. >> reporter: they hit one of the starbucks here in d.c., another in associatiocean city, too. and nearly a dozen others nationwide, including $10,000 purchases in a starbucks in california. all told, the employees of one agency, the department of homeland security, using government taxpayer purchase cards bought starbucks last year. they won't tell us what they bought, why they bought it, nor are they required to release the information to the public. the public wouldn't have known if the team hadn't dug up the reports. we showed it to the man overseeing the committee. >> when you have this money being spent in six months, someone is abusing the purchasing permission that we have given them. >> reporter: it took us months and intervention by the congressman for us to find even some details. more on that in a moment. first, we wanted to know how much taxpayer money the government spends on these mysterious purchases. we found out. about $20 billion in just about the course of a year. we asked all of these other major federal agencies based in d.c. for their micro-purchase shopp