Under pressure after a series of news reports, the Pentagon has re-opened investigations into 264 employees suspected of purchasing child pornography.

An official from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service told John Cook at The Upshot the Pentagon plans to take action against every employee or contractor identified in a four-year-old investigation into individuals who used their credit cards or PayPal to buy child porn from a foreign Web site.

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In July, Raw Story reported on claims that the Pentagon had failed to investigate dozens of employees identified as possibly having purchased child pornography.

In an investigative report earlier this month, The Upshot found that a 2006 investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as Project Flicker, resulted in 264 Pentagon employees and contractors being identified as potentially involved in buying sexual images of children.

Of those, the Pentagon investigated 52 and pursued charges against only 10.

Suspects “included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” The Upshot reported.

According to documents obtained by The Upshot, the original investigations were halted because of a lack of resources. A Pentagon source said the DCIS is focused primarily on uncovering fraud among contractors.

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Lacking in resources, the Pentagon investigators focused on those employees who had prior sex crimes records, or had high security clearance, or access to children as part of their Pentagon work.

Now, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations James Burch says the DCIS will re-open the investigations into all Pentagon employees linked to Project Flicker.

“I have tasked Defense Criminal Investigative Service representatives with reviewing each and every Project Flicker and related referral DCIS received so as to ensure action was taken regarding these allegations involving employees of the Department of Defense,” he said, as quoted at The Upshot.

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“In situations whereby criminal charges will not be pursued, relevant information will be referred to the leadership of appropriate DoD organizations for administrative action deemed appropriate.”

Last week, Kenneth deGraffenreid, a former high-ranking counterintelligence official, told John Cook it was “absurd” the Pentagon didn’t investigate the child porn allegations, because it left the defense establishment vulnerable to espionage.

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“What a sophisticated case officer is looking for is someone who has potential vulnerabilities,” he said. “They look for something like that, and a taste for child pornography is powerful stuff. So I would be very worried that they didn’t investigate all of the cases. It sounds absurd on the face of it, that you’d have this information and only investigate some of the cases. You don’t put five locks on three of your doors and none on the last one.”