What happened to $2.3 TRILLION???

[nostalgicaboutmyfutr]

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

[izzie]

1. Did we give it to the groups that were fighting for us?

Maybe this is the slush fund Bush has to give all that money to the faith base groups. Where does Bush get all the money to keep dishing up to his BASE? Does anyone know?

[seemslikeadream]

2. Ask Dov Zakheim

Dov S. Zakheim was sworn in as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense on May 4, 2001. Dr. Zakheim has previously served in a number of key positions in government and private business. Most recently, he was corporate vice president of System Planning Corp., a technology, research and analysis firm based in Arlington, Va. He also served as chief executive officer of SPC International Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economic consulting. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then-Governor Bush.

From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). In that capacity, he played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic planning processes. Dr. Zakheim held a variety of other DoD posts from 1981 to 1985. Earlier, he was employed by the National Security and International Affairs Division of the Congressional Budget Office.

Dr. Zakheim has been a participant on a number of government, corporate, non-profit and charitable boards. His government service includes terms on the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad; the Task Force on Defense Reform (1997); the first Board of Visitors of the Department of Defense Overseas Regional Schools (1998); and the Defense Science Board task force on "The Impact of DoD Acquisition Policies on the Health of the Defense Industry" (2000).

A 1970 graduate of Columbia University with a bachelor's in government, Dr. Zakheim also studied at the London School of Economics. He earned his doctorate in economics and politics at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where he was graduate fellow in programs of both the National Science Foundation and Columbia College, and then a research fellow. Dr. Zakheim has been an adjunct professor at the National War College, Yeshiva University, Columbia University and Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., where he was presidential scholar.
http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/zakheim_bio.html

The CEO of SPC
Dr. Dov Zakheim has been nominated to serve as Under Secretary of Defense and Comptroller. He is presently the CEO of SPC International, and in the past he has served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources as well as in a variety of Defense Department positions under former President Reagan. He was a member of the Task Force on Defense Reform under then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen and in February of 2000 he was appointed to the Defense Science Board Task Force on the Impact of DoD Acquisition Policies on the Health of the Defense Industry. He has received the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal; the Bronze Palm to the DoD Distinguished Public Service Medal and the CBO Director's Award for Outstanding Service. A New York native, Dr. Zakheim is a graduate of Columbia University and has also studied at the London School of Economics. He received his doctorate degree from St. Anthony's College at Oxford University.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20010212-2.html

It was an SPC subsidiary, TRIDATA CORPORATION, that oversaw the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.


Pentagon finance manager resigns
Thursday 11 March 2004

Rabbi Dov Zakheim's refused to tell journalists the exact reason for his departure on Wednesday. A former adjunct economics professor at New York's Yeshiva University, Rabbi Zakheim has spent more than 30 years working in various jobs at the Pentagon.

But he has also worked in private industry, specifically as a consultant to McDonnell Douglas and Boeing.

Rabbi Dov Zakheim,
Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, a conservative Republican who graduated from Jew's College in London in 1973, Zakheim first joined the Department of Defence in 1981 under former president Ronald Reagan.

He was responsible for such tasks as preparing defence planning guidance for nuclear war.

As Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer, Rabbi Zakheim's priority has been financial management.
But that does not include additional spending needed to support US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - a sum expected to range from $30 billion to $50 billion.

A General Accounting Office report found Defence inventory systems so lax that the US army lost track of 56 aeroplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/635B6007-9DD0-43...

Analysis: Defense budget practices probed
Thursday, 02-Oct-2003 10:00AM PDT Story from United Press International
Copyright 2003 by United Press International (via ClariNet)

MIAMI, Oct. 2 (UPI) --

Zakheim said, however, he was limited in his response because of the ongoing audit of the issue, which originally was sparked by a telephone call to the Pentagon's Defense Hotline.

"Our objective will be to review the allegations to the Defense Hotline concerning funds 'parked' at the U.S. Special Operations Command by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)," said a letter from the inspector general's office to Gen. Charles Holland, who has since retired as Special Operations commander.

Among several documents The St. Petersburg Times obtained during its investigation was e-mail sent by Special Operations Command Comptroller Elaine Kingston to colleagues in February 2002.
She said an unidentified official in the Pentagon comptroller's office had asked her if the command could "park" $40 million of research-and-development money in its proposed budget for the 2003 fiscal year.

The programs where the money was placed included missile warning systems on aircraft, infrared equipment on helicopters and radar system. The amounts ranged from $2 million to $5 million.
Kingston said in the e-mail message she coached her colleagues on how to account for the money and avoid attracting congressional attention to it.

"We are doing a favor for the OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) which we hope will benefit the command if we should need additional (research and development funds)," the message said.
Young said at the hearing on President Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan Tuesday that he wants to know if it is a common practice.

Young is clearly not finished and called it "an obvious attempt to keep from Congress what was happening. I think that would make you suspicious. It makes me a little suspicious."

more
http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/dp/Uus-de...

In a report to the DoD comptroller, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, acting Assistant Inspector General for Auditing David Steensma wrote: "We reported that DOD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DOD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DOD financial statements for FY2000. For FY2001 we did not attempt to quantify amounts of unsupported accounting entries; however, we did confirm that DOD continued to enter material amounts of unsupported accounting entries to the financial data."

What this gibberish means is that the DoD still cannot account for at least $1.1 trillion from fiscal 2000 under former president Bill Clinton, and the assistant inspector general of DOD wouldn't even touch the unsupported money expenditures for fiscal 2001 because "material amounts" still couldn't be accounted for properly in the year George W. Bush came to power. The trillion-dollar question is how much is "material amounts"? Because the auditor would not "quantify" the amount, some fear it's worse than the previous year's unaccounted for $1.1 trillion.

Of course the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a "stand-alone" financial statement for 2001 because of "the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack."

So where is that missing $1.1 trillion? Traditionally the top dogs at the Pentagon haven't liked the word "missing." The rationale at DoD has been that just because the money can't be accounted for doesn't mean it is lost, stolen or strayed. According to Susan Hansen, a spokeswoman for DoD: "These are unsupported entries. When the auditors go to audit the books and they look at the balance sheet for the year, someone has entered in an adjustment because they made an error somewhere."
more
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&story...

[pa28]

3. It's not "missing", "lost" or "stolen" . . .

It's "pending accountabilities".