Property Disposal

Controls Needed to Preclude DOD Release of Unsafe Surplus M151 Jeeps Gao ID: NSIAD-91-10 January 2, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Defense Logistics Agency's (DLA) procedures for safeguarding surplus Army M151 jeeps sent to disposal offices, focusing on whether DLA complied with the Department of Defense's (DOD) policy on the mutilation of M151 jeeps to prevent civilian use.

GAO found that: (1) the DOD in-transit accountability system did not effectively control the transfer of M151 jeeps from military units to disposal offices; (2) disposal offices did not use the voluminous reports the accountability system generated to track jeep transit; (3) military units did not investigate record discrepancies between the number of jeeps sent and received because it was time consuming and little emphasis was placed on reconciling differences; (4) disposal offices did not follow such internal control procedures as inspecting vehicles transporting jeep parts, annotating and controlling weight tickets for jeep parts disposed of as scrap, and annotating and controlling delivery passes for usable jeep parts; (5) DLA mutilated jeep frames to prevent restoration to operable condition, but allowed the sale to the public of the rest of the parts, including the suspension, which was considered the primary cause of jeep accidents; and (6) DLA did not report the lack of an effective accounting system for jeep transit or the disposal shortcomings as internal control weaknesses.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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