The Pentagon is continuing to stonewall Congress on efforts to close or realign U.S. military bases.

Hiding behind a curtain of secrecy and the claim of protecting national security, the Pentagon refuses to release the methodology and data used to target three facilities in Maine.

Sens. Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., have been forced to subpoena the information, giving the military until Monday to turn it over.

There are serious questions about the process the Pentagon has used to measure the value of the bases it would like to close. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency that works for Congress, has issued a report critical of the methodology used by the military to determine excess capacity and to evaluate potential savings from base closures.

The Pentagon has not earned the benefit of the doubt. Savings from past rounds of base closings have not lived up to expectations, and the changing nature of the threat U.S. forces will be asked to combat make predictions on “excess capacity” difficult to calculate.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has estimated $48.8 billion in savings over 20 years from this round of closures and realignments. But it’s not at all clear that the Pentagon has counted the high cost of environmental cleanup in its estimates.

While Rumsfeld’s estimate, if accurate, is a significant amount of money, in the context of military spending, fraud and waste, we are not convinced the savings will materialize or have an effect on future budgets.

The military’s procurement system for next-generation weapons systems is badly broken. As The New York Times reported Wednesday, even Rumsfeld admits there’s “something wrong with the system.” Costs for weapons systems of debatable value have skyrocketed, while many of the war tools have failed to perform even under ideal circumstances. For 80 new weapons systems under development, the Times reported, the Pentagon is over budget by $300 billion. According to the GAO, getting it right on procurement is the exception, not the rule, for military buyers.

But it’s not just high-tech, futuristic weapons systems that cause the Pentagon to stumble. As The Washington Post reported, also on Wednesday, the military has trouble keeping up with its inventory of simpler things, such as uniforms and medals. Brand-new materials were labeled as excess and sold, costing the Department of Defense more than $3.5 billion between 2002 and 2004. Equipment in excellent condition was sold for pennies on the dollar, discarded or destroyed. Additionally, another $466 million worth of sensitive equipment, including missile parts, was missing.

Meanwhile, soldiers have been deployed to Iraq without the equipment and armor they need.

Time is running out for Maine and other states facing base closures or realignment to make their respective cases. A regional hearing on the closures is scheduled for July in Boston.

It shouldn’t take a subpoena from Congress to pry information out of the Pentagon. But, given the Department of Defense’s recent track record, it’s no wonder why it’s dragging its feet.