Topeka ? Despite the revision of a federal audit, House Speaker Doug Mays said Friday that “the smoking gun still exists” indicating that the Kansas Army National Guard has “ghost soldiers” in its ranks.

Mays stood by his assertion that the Guard has inflated its troop strength for seven years, even though Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Maj. Gen. Greg Gardner, the Guard’s commander, said the revision of the federal audit confirms their statements that strength reports have been accurate.

The House speaker based his allegations on information leaked from an internal April draft of the audit, prepared by the U.S military’s Property and Fiscal Office.

That draft said nearly 2,400 individuals, or 30 percent of the soldiers awaiting discharge from January 1996 through February 2003, remained on their unit payrolls for at least 180 days “after the effective date of the discharge.” It went on to say that the Guard’s strength had been overstated.

Thursday, Col. Dennis Elliott, property and fiscal officer for Kansas, announced a revision that “corrects a misinterpretation in the narrative portion” in the draft, adding in a memo to Sebelius, the change “clarifies that the 180-day timetable encompasses the period when a member is placed into a non-pay status until discharge.”

Mays said the change did not affect the numbers in the audit.

“The smoking gun still exists by stating that statistical data of the report remains unchanged,”‘ Mays said in a statement, quoting Elliott’s memo.

He also said Elliott’s memo “does not deny the existing problem with back-loading strength reports.”

In May, the House speaker called on Atty. Gen. Phill Kline’s office to investigate the matter. Kline’s office has not said whether it was reviewing the issue, but Mays said Friday that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was doing so.

Meanwhile, a Sebelius spokeswoman said, “Col. Elliott represents an independent investigating agency, and we respect its findings.”