CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : STANFORD : Navy Probes Lack of Stanford Audit

The U.S. Navy has opened an investigation to find who was responsible for its lax oversight of Stanford University, which is under fire for allegedly overbilling the government $200 million for research. Rear Adm. William C. Miller, chief of the Office of Naval Research, has established a panel to learn why his agency failed to audit Stanford’s books during the 1980s. Results of a recent Navy inquiry, released Feb. 7, found that potential for overcharges existed because the Navy didn’t audit Stanford’s indirect cost bills for research. Lack of an audit paper trail made it difficult to uncover any exact overbilling on the $240 million in annual federal research at Stanford. An audit is being conducted as part of an investigation.