director of the natural resources and environment team at the government accountability office, and he was in charge of an audit of loans given out by the department of energy. your report doesn't go into specific companies, but you took a look at ten different companies getting some of these government loans. why, first of all, did you do that audit? >> well, the doe loan guarantee program was createed in 2005 and as part of the legislation, gao is required to report annually on the program and how it's functioning. jenna: so this is part of the annual report. you took a look at ten companies. what did you findsome. >> well, we looked at the ten companies at the time we reported that had received commitments for loans. and what we found is fully half of those had received those commitments before the program had completed key reports that are required by the program in order to assess the risk of the loans. jenna: why did they get the money before that was done? >> well, we did ask the program