Mysteries surround Americans' deaths

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3849759.html

Corrupt U.S. officials may have used their 2004 deaths to steal additional cash

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - The killing of Fern Holland, a young human rights worker from Oklahoma, remains unsolved and as mysterious as it was when her body was found riddled with bullets on a desolate stretch of road near one of Iraq's southern holy cities in March 2004.

Now, federal investigators are grappling with a second mystery: What happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash issued by American authorities to Holland and Robert J. Zangas, a press officer who died in the same attack near Karbala, in the days before their deaths?

Financial records from the American-run compound in Hilla, the south-central Iraqi city where Holland and Zangas were based, have revealed that much or all of that money — issued for things such as the building of women's rights centers that Holland was establishing — was either missing or improperly accounted for after their deaths.

American investigators are trying to determine whether that money was stolen as part of the web of bribery, kickbacks, theft and conspiracy that they have laid out in a series of indictments and court papers describing corruption by American officials in Hilla in 2003 and 2004, according to officials involved in the inquiry.

Iraqis in uniform

[warrens]

1. More of that good news from Iraq

I wonder what would happen if anyone ever investigated the heroin market in Afghanistan and the sudden rise in drug addiction in Iraq.

[stillcool]

2. there is that one duffel bag full of cash...

that was found at that Pennsylvania Nuclear Plant...in the truck leased to Bechtel, with the drivers from Texas, who went there to pick up 'tools', who didn't know the cash was there. Remember?...turned out the half-million in cash was to buy a 'truck' for their boss.