And Then They Blew $5 On Some X-Ray Specs That Didn't Even Work

The TSA embraces the holy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse:

Employees with the agency in charge of safeguarding air travel spent more than $370,000 to lavishly decorate an office and then tried to cover up the cost by having an invoice rewritten, according to a government audit that blasts the agency for "wasteful" spending.

Officials at the Transportation Security Administration also bought $3,000 Subzero refrigerators and built a fitness center the size of a college basketball court, says the report, released Tuesday by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general. The costly perks were put in an office in suburban Washington, D.C., that opened two years ago as a TSA crisis management center, the audit says.

The report says TSA employees violated federal spending rules and in one case an ethics regulation. And TSA senior management "created a culture in which procurement procedures were abandoned, ethical norms slipped and fiscal responsibility was neglected," the report says.

TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield (not that Mark Hatfield) tells USA Today's Thomas Frank (not that Thomas Frank) that there's nothing to worry about:

Hatfield acknowledged "a failing of the system," which he said has been corrected.