CDC missing $22 million in equipment

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ATLANTA, June 12 (UPI) -- There's a mystery at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involving the disappearance of more than $22 million in equipment.

The missing items range from new Dell and Compaq computers to scientific equipment. Two Republican congressmen suspect the thefts may have been an inside job.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky. have asked the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a full audit.

"The scope of property mismanagement and outright theft at CDC is both astonishing and baffling," Barton wrote the newspaper. "Absent laptops are hardly unique to CDC, but the centers may just have the worst record in the federal government for vanishing computers."

Computers worth more than $500,000 were among the 5,547 items that have disappeared.