June 23, 2007 (LPAC)--New Jersey's Congressional delegation is in an uproar after an investigation by the Asbury Park Press (APP) revealed that the costs to close Fort Monmouth, a center of electronics and communications engineering for the U.S. Army, have nearly doubled in two years, from $780 million to almost $1.5 billion. The APP investigation also found that the Pentagon withheld information on the shortage of engineers that would result from the closing, information that was required by law to be supplied to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) by the Pentagon in 2005 when it recommended that Fort Monmouth be closed and its functions be moved to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The data showed that normal attrition would result in a shortfall of 4,000 scientists and engineers in the military's research labs, but the 2005 BRAC recommendations will eliminate 3,000 more jobs, for a total shortfall of 7,000. That data was excluded from the documentation given to the commission.

The APP's revelations have resulted in demands in Congress for investigations. Representatives Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) have asked the Government Accountability Office to look into whether Pentagon officials broke the law in preparing the Pentagon recommendations for base closures, and New Jersey's two senators, Frank Lautenberg (D) and Robert Menendez (D), have asked Pentagon Inspector General Claude Kicklighter to look into the process. In their letter to Kicklighter, Lautenberg and Menendez wrote that "it now appears that the real closure costs were known by the Defense Department in 2005, yet hidden from the public" and the BRAC commission.

The APP found that the overall costs of the 2005 BRAC round have risen from the Pentagon's original estimate of $22.3 billion to $30.7 billion. The APP quoted at least two former members of the 2005 commission, Philip Coyle and James Bilbray, saying that if they had known about the higher cost estimates, the panel might have voted differently from the way it did.