By Jim Miklaszewski
Defense Department workers ran up more than $1 million in charges at casinos and strip clubs with their government-issued credit cards in a single year, a Pentagon audit has found.
Officials told NBC News that taxpayers did not have to foot the bill because the cardholders were required to pay "personal" expenses out of their own pockets.
The DOD's Inspector General looked at transactions by civilian and military personnel between July 2013 and June 2014 and zeroed in on 4,437 transactions in which cardholders charged a total of $952,258 at casinos and an additional 900 charges totaling $96,576 at strip clubs.
The charges are against regulations on the use of government credit cards, but they did not violate any laws because they "did not result in the payment or loss of US taxpayer dollars," according to the Pentagon.
Administrative action has already been taken against 364 of the cardholders, while 79 are "pending action." Most of the offenders have undergone "counseling" on the use of the cards, but at least one military officer has been demoted one rank.
The officials could not say whether any civilians cardholders have been dismissed from their job.
Steven Senne / APFirst published May 7 2015, 8:39 AM
Jim Miklaszewski
Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.
In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.
Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.
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