We're from Missouri

Richard Lardner of the Associated Press has this story on the ongoing controversy over whether the then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff misled the Senate in the course of successfully resisting legislation that would have changed the current commander-centric charging system for sexual assault and other major offenses. Excerpt:

The Pentagon is relying on information it won't make public to dispute an Associated Press investigation that found the military misled Congress about sexual assault cases to blunt support for Senate legislation.

In a report sent Thursday to a bipartisan group of senators, the Pentagon refers to undisclosed files about several of the cases to challenge AP's findings. But the response, which faults AP for inconsistencies and misunderstandings, fails to conclusively counter the investigation.

The Pentagon has asserted that commanders saw to it that cases declined by civilian prosecutors were successfully pursued. The AP's ability to test that assertion based on actual case records has been thwarted:

The Navy judge advocate general's office last year ordered the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to release investigative reports after AP appealed NCIS's refusal to do so. NCIS blacked out all the names in the reports, including the accused.