The New York Times reports that “an Army program meant to increase the number of recruits during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars devolved into an illegal free-for-all that could cost taxpayers close to $100 million, military investigators say, describing new details of what they called a long-running scheme among National Guard recruiters that went undetected for years.”  

“Army officials appeared before a Senate hearing on Tuesday and sketched out a huge criminal endeavor that has implicated more than 1,200 people — 200 of them officers — including two generals and dozens of colonels. Criminal investigators for the Army said soldiers, civilians and National Guard recruiters had used the program as a ‘bounty’ from which they could illegally collect money for recruiting soldiers they had not recruited.”