Rumsfeld and the 2.3 trillon

double post removed.

[edit on 21-9-2009 by Swampfox46_1999]

What you guys don't seem to get is that it's not overpriced hammers, or overpriced aircraft carriers or overpriced f-18's, etc. The government and pentagon are not the incompetant fools you make them out to be.

Rather they want people to believe this nonsense so they can easily conceal the black budget which by many accounts is mind-boggling!

And I never said(or implied) that someone just walked out with 2.3 trillion dollars. That is childishly perposterous!

CASE CLOSED

posted by Swampfox46_1999

Now, can we lay the 2.3 trillion story in regards to 9/11 to rest????

posted by praxis

No; we can't.

If this 'explanation' was any where near truth, it would prove beyond any doubt that the pentagon and civilian government were incompetent and incapable of running this circus.

The real problem is that these people are criminals. Fact is, we know these people are skimming money out of the system. The only real question is how much of this stolen money is ending up in black projects and how much is ending up in politician's pockets.

Tell you what -- we'll talk about 'believing' the government's version of events when you can explain the 360 tons of cash flown to Iraq and promptly "lost". Sound ok to you?

No; we can't.

How do you account for the fact that the accountants working on this forgettable unimportant $2.3 Trillion in missing Defense Dept funds just happened to be moved into the dusty unfinished Wedge 1 area of the Pentagon just weeks before 9-11?

Why would any bureaucrat move expensive computers and accountants and important records into an area under construction? Is it just coincidence that those records and the accountants were destroyed on 9-11?

Was their destruction planned weeks in advance? Was Hani Hanjour working for the US Department of Defense? Or was it even more sinister with Hani completely faked and the Pentagon planting explosives to murder their own military personnel along with the accountants?

reply to post by EarthCitizen07

Rather they want people to believe this nonsense so they can easily conceal the black budget which by many accounts is mind-boggling!

The "black" budget, is completely hidden within the Federal Budget. There is no need to create what you seem to be suggesting, to hide it. So when they say that the budget for a fiscal year is 1.9 trillion, that includes the "black"

reply to post by SPreston

How do you account for the fact that the accountants working on this forgettable unimportant $2.3 Trillion in missing Defense Dept funds just happened to be moved into the dusty unfinished Wedge 1 area of the Pentagon just weeks before 9-11?

This would be funny, if it wasnt for the fact that you believe every word of it.


I cant wait to see your next post about all the workers using dollys to tote the boxes holding the 2.3 trillion in cash into the completed offices......

Interesting thread. Swampy do you happen to know what the latest is on the hunt for the 2.3 trillion or, rectification of the books if you prefer? Are we on top of that yet?

reply to post by Swampfox46_1999

I thought long and hard about replying to this thread as I did not want to bump it because it unintentionally advances disinformation. However, I felt it was necessary after Swampfox46_1999 linked to it in my thread Do you remember 9/10/2001?.

There is more to the story than what is presented here.

If I understand your thread correctly, the underlying premise that you base your opinions on is the fact that the DoD IG auditors said that, although it is a problem, it is only an administrative problem and an old problem at that. Am I understanding correctly?

Assuming I am understanding you correctly, then I have to offer you proof that what the auditors said in that 2000 audit is not to be taken on their word or trusted in the least. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you advancing this lie as fact is very naive. There are those, in every agency, who will outright lie either because they believe that in doing so they are protecting the American people, or because it is just is easier to lie than to do their jobs, or they are hiding something. Whatever the case may be, their lies were found out and have never been addressed publicly.

In 2000 a peer review was done on the DoD IG by other agencies' IGs that was absolutely scathing.

2000 Peer Review of the DOD IG

•DOD IG’s internal investigation confirmed allegations on
February 14, 2001, and found that DOD IG staff
inappropriately altered and destroyed work papers for an audit
selected for peer review.
•DOD IG staff inserted newly created work papers for an audit
selected for peer review without the knowledge of the peer
reviewers.

GAO-02-253R Inspectors General: Department of Defense IG Peer Reviews

The 2000 peer review was performed by TIGTA and resulted in an unqualified opinion on August 9, 2000. While TIGTA noted a number of isolated problems, the peer review report stated that the DOD IG’s quality assurance system provided reasonable assurance of compliance with auditing standards. However, after the 2000 peer review had been completed, the DOD IG, TIGTA, the Office of Management and Budget, the then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and others, including representatives of the media, received serious allegations in a letter dated December 14, 2000, that questioned the integrity of the documentation that the DOD IG had provided to the TIGTA peer review staff. Subsequently, the DOD IG performed an internal investigation which was completed on February 14, 2001. The IG’s internal investigation confirmed that work papers for one of the audits selected for peer review had been inappropriately altered and destroyed. The report concluded that these inappropriate actions violated Government Auditing Standards, internal DOD IG audit policies, and the expectations of the external peer review staff. Based on this information, TIGTA first withdrew the 2000 peer review opinion on March 15, 2001, and then issued a disclaimer of opinion on May 25, 2001, citing an inability to determine whether the substantiated allegations would materially affect the DOD IG’s system of quality control.

Now, which exact audit do you think that the peer review looked at? And tell me, why would they destroy work papers? Maybe the final report's conclusions were not supported by the facts in the case?


[edit on 28/11/2009 by Iamonlyhuman]

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman

If I understand your thread correctly, the underlying premise that you base your opinions on is the fact that the DoD IG auditors said that, although it is a problem, it is only an administrative problem and an old problem at that. Am I understanding correctly?

Nope you are not understanding correctly. The underlying premise...is that the "truth" movement likes to claim that on Sept 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced there was 2.3 trillion dollars missing from the Pentagon piggy bank and that on the next morning, a US Government directed conspiracy crashed a jetliner into the Pentagon, killed the accountants and erased all evidence of the heist. WOW, my grammar teacher would have LOVED that run on sentence.

My post was to show that 1. It wasnt a bunch of cash that had been stolen. 2. It wasnt a secret. 3. It was known about long before Bush was President, let alone Rummy being the SecDef and 4. It's another example of how grossly inefficient the Pentagon is in how it handles its finances and how neglectful that the Congress has been in its oversight duties.

It is not a minor problem by any means, however, it had nothing to do with 9/11.

This is true, we have known about the problems with the Pentagon's accounting for decades. Most of it is to hide top secret projects. This is understandable. You can ntto have proper documentation for something that is top secret.

However, your point actually gives more probabilty to a cover up.

It just makes you think maybe Rumsfeld was not invovled like we thought.

If you finally get a secretary of defense that not only wants to fix your accounting problems but has gone on television and brought more attention to the problem, what do you do?

It is the fact that 45 accountants and bookeepers died that day that sends up red flags for me. These people knew where the money was going and it was their job to cover those tracks.

Now if someone is going to investigate these accoutants and you want to shut them up how do you do it?

"An office of the Army that had just re-occupied the Pentagon's recently renovated Wedge One, named Resource Services Washington, lost 34 of its 45 employees. Most were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts"

You have to admit it is a very big coincidence that Rumsfeld wanted to fix the accounting department and then they all get killed by a terrorist attack.

What terrorsit would think the pentagon does not have surface to air missiles to stop such an attack? They do and did not use them. This alone is a problem.




Now here is another question:

If they just renovated the offices, would that not involve new computer system and accounting procedures?

Why would you spend millions to remodel a building if the computer system is so outdated you can not even account for your spending?

If the accounting issues were so bad that the confirmation hearing mentioned it, why would a building remodel be done before a computer upgrade?

None of this stuff adds up at all.

Obviously they did not upgrade the computer system as part of the remodel or Rumsfeld would not have talked about it the day before, right?

The more you think about it the crazier all this starts to sound.

You could not make up a story so involved and so corrupt.

This is an old news story I have saved

US Government "misplaces" trillions of dollars

September 3 2003

Beyond Enron and WorldCom lies a much bigger scandal: the "misplacement" of over $3 trillion of taxpayers' money by the US government. This story hasn’t gone completely unreported. For example, CBS News quoted Donald Rumsfeld as saying, "according to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." ('The War on Waste', CBS News, 29/1/02).

According to Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), "total undocumented accounting adjustments [...] for the Department of Defense [and HUD for fiscal 1998-2000] amount to a whopping $3.3 trillion, or $11,700 for every American."

[Note: $2.3 trillion from DoD and further $1 trillion from HUD = total $3.3 trillion]

In June 2001, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee published a study, “Government at the Brink” describing the failure of government agencies to maintain reliable financial systems and/or to publish audited financial statements. President Bush's initial 2002 budget (before increases for 9/11) proposed that 85% of federal appropriations be awarded to the very same agencies criticised by the study. The Department of Defense has failed to produce independent audited financial statements since 1995.

The US Constitution says: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law." According to a New York Times article (July 22, 1999), however, "Congress says in a new report that the Pentagon defied the law and the Constitution by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on military projects that lawmakers never approved."

Is anything being done to stop this? According to Catherine Austin Fitts, the company credited with an accounting "misplacement" of $59 billion at HUD has been awarded the contract to redesign the Pentagon's business processes.

Let's put these figures into perspective. $59 billion would pay the total cost of UK unemployment welfare (£5bn/year) for 7 years. $3.3 trillion would cover it for 420 years. How do you "misplace" an amount that size?

Meanwhile, "black," or classified, or "don't tell the public," programs requested in President Bush's 2004 defense budget are at the highest level since 1988 (source: Washington Post, 27/8/03). As John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, says, with amusing understatement: "It's puzzling. It sets the mind to wondering where the money's going and what sort of politically controversial things the administration is doing because they're not telling anybody".

And, meanwhile, as an example of the wage levels most unprivileged US workers can expect, the odds against a typical US welfare recipient landing a job which pays at least $8.89 per hour (the minimum needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless) are about 97 to 1. (Source: Preamble Center for Public Policy, reported in Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed').

Of course, the quality of life of the "typical" unprivileged employed/unemployed person has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that $11,700 *per person* of public money disappears into a black hole every few years. Of course. People should take responsibility for their own livelihoods and not blame the government. Of course.

For further details see:
www.cbsnews.com...
www.insightmag.com...
www.insightmag.com...
www.anxietyculture.com...

Originally posted by whattheh
It is the fact that 45 accountants and bookeepers died that day that sends up red flags for me. These people knew where the money was going and it was their job to cover those tracks.

You cannot hit any section of the Pentagon and NOT take out accountants and bookkeepers. There are hundreds of them all over the building. Not to mention, that was only the Army. What about the Navy, Air Force and Marines? I mean if someone was trying to cover something up, they did a piss poor job since they didnt worry about the rest of the branches.

You have to admit it is a very big coincidence that Rumsfeld wanted to fix the accounting department and then they all get killed by a terrorist attack.

He wanted to fix multiple problems at the Pentagon, and a decent start on the accounting issues had already been made. It isnt quite the coincidence you think it is.

What terrorsit would think the pentagon does not have surface to air missiles to stop such an attack? They do and did not use them. This alone is a problem.

Umm, no the Pentagon did not have SAMs for building defense. As has been discussed on numerous ATS threads, the Pentagon lies right in the approach/departure area of Reagan National Airport. Placing missiles at the Pentagon was a non-starter. Not enough reaction time and too great a chance you would shoot down an airliner that shot a missed approach.

Now here is another question:

If they just renovated the offices, would that not involve new computer system and accounting procedures?

Why would you spend millions to remodel a building if the computer system is so outdated you can not even account for your spending?

If the accounting issues were so bad that the confirmation hearing mentioned it, why would a building remodel be done before a computer upgrade?

None of this stuff adds up at all.

Obviously they did not upgrade the computer system as part of the remodel or Rumsfeld would not have talked about it the day before, right?

They were gradually installing new systems and upgrading the abilities as part of the remodeling. It still wasnt an issue that was going to be solved overnight.

The more you think about it the crazier all this starts to sound.
You could not make up a story so involved and so corrupt.

You obviously havent ever worked for the Department of Defense.....

Someday, ask me about how my helicopter squadron was grounded for a week (during the cold war) because we had run out of money for gas/parts.....but they still had $80,000 dollars to transplant palm trees for base beautification.

reply to post by Swampfox46_1999


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[edit on 16/1/2010 by Sauron]