red warning flag? I ended my letter to Mr. Lynn this way: Bill, the responsible person or persons in your organization need to be held accountable for ignoring obvious and repeated warning signals about SSGT Miller's trustworthiness and giving him unrestricted access to your department's money vault. I asked for answers to these two questions by September 23, 1998. That would have been 5 days after I wrote the letter. None ever arrived, as far as I know. When I did not get a prompt response to my January 19 letter to Mr. Lynn on straight pay, I raised those same issues with Secretary Cohen. I did that at a hearing before the Budget Committee on March 2, 1999. This is what Secretary Cohen said at the time: There is no authorized procedure called Straight Pay. Now, get that. You have straight pay that people talk about, and you have a Secretary of Defense saying there is no authorized procedure called straight pay. The process described is not correct and is not authorized. These answers do not square with the evidence I have tried to lay out.”