That $6.6 Billion In Cash ‘Lost’ In Iraq? Turns Out It Was In The Bank

October 27th, 2011 - Back in 2004, in an effort to rebuild Iraq, the United States flew at least 20 planes full of money — tightly-wrapped stacks of $100 bills — into the country. In total, $12 billion was airlifted to Iraq, all in cash. This June, when the books were closing on Development Fund for Iraq, which was under the rule of the Coalitional Provisional Authority (which dissolved in 2004), it was reported that $6.6 billion of the cash was missing. The cash wasn’t America’s; it was money from seized Iraqi assets, oil sales, and surpluses. We were just, essentially, returning it to them. Still, it’s a hefty sum to misplace (or, as some believed, to have stolen). Paul Richter, of the Los Angeles Times, wrote:

The White House decided to use the money in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq, which was created by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hold money amassed during the years when Hussein’s regime was under crippling economic and trade sanctions.
Richter added that House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials, “used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds.” Since the U.S. was responsible for the safe-keeping of the cash, Iraq was threatening to sue for the $6.6 billion that we had let slip through our fingers.

This week, however, a report based on a Pentagon audit revealed that the money was never stolen — it was transferred to the Central Bank of Iraq. “That money is not missing,” Inspector General Stuart Bowen told Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio and David Lerman. CNN’s Charley Keyes points out that the Inspector General’s report concludes, “sufficient evidence exists showing that almost all of the remaining $6.6 billion was transferred to actual and legal CBI (Central Bank of Iraq) control.”

So all’s well that ends well, right? Maybe not. The report says that sufficient evidence exists that the deposit was made. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the location of the $6.6 billion is actually known, or that it can be accounted for. The money might still be missing — we just know, and have evidence of, where we put it last. It’s now in the hands of Iraq to figure out what happened to it.

Read more at link above...

Now remember back to September 10, 2002


One day before the 9/11 attacks, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made the above astonishing admission. Besides being reported months later in the CBS report given below, the quote is still posted at http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=430 on the Department of Defense website. And on PBS at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june01/dollars_2-12.html we learn that this figure came from a report of the Pentagon's inspector general. "Its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends," reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.

The timing of this admission just one day before 9/11 kept this story from even making the news at the time. Even when it was finally reported months later, this revelation received scant coverage. Why is this startling news not given top headlines in large bold print on all of the nation's newspapers? Why to this day is our press hardly mentioning this most vital issue? Please help to play the role at which the press is so sadly failing by sending this message to your friends and colleagues. With the power of the Internet, we can inform the public of all that is going on the behind the scenes and inspire people to work together for a brighter future. You take care and remember that every one of us makes a difference!

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info Team


DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff—Bureaucracy to Battlefield
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Pentagon , Monday, September 10, 2001
http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=430

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june01/dollars_2-12.html