Follow the Money ... If You Can

It can be hard to keep track of your money. You charge stuff and misplace the receipts, you forget to record a check written and before you know it, $12-14 billion is unaccounted for in Iraq. Even then, after one authoritative source thinks he’s found some of it, no one bothers to go get it.

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New information from the former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGAR) Stuart Bowen [...] shows that of the multi-billions of U.S. dollars cash literally shipped on pallets to Iraq in 2003, over one billion was traced into Lebanon (the other billions remain unaccounted for.)

  Peter Van Buren

Because if you’re the government doing something unapproved or even illegal with taxpayer money, you can get caught and embarrassed if you do it through covert means like in the Iran-Contra scandal (although, you still won’t be held accountable or get in any trouble), but if you do it out in the open and just don’t account for where it actually goes, you can only be accused of sloppy bookkeeping.

“We did not know that Bremer was flying in all that cash,” said the head of the Treasury Department team that worked on Iraq’s financial reconstruction after the invasion. “I can’t see a reason for it.”

So, Paul Bremer, on his own, without the knowledge of Treasury, sent billions of dollars from the Treasury to Iraq? Tell me, who is Paul Bremer that he has such power?

The cash was literally delivered shrink-wrapped, on pallets, enormous bundles of Benjamins. Exactly what happened to that money after it arrived in Baghdad became one of the many unanswered questions from the chaotic days of the American occupation. We’ll never know.

Yeah, well, maybe. And then again, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction traced about a billion and a half to Lebanon, and there may be another Edward Snowden out there.

Bowen said. “Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last ten years illegally. In this investigation, we thought we were on the track for some of that lost money. It’s disappointing to me personally that we were unable to close this case, for reasons beyond our control.”

And what were those? Let’s guess.

The Bush administration never investigated how that huge amount of money disappeared, even after Bowen’s investigators found out about the bunker in Lebanon. The Obama administration did not pursue that lead, either. Bowen’s team briefed the CIA and the FBI on what they found, but no one took any action. [...] When Bowen and his staff tried to move the search into Lebanon themselves, he met with resistance from the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Bowen himself was not allowed to travel to Lebanon, and two of his investigators who did travel were denied permission from the embassy to see the bunker.

Gee golly. Nothing suspicious here.

Pentagon officials contended for years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records.

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But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless. [...] Apparently, there are no electronic records to back up the spending. It. Just. Went. Away.

No. It didn’t.