In fairness, probably almost any investigation into whether agency X used money from somewhere in its vast and disparately managed budget for thing Y will cost more than thing Y itself - if thing Y cost more than such an investigation it would be a sufficiently big ticket item that agency X’s involvement would be stamped all over it.
It may be that occasionally having such an investigation (not specifically into photos of space vikings - that’s just silly) has a benefit though; if it produces an atmosphere where people at agencies A through X routinely consider whether their use of agency funds for this or that little project would stand up to scrutiny.
