Anyone who has ever had to deal with a bill in collections knows it isn't a fun process, but apparently for the FBI, it can even become a threat to national security.

According to an audit by the Justice Department's Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a serious problem with managing and paying it's bills. In some cases, the bills grew to over $66,000 for a single FBI office, while in most, the FBI was simply too confused to know what it owed. The probe discovered that the agency often couldn't determine which funds should be used to pay bills, whether charges had been applied more than once, and what to do with refunds — which in some cases, were returned to the phone companies.

The most surprising — and potentially damaging to U.S. security — revelation, however, is that one company actually went so far as to disconnect a wiretap on a foreign intelligence suspect until the bill was paid. Now, I'm no supporter of unrestricted government spying, but I bet I'm not the only one hoping nothing important was said on the line until they paid the bill.

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