Despite attempts by his superiors to bury the controversial report, it eventually was exposed during a United States Senate Budget Committee on Defense hearing, which though scheduled to go unnoticed, made the cover of Time magazine March 7, 1983.

Dubbed a maverick by Time magazine, he and Boyd shared an open contempt for authority and their Emperor's-New-Clothes-like critique of the military establishment in its spending frenzy.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked to interview its author, but was met with opposition from the Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, and David S. C. Chu, Spinney's immediate superior, who tried to downplay the report saying it was neither factual nor represented the current budget and programs.

[citation needed] Spinney produced several other reports with titles such as "Shape Up and Fly Right: How to Build a Better Air Force for Less Money" which outlined a reform strategy for the Air Force that would reduce operating costs, or "Teach the Pentagon to Think Before It Spends", in which he wrote: "The Pentagon's strategists produce budgets that simply cannot be executed because they assume a defense strategy depends only on goals and threats.

[citation needed] In September 2000, in a Defense Weekly commentary, he called the move to increase the military budget from 2.9% to 4% of the GDP as " tantamount to a declaration of total war on Social Security and Medicare in the following decade.

"[citation needed] In 2002, Spinney testified before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, part of the House Committee on Government Reform on Pentagon accounting and the increasing defense budget before the September 11, 2001 attacks.