Remember the successive scandals about $640 toilet seats, $7,600 coffee pots and $436 hammers made for the U.S. armed forces?

The simple explanation is usually the right one, so the smart money's always been on the bet that by over-budgeting for tens of thousands for simple items like these, the U.S. armed forces padded their top-secret budgets, creating fiscal space that could be inhabited by expensive "black projects," "special weapons skunkworks" and the like.