Just doing a rough "google" search turned up nothing about this story. With the highly political world we live in I think someone would have broken this story wide open to make certain parties look bad.

We've all gotten emails that begin with "I got this from a friend of a friend who I totally trust...". These usually turn out to be inflamatory B.S. Be fore we make too much of a leap to judgement we need to verify an actual source.

Given what we know, assuming the basic story did happen and the exchange sent supplies to a military base, it is entirely logical to think that the supplies were intended for the personnel who would be deployed there to care for and supervise the evacuees. these would possibly be military personnel who are not entitled to the free supplies and would there for need the exchange to purchase there personal items.

Even if the itemes were intended for the evacuees to purchase, also consider that everything the exchange sells is tax free.