A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for answers on the Army[1]'s handling of meal funds as questions mount over the apparent misallocation of tens of millions of dollars intended to feed soldiers.
The scrutiny follows a Military.com investigation[2] revealing that the Army cannot account for more than $151 million deducted from troops' paychecks -- funds meant to cover meals. On Tuesday, 21 lawmakers penned a letter to Hegseth on the matter and about concerns over access to nutritious food.
At the heart of the issue is the Army's Basic Allowance for Subsistence, or BAS, a roughly $460 monthly stipend for soldiers meant to offset food costs. For many junior enlisted troops living in barracks, much of that allowance is automatically deducted to fund dining facilities. Lawmakers, however, are questioning whether those deductions are being used effectively and appropriately.
"Our service members are the best among us and expect fair compensation from their government," Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who is leading the oversight effort, said in a statement. "If a service member is losing money from their paycheck because they are being given a meal, it is reasonable for them to expect that funding will be used only to cover the costs of providing it and to ensure it is of the highest possible quality."
Financial data from 11 of the Army's largest bases, reviewed by Military.com, revealed that only about 40% on average of the funds collected from soldiers for food was actually spent on meals, though at some bases the gap was more significant.
Officials have declined to provide figures for nearly 100 other Army garrisons, likely violating the service's own transparency rules, meaning the issue may be much more significant. Data reviewed by Military.com accounts only for 2024, yet the issue has been going on for years and across several administrations.
The publication also found numerous instances of dining facilities abruptly closing or changing hours, making it difficult for troops to access food. The Army has increasingly relied on grab-and-go kiosks[4], a shift away from college campus-style dining facilities. But these kiosks primarily offer snacks and prepackaged meals, many of which fall short of the Army's own nutrition standards.
Lawmakers also want Hegseth to explain how the Army is providing nutritious options for soldiers, and whether the Defense Department needs additional resources for food options.
"Through your experience as a junior officer, you can empathize with the importance of a reliable, nutritious dining facility, and its importance to morale," lawmakers wrote to Hegseth. "You are now ultimately responsible for the welfare of these service members."
Service officials interviewed by Military.com were unable to answer detailed questions on how the Army decides food budgets, noting only that budgets are based on the volume of soldiers using the dining facilities. But that data does not take into account the number of soldiers eligible to use the facilities or how many are on base at a given time.
Army officials declined to comment for this story.
"They haven't given a clear explanation on what's being done with food; some of their responses have been really confusing," one congressional staffer told Military.com on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, referring to behind-the-scenes conversations between the Army and Capitol Hill on the matter. "There's some fundamental confusion of how money works."
Head count numbers do not account for long-term training events or deployments[5], when troops are away from base facilities -- sending a false signal to Army planners that troops are choosing not to use their meal entitlements.
A 2022 report[6] from the Government Accountability Office found that the services, with the exception of the Air Force[7], do not adequately track how often troops make use of dining facilities.
"We found that Army food program officials do not track the extent to which service members with a meal entitlement use the entitlement and do not have plans to do so," the report noted.
Senators who signed the letter to Hegseth include Warnock; Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Michael Bennet, D-Colo.; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.
House members who signed onto the effort include Reps. Rob Wittman, R-Va.; Jen Kiggans, R-Va.; Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif.; Don Bacon, R-Neb.; Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis.; Sanford Bishop, D-Ga.; Seth Moulton, D-Mass.; Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz.; John McGuire, R-Va.; Lance Gooden, R-Texas; Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J.; Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa.; Don Davis, D-N.C.; and Salud Carbajal, D-Calif.
Three weeks after President Donald Trump’s extraordinary purge of inspectors general across the federal government, a document arrived in Navy Lt. Cmdr. Shannon Bencs’ email inbox.
It was the day before Valentine’s Day, but what was detailed in the 64-page report under the official seal of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense was a relationship gone sideways:
“WHISTLEBLOWER REPRISAL INVESTIGATION, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER SHANNON BENCS, U.S. NAVY, NAVAL SUPPLY FLEET LOGISTICS CENTER,
PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII.”
Bencs had been waiting for nearly four years for the report since filing complaints against her commanders, claiming they had retaliated against her for exposing significant issues before a devastating fuel leak at the Navy’s largest storage facility in 2021 contaminated drinking water for tens of thousands of service members and their families.
But when she scoured the preliminary findings, her heart sank. The DoD inspector general found no link between her whistleblowing and her negative performance reviews.
“It was like a kick in the gut,” Bencs told The War Horse. “I had a feeling that they would protect the Navy.”
While Congress empowered inspectors general with independent oversight to root out waste, fraud, and abuse[1], critics say what happened to Bencs is typical of a system that is overseen by the agencies that are under the spotlight themselves.
Now, some advocates for greater independence and accountability are asking: Could IG reform really come under Trump?
Retired Lt. Col. Ryan Sweazey, a T-38 Talon pilot, served as an inspector general during his time in the Air Force and now heads a group calling for reforms. (Delaney Gonzales/U.S. Air Force)
‘97.6%’ Told ‘No, You’re Liars’
Trump raised alarm with his unprecedented sacking of more than a dozen heads of inspector general offices[2] during his first week back in the White House, including at the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs. A month later, he turned his ax on Pentagon military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Critics say the housecleaning is simply part of a larger consolidation of power—not a pretext for reform—and that the dramatic downsizing of federal workers under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is fostering an even deeper fear of speaking out. But the leaders of the veteran-run Walk the Talk Foundation[3] are still hoping the president will make good on a campaign promise[4] to “make every inspector general’s office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee”—a change they say is critical to creating a system whistleblowers can trust.
Walk the Talk founder Ryan Sweazey is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served as an inspector general for an air wing from 2013 to 2016. He says he later found himself subjected to professional reprisal after reporting workplace hostility and discrimination in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Sweazey points to a Congressional Research Service report in 2020[5] on how infrequently whistleblower reprisal complaints are substantiated: just 2.4% of cases.
“So 97.6% of cases are told, ‘No, you’re liars or you’re wrong, go suck it,’ right?” Sweazey told The War Horse. “It’s an extremely high-risk, low probability of quote-unquote success system.”
Officers named in Bencs’ reprisal report were faulted in the Navy’s separate findings about the handling of the Red Hill fuel leak that sickened thousands in Hawaii. The draft IG report found her commanding officer at the time had motive to retaliate against her, having known about multiple reports she made regarding fuel leaks into Pearl Harbor and a new fire suppression system that had been taken offline.
But the report found actions her senior officers took, including unfavorable fitness reports, and a decision at one point to put Bencs on travel orders, did not adversely affect her career, or were linked to her job performance and not her reporting. The Defense Department's Office of Inspector General did not respond to an interview request, and The War Horse tried to contact Bencs' supervisors but did not hear back.
She says the IG’s interviews with her felt adversarial, seeming to probe for inconsistencies in her story.
“It’s like every time I [talked] to them, they’re just trying to find a way to disprove what I was saying, thinking I didn’t have evidence to support it,” she said.
‘72 Hours of Training’
The Walk the Talk Foundation has created a draft executive order and legislative proposal outlining changes that would make IGs less beholden to the organizations they report on. These include creating an independent inspector general for DoD that does not depend on military command-appointed investigators; more and better training for IG staff; mandatory timelines for completing investigations; and a fast-track process for Freedom of Information Act document requests related to IG investigations.
“When I was an inspector general, I received three business days of training, and then suddenly I was an IG,” Sweazey said. “I think that’s absurd, especially when I was overseeing investigations that have real, serious ramifications and you could get dismissed from the military via the administrative process—that’s a big deal. For that, you need somebody with more than 72 hours of training, in my humble opinion.”
Sweazey noted that inspectors general are political appointees and often treated politically—Trump replaced a number of inspectors general[8] from the previous administration during his first term in 2020, and President Barack Obama removed AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin in 2009[9]. But any indicator that Trump will make good on his promise of IG independence has yet to come.
“I have guarded optimism, I guess is the best phrase, that the removal of the head of the agency is a step in that direction,” Sweazey said. “But true reform has not yet materialized.”
Don’t expect it, says Joe Spielberger at the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog organization that reports on government waste, corruption, and accountability. He worries that the system, flawed as it is, could become less accountable, more politicized and beholden to the demands of senior leadership in the new administration.
“When we see these very clear and blatant moves, like with these recent firings, that really paints a picture that these decisions are being made for partisan political reasons, and not because of the need for increased accountability in the federal government,” said Spielberger, the senior policy counsel at POGO’s Effective and Accountable Government team. “It really also plays a huge role in creating that wider chilling effect.
“It can just really cause much more confusion and chaos and lack of clarity about whether these individuals in these [inspector general] offices really are serving in the best interests of the people.”
Positive Signs at VA Before Firings
Well-known veteran whistleblowers say change has been slow in coming at the Department of Veterans Affairs, an organization historically so beset by reports of whistleblower reprisal that in 2017[10] Congress established a separate Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection to remedy the problem. But they point to recent signs of positive change—before Trump’s firings.
Shea Wilkes, an Army veteran who played a key role in exposing the VA’s infamous waitlist scandal[11] while working at the Shreveport, Louisiana, VA Medical Center in 2014, has testified before Congress[12] about being placed under criminal investigation and effectively suspended from his work after blowing the whistle. Wilkes still has issues with the VA OIG—he’s bothered that it has “no bite”—no enforcement authority over the VA with its recommendations—and contends that investigations can often be a box-checking exercise.
Shea Wilkes, pictured here during a 2008 deployment to Afghanistan, was suspended after speaking out about a waitlist scandal when he worked at a VA Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana. (Photo courtesy of Shea Wilkes)
But Wilkes said he was impressed by his interactions with Michael Missal, the VA inspector general who had led the office for eight years before being fired by Trump in January. Despite Wilkes’ reputation for calling out leaders, which has caused some to keep their distance, Missal engaged right away, he said.
“I communicated with him via email directly a few times, and he would actually respond to me,” Wilkes said, adding that he believed investigations under Missal were more aggressive and direct.
“I thought he did better, and I thought [the VA OIG investigations under Missal] would actually call out the VA,” Wilkes said.
Missal, who joined seven other fired inspectors general[13] last month in filing a lawsuit alleging that their terminations without notice were illegal, told The War Horse that he’d taken pains to stay objective and distinct from the VA in his job. Once, he said, he turned down an invitation to join an office birthday party for the VA secretary.
“I said, ‘The last thing I want is for me to be seen celebrating the secretary’s birthday,’” Missal recalled. “It’s things like that—to me, you’re giving the appearance you’re not independent. And I never went to staff meetings of the VA; I never went to any event in which we didn’t have sort of an official role.”
While Missal acknowledges the OIG still has no enforcement authority over the VA, he said he worked to improve accountability within the office, launching a data group that would request information ranging from dialysis recipients to prosthetics purchases to improve data analytics and locate waste and malfeasance.
What Comes Next
Missal has little optimism for what will come next for IGs in the current administration, fearing that the watchdog agencies could be dismantled, or that fired inspectors general will be replaced with leaders less concerned about accountability than with pleasing the White House.
“Either way ... veterans are going to suffer, because we did so many things that helped VA improve, which benefited veterans,” he told The War Horse.
Navy fuels director Shannon Bencs walks a portion of the seven miles of tunnels of the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in 2020. (Daniel Mayberry/U.S. Navy)
As for Bencs, she’s not giving up—she plans to submit a response to the DoD IG report with statements from witnesses she says will back her up.
Her role as a whistleblower in the catastrophic leak has been highlighted in the local media and championed by local groups like O’ahu Water Protectors[14].
“If I had just gone on and [said] everything was hunky dory ... I don’t think I would have learned what I learned,” she said.
Like the Walk the Talk Foundation, Bencs wants to see the IG fully removed from the purview of the Defense Department, and hopes the current upheaval will force a move in that direction.
“I think this is a good catalyst to force change with my case and with others,” she said. “It’s got to stop.”
We Want to Hear From You
At The War Horse, we want to truly understand and share the unique challenges service members, veterans, and their families are facing. Are you a veteran or military spouse who recently lost your job due to federal agency cuts? Are you experiencing any interruptions, cancelations or delays to your medical care or benefits? How is all this affecting your family?
You can contact The War Horse at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.[15]or via encrypted Protonmail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.[16]
This War Horse story was reported by Hope Hodge Seck, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
Editors Note: This article[17] first appeared on The War Horse,[18] an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter[19].
Organizers of a conference that brings Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs[1] health leadership and military medical professionals together to share ideas excluded "independent media" this year, despite having allowed -- and welcomed -- press coverage for more than a decade.
Reporters who tried to sign up to attend the annual meeting of the AMSUS Society of Federal Health Professionals were told that the media was being excluded this year. Those who managed to sign up received emails that their registrations had been canceled.
According to Kenneth McClain, communications director at AMSUS, media registrations were "not available for independent media organizations."
When pressed for a reason, McClain said that the decision was made at the "request of speakers who want to be able to speak without attribution."
"AMSUS leadership revised the media pass policy in response to new guidelines affecting sessions and speakers," McClain said. "As a nonprofit, we are not part of the federal government, but to best support our speakers, we will honor their request."
McClain did not provide a definition of what AMSUS considers "independent media" or who might attend or provide information from the conference.
The AMSUS conference is one of the few opportunities each year for members of the military and veterans health community, the U.S. Public Health Service, contractors, vendors, the public and the media to learn about developments and research within the Defense Health Agency, the Veterans Health Administration and the Tricare[3] health program.
The decision to exclude the media follows decisions made by the White House to exclude traditional media such as The Associated Press from Oval Office briefings and institute an annual rotation schedule at the Pentagon Press Office that removed outlets such as NBC News, National Public Radio and The New York Times while bringing in outlets favorable to President Donald Trump, including One America News Network and Breitbart.
The decision also follows turmoil in the Defense Department over the provision of medical care for 9.6 million patients and concern among veterans over the future of health care at the VA.
Since Jan. 1, patients who use the Tricare health program have experienced trouble staying with their providers or finding new ones, as well as delays in specialty referrals and care[4] following a change in contract management to TriWest Healthcare Alliance.
Many military hospitals are short-staffed[6], resulting in long waits for care or referrals to private care in communities that may not have the capacity to handle the patient load.
At the VA, veterans are closely watching efforts to expand community care[7] -- medical services provided to veterans by private physicians but paid for by the VA. While some patients have reported delays in receiving referrals to community care, others want to be seen at the VA and would like to see improvements in VA facilities.
Many of those subjects were to be addressed at various sessions at AMSUS. The top leaders of the Defense Health Agency and Acting VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Steven Lieberman are slated to speak, as are the service surgeons general.
Topics include the future of Army[8], Navy[9] and Air Force[10] medical response; the state of the military health system; quality and safety in the military system; mental health care for service members; veterans suicide prevention; and more.
Nonprofit conferences may not meet a requirement under a law known as the Sunshine Act guaranteeing media access to meetings.
An attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said it was not clear whether the conference would be covered by the act. However, he added, allowing the press access to public functions is "paramount for a transparent and accountable government."
"To prohibit independent media from covering such a consequential convening at a time of such rapid change does a disservice to the goal of keeping the public informed and engaged," wrote Gunita Singh, an RCFP staff attorney, in an email to Military.com.
Americans celebrate National Anthem Day to commemorate Francis Scott Key, who was inspired by the Battle of Fort McHenry to write The Star-Spangled Banner, the U.S. national anthem since 1931.
