8.5 TRILLION !!! - The Pentagon's Doctored Ledgers Conceal Epic Waste - Reuters

[WillyT]

Special Report: The Pentagon's doctored ledgers conceal epic waste
By Scot J. Paltrow - LETTERKENNY ARMY DEPOT, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:56am EST

<snip>

(Reuters) - Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense's accounts.

Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon's main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy's books with the U.S. Treasury's - a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. "A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate," Woodford says. "We didn't have the detail … for a lot of it."

The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford says, staff were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take "unsubstantiated change actions" - in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called "plugs," to make the Navy's totals match the Treasury's.

Jeff Yokel, who spent 17 years in senior positions in DFAS's Cleveland office before retiring in 2009, says supervisors were required to approve every "plug" - thousands a month. "If the amounts didn't balance, Treasury would hit it back to you," he says.

After the monthly reports were sent to the Treasury, the accountants continued to seek accurate information to correct the entries. In some instances, they succeeded. In others, they didn't, and the unresolved numbers stood on the books.

<snip>

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118

[BlancheSplanchnik]

1. kick for visibility

Speechless.

[Voice for Peace]

5. seriously. another kick and a rec.

we really need to cut social security and medicare,
otherwise how will we pay for all the trillions in
waste?

[Heather MC]

34. I am not suprized at all.

It is really all about appearances facts don't matter as long as it looks good

[BlancheSplanchnik]

45. really.

Can't think of anything more to say.....

[rhett o rick]

54. I think 60 minutes is going to do a story on this.

No, maybe it's another story on Benghazi. I get confused.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

56. ha!

[valerief]

67. Obama Wastes 8.5 Trillion on Benghazi Massacre.

Yeah, I can see 60 Minutes running that.

[rhett o rick]

85. And therefore the failed invasion of Iraq was Obama's fault. Put Lara on it. nm

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. What a fucking racket! Why should I pay taxes for this bullshit?

This is really infuriating, especially when we read that the Republicans want to cut Social Security to help the poor little military with its sequestration budget problems.

This whole country seems increasingly like one big crooked racket. Everything is about somebody connected making money.

[tina tron]

3. The US is the biggest banana in the history

of corrupt banana republics.

[Chrom]

96. +1000000

nt

[sakabatou]

4. Good god

[Ian_rd]

6. Darryl Issa announced hearings! Tea Party demands repeal of Pentagon!

... right?

[Ace Acme]

15. I always like to needle the Repugs who want to cut the budget,

... pointing out that if they don't want to cut the Pentagon's budget too then they're hypocrites.

How come government is inherently incompetent and inefficient and wasteful and corrupt, except when it's our military?

[Tikki]

7. Prob been going on at some level or another for a very long time...

I feel sorry for the tax payers and the poor souls whose work caught them up in this trap…


Tikki

[Hubert Flottz]

78. Since 1860!

"The Age of Shoddy" (Goggle it)

Snip...

The world has seen its iron age, its silver age, its golden age, and its brazen age. This is the age of shoddy. . . shoddy brokers in Wall Street, or shoddy manufacturers of shoddy goods, or shoddy contractors for shoddy articles for shoddy government. Six days a week they are shoddy businessmen. On the seventh day, they are shoddy Christians.

http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20United%20States%20History/Civil%20War%20-%20Notes.htm

Ike loved his country more than money, so he let the cat out of the bag on the Military Industrial Complex and the shoddy GOP's cash cow.

[Hubert Flottz]

81. "The Union’s ‘Shoddy’ Aristocracy"

With the Pentagon budget up two-thirds over the last decade, it’s no surprise that charges of war profiteering make for regular front-page fodder. But for sheer scale and audacity, nothing beats the corruption that surrounded the Union war effort — and, thanks to the horrendously poor quality of the resulting equipment, did much to undermine it.

From the very beginning, government representatives awarded contracts based not on the best product, or the fairest price, but on the highest bribe. As the war progressed, the problem became epidemic: during one week alone in November 1861, contractors in New York generated nearly $3 million in revenues from military deals. It would be easy to excuse a little corruption, or even a lot, if the result was high-quality equipment. But much of the contractors’ profit came from cutting corners. And with the government representatives more concerned with lining their own pockets than establishing a system of standards, there was little quality control over the goods that went into the field.
Read more...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/the-unions-shoddy-aristocracy/?_r=0

'Multiple' failures led to Iraq electrocution, Pentagon says

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/27/military.electrocutions/

Suit claims Halliburton, KBR sickened base

A Georgia man has filed a lawsuit against contractor KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, saying the companies exposed everyone at Joint Base Balad in Iraq to unsafe water, food and hazardous fumes from the burn pit there.

Joshua Eller, who worked as a civilian computer-aided drafting technician with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, said military personnel, contractors and third-country nationals may have been sickened by contamination at the largest U.S. installation in Iraq, home to more than 30,000 service members, Defense Department civilians and contractors.

"Defendants promised the United States government that they would supply safe water for hygienic and recreational uses, safe food supplies and properly operate base incinerators to dispose of medical waste safely," according to the lawsuit, filed Nov. 26 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. "Defendants utterly failed to perform their promised duties." Read more here...

http://www.armytimes.com/article/20081203/NEWS/812030329/Suit-claims-Halliburton-KBR-sickened-base

So why should old folks who paid into Social Security and Medicare be robbed, to pay for the Pentagon's graft and ineptitude?

[JHB]

8. $8.5T would be the total of DoD budgets for 1996-2013

Yes, it's unaccounted for in that the DoD's extremely (and, IMO in some areas deliberately) poor accounting methods make it the perfect breeding ground for waste and corruption. However, it's not as if that entire amount simply disappeared.

[Ace Acme]

13. Right, we got warehouses full of $1000 hammers and $1500 toilet seats. nt

[JHB]

25. We do have warehouses with tools and parts...

...plus vehicles, ships, other equipment, buildings, etc. Add to that personnel costs. All of those cost money, so all of the $8.5T didn't just vanish.

However, the Byzantine and dysfunctional accounting blurs actual costs with padding, masks outright bilking, and keeps things usefully fuzzy for certain people and corporations with the right connections.

[me b zola]

9. K&R

[NightWatcher]

10. It's not lost or waste

Black ops doesn't get a line in a ledger. Rendition doesn't show up on the books. Bribes to Third World Dictators looks bad when you write it down.

Mistakes and overages are where funds for "other" projects come.

[Deny and Shred]

23. "In a well-ordered republic ...

… it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures" - N Machiavelli

You are right, it is intentional, not waste.

The other side of National Security has more potential than any foreign adversary to bring down our Republic. It operates beyond the Constitution, the law, accountability, oversight, etc. A couple Congresspeople are the only effective oversight, and they've been more than happy to ask no questions, and if they do, to wait years for partial or forged documentation reviewed by a new pliant commitee chair.

Why doesn't anyone with authority ever follow 'the money'? In this case its taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon, and that is merely what they admit.

The Black Budget has been additionally funded by tens of billions in drug money since the 80s at least. Iran-Contra and Danilo Blandon are as bright a light as will ever shine on these activities. Since then, mostly undocumented, or, as you say, dismissed as overages.

[Ace Acme]

26. September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon could not account for

... 2.3 TTTTTTrillion in expenditures.

The next day, the computers that were being used to investigate this were destroyed when an airliner flew into the Pentagon.

[Deny and Shred]

28. Agreed. Don't get me started … (eom)

[harrose]

64. Yep, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and their cronies got to pocket $2.3 TRILLION in stolen money...

... and not one person is ever held responsible nor is one cent of that money ever recovered.

[dotymed]

80. I would sure hate to be a "truther."

[valerief]

68. Funny how those types of coincidences happen. nt

[Drahthaardogs]

52. The DoD really does not spend $350 for a hammer.

They just fill out paperwork that says they did. You cannot have covert operations with transparent funding. It just does not work that way. However, the law says you HAVE to account for EVERY dime. So, when you give people an impossible task, they resort to cheating because that is all they have left.

[truebluegreen]

83. There's an element of that,

but they are also damn lousy at their jobs. This is the same organization that flew 6 nuclear warheads around the country for a day and a half without realizing they were missing.

On a more fundamental level, WTF is the military--or anyone else--doing involved in covert operations? Making us safe from the Soviets? Or our Most Favored Nation trading-partner the Chinese? As it was put recently, we spend more on "defense" than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of which are allies.

I'd like to see a debate about the rationale for any DoD spending. Who are we defending, and what are we defending against and why does it take more than half of the discretionary budget every year: would anyone like to argue that it makes Americans' lives better, or even more secure?

[Ace Acme]

86. Repurposing the DoD to the defense of the national borders of the USA

could be accomplished for 20% of the current DoD budget, says Lt. Col. Robert Bowman USAF (ret.).

I've heard a proposal recently to split the DoD into two agencies:

1) A Department of National Defense, charged with defending the US borders, with a budget of $150 billion or so

2) A Department of Global Domination, charged with maintaining 700 overseas military bases and defending corporate interests around the world.

[truebluegreen]

88. I'd go for that and then abolishing--not outsourcing--

the Department of Global Domination. I bet most Americans would agree with me, especially after our recent Adventures Abroad.

[Drahthaardogs]

91. Because we are Rome.

It is that simple. Everything is country is tied to the military. Without it, our economy would collapse.

[truebluegreen]

94. Yeah, I know.

Just indulging in a little wishful thinking.

[Drahthaardogs]

95. But I guess in the history of the world, someone always has to be Rome.

I guess it is our turn.

[dotymed]

79. How much proof that we are a fascist nation

is needed before the top is blown off?

Drug money -----how obvious is it that "our" military protects the worlds largest poppy (heroin) fields in the world.
That and oil protection is "mission #1 in Afghanistan.

That is not even secret.

[merrily]

11. I blame needy seniors and needy disabled people.

If they had not paid into Social Security all their lives, the government could never have afforded to bury the Pentagon in so much money.

[Orrex]

12. I agree--we can fix this by cutting foodstamps!

[TRoN33]

14. Simply...

Check the bank accounts owns by Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, inner members of W. Bush administration, Bush-II era warmongers, Republicans and few eager Democrats to score some easy money, private military corporations, and corrupt Iraqi businessmen/politicians. Even former President W. Bush himself would be part of culprit for stealing our money. After all, he is President, he can get away with what he wants to.

Well known criminal, Darrell Issa himself couldn't even possible hold $220 million of dollars in his personal accounts with $170K a year salary. He was nearly dead broke by the time he got elected and he saw the opportunity to make easy money. Nancy Pelosi can't even make $130 million with her $190K a year salary also.

When Politicians saw the opportunity to make the easy money from inside trading during Afghanistan and Iraq wars, part of those trillion of dollars missing can easily being part of it.

[The Wizard]

16. We don't have money to feed the poor

or provide medical care or housing. Yet, defense contractors have blank checks to distribute amongst themselves. How much of that cash goes to Cayman Islands accounts of select legislators who keep approving of and promoting these radical drains on the Treasury?
This kind of thievery and corruption has brought down all of History's empires. like it or not, we're next.

[G_j]

17. quick!

cut those food stamps, we gotta pay for this!

[Ezlivin]

18. Rumsfield tried to get it under control

On the day before 9/11, he announced that the Pentagon had lost track of $2.3 trillion dollars .

He declared "war" on this failure of accounting systems.

On 9/11 the terrorists managed to hit the Pentagon, killing the personnel researching this missing $2.3 trillion.

[kelliekat44]

55. Look, just know that the "missing $$$" are not missing. They are in the pockets of the MIC.

From the contractors in the districts of certain Congressmen, to the pockets of the share-holders of the huge military contractors, to some Congressmen themselves. The money isn't lost...it's stolen. Stolen from the American taxpayer and the GOP intends for you slovenly working saps give up living wages, SS, retirement funds, affordable health care insurance, fair tax structure etc. to pay for it. The people must be punished for their greed and corruption. And that's final!!

[Berlum]

19. And the Repubbies want to slash Social Security to be sure the Pentagon, Inc. (R) gets oodles more

Ptoooey on Republicon waste and cruelty.

[Enthusiast]

72. Democrat Leon Panetta said, "Cut entitlements, not the military."

Both parties are guilty of allowing this theft or it would never have happened.

Do you hear the President on his bully pulpit decrying pentagon waste? No, you do not.

It's either social security or military waste. We can't have both.

[DrDebug]

20. Yep, that's pretty much the norm.

Here's an older post about the subject:

Project for the Exposure of Hidden Institutions
Unacknowledged Special Access Programs

(...)

A big questions that remains of course is how all these projects are funded. The official black budget of the DoD would be the most likely explanation, but there are 'indications' that the U.S. economy is being plundered for at least $1 trillion every year (yes, about 10% of GNP). Because no one is going to believe this without reading the full original sources, I cached all the mainstream news reports at the bottom of this article. I extracted the following numbers from these reports:

[font face="courier"]
Year Missing Sources (all cached at the bottom)
1998 $3.4 trillion Washington Times
1999 $2.3 trillion Congressional meeting
2000 $1.1 trillion Congressional meeting; Insight Magazine
2001 $2.3 trillion CBS quoting Rumsfeld
2002 $1+  trillion San Francisco Chronicle; CBS
[/code][/font]

Sadly the original website has gone missing. Never mind, because web.archive provides a copy as usual

1998:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061211174815/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/1999_04_01_Washington_Times_more_than_3_trillion_missing_in_1998.htm

1999:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061024110335/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/2000_11_06_Insight_Magazine_Why_Is_59_Billion_Missing_From_HUD.htm

2000 (HUD):
http://web.archive.org/web/20060509201538/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/2001_06_25_Insight_Magazine_Inside_HUDs_Financial_Fiasco.htm

2000:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061107192611/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/2001_09_03_Insight_Magazine_Rumsfeld_inherits_Financial_Mess.htm

2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061215082039/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/2002_01_29_CBS_News_The_War_on_Waste.htm

2002: (includes $640 for a toilet seat)
http://web.archive.org/web/20061215082128/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/USAPs/2003_05_18_SF_Chronicle_Military_Waste_Under_Fire.htm

[Octafish]

21. ''Money trumps peace.'' -- George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

Last edited Tue Dec 3, 2013, 04:32 PM - Edit history (2)

The very words of George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007, uttered at a press conference in which not a single of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

And not one member of the White House press corpse followed up. I remember Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention, but the press didn't run with that story, either.

This is the same mass media that swore North Vietnam attacked America in the Gulf of Tonkin, swore Bush had no idea bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States, and twice swore Iraq had WMDs, and swore for 50 years that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

[RC]

33. But, but, but... Our government doesn't do conspiracies.

Just ask the people here that tell us that Oswald acted all alone, 9/11 was done by a bunch of Saudis, that's why we had to invade Iraq and blow up Baghdad. Oh, and the Twin Towers collapsed because of the raging 2000° fires in the 7th sub basement from all of the jet fuel flowing down the elevator shafts from the 80th floor.
And the NSA has never broken any laws and adheres to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Yea, we are the greatest!

For those that have tried to push the above shit, this post is -

[Enthusiast]

73. You should recognize that WE ARE NUMBER ONE!

[RC]

82. Yeah, we're #1 alright.

Just not in the good stuff that counts.

[trusty elf]

70. That smirking SOB!

[IMG][/IMG]

[xchrom]

22. du rec.

[Egalitarian Thug]

24. The biggest welfare trough in the universe, no little people allowed. K&R

[underpants]

27. 9/10/11 - Rumsfeld presser about the 1,400 accounting systems used at DoD

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/

The next day it was not a matter of interest anymore.

[Electric Monk]

43. You mean 9/10/01 of course, not 9/10/11, which is what you wrote. nt

[underpants]

74. Oops yes

my bad

[nykym]

29. SO when they come around with thier hand out

we just tell them to get your house in order and you will find all the money you need.

[OnionPatch]

30. Why wasn't/isn't this the main headline in every newspaper?

And the main topic for every political talk show? It should be the main question every constituent is asking their reps. It should be a major issue that the president addresses.

This is the most outrageous thing I've ever heard of.

[Blue Owl]

48. The ACA website glitches are the top story

[Dustlawyer]

60. General Electric (Defense Contractor & more) has their own major TV network...

They (the MIC and Wall Street) own the media. There has been way too much consolidation of entire industries, including the mass media. They have this game completely rigged!

[spanone]

31. Presidents come & go, the military is constant...who runs the country?

[Ace Acme]

32. JFK and LBJ being a case in point.

Last edited Wed Dec 4, 2013, 12:32 PM - Edit history (1)

Before JFK took office, the military had started on this goofy plot to support a bunch of exiled Cubans and invade Cuba.

So JFK went along with it, but he refused to provide US air support to the exiles' landing and the invasion failed. The military blamed JFK. So the military proposed Operation Northwoods, a plot to make an excuse for war with Cuba by blowing up an airliner or a ship and blaming it on Cuba. JFK wouldn't go along with it. The military didn't like that. And the Vietnam thing started to get ugly and JFK was going to pull out. The military didn't like that. Then JFK was killed and LBJ was sworn in and we stayed in Vietnam. The military liked that.

Who runs the country? Christopher Edley, who served on Obama's transition team, said that they considered investigating crimes such as torture and decided not to investigate out of fear that the CIA would revolt. At the time Obama did the troop surge in Afghanistan it was reported that he had no choice but to do that or the Generals might revolt.

[valerief]

69. 20-year-old men who foolishly do the bidding of the Pentagon criminals actually run

the country. Without their help, the Pentagon criminals would be powerless.

[2naSalit]

35. ...

F'ers need to pay it all back, that's the only way I think it should be resolved even if it comes out of upper echelon pay.

[truedelphi]

36. And of course, when some of us look up at the sky, and

We remember how a couple of years back, it was revealed that seven planes spraying 24/7 would cost the government ten billion bucks a year, and now there is not a county in the USA that doesn't have that happening, often with useage of more than seven planes, it explains where the money is going.

[Octafish]

37. Isn't it about time for some bodies to go to gaol?

[glinda]

38. K & R n/t

[jsr]

39. We really need to cut food stamps

[99Forever]

40. Seems like a perfectly believable number to me.

I detest the MIC and all that are part of it.

[wildbilln864]

41. let's see

$2.5 trillion Sept. 10, 2001, 2 trillion year or two ago, now 8.5?
13 Trillion dollars down the rabbit hole!

[myrna minx]

42. Disgusting - especially when children go hungry and we're debating chained CPI. Just disgusting. K&R

[JEB]

44. Greedy fucking criminals looting the US treasury.

[flamingdem]

46. Who then? Let's see the possible names

Who was in charge. Jeez

[Festivito]

47. "unsubstantiated change actions" should go down in history along with enhanced rendition.

"unsubstantiated change actions" "plugs" fake entries? fraud?

[Liberal_in_LA]

49. K&r

[Blue Owl]

50. Funny how the teabaggers are so unconcerned about the giant satanic symbol

n/t

[debunkthis]

51. Remember what happened last time they tried to audit the Pentagon?

Hint: 9/11

[Phlem]

53. Not surprised based off their budget and what they've got to show for it. Epic.

They are shitting money while everyone is struggling to get by. I'd love to get one of those high ranking purse snatchers in a room alone and let my PTSD just go off. There is no fucking budget that could ever stop that.

-p

[lonestarnot]

57. but of fucking course!

[blkmusclmachine]

58. So much waste. And so many excuses.

Austerity Now! Austerity Forever!

[wildbilln864]

59. and k & r! n/t

[The Wizard]

61. But what about Bengazi(NT)

[uponit7771]

62. +1

[colsohlibgal]

63. Bet This Gets Zero Play From Faux News

If only enough wing nuts would start to engage in some critical thinking instead of going all Pavlov over the dog whistles from Faux News.

I'm sure there are a few welfare queens playing the system but it's a drop in the bucket compared to defense waste/fraud.

[nadinbrzezinski]

65. Translation: Black programs

[Blue_Tires]

90. +1

that and funneling overfunded contracts to their contractor cronies...

[truedelphi]

92. Yes yes yers. Black op programs, that are becoming more and more prevalent.

As well as corruption on all levels.

[sabrina 1]

66. And who is going to do something about it?? We heard about this years ago. The Trilions that

were unaccounted for in the Pentagon 'budget'. More like 'hold up'.

And nothing has ever been done about it.

This too shall pass. Until we kick out all the Corporate and MIC morons who have facilitated these massive crimes for so long, nothing is going to change.

[sendero]

71. And they cry like babies..

.... over a 20 billion dollar budget cut. The military never accomplishes anything it promises, it spends money like water, doling out vast sums to unbelievably overpaid "contractors", what a mess.

[Enthusiast]

75. The nation's real enemy is the military industrial complex.

In his farewell address Ike went out of his way to emphasize to the nation the danger of the military industrial complex.

Ike did not call our attention to the Soviet threat, North Korea or Red China. Ike felt these threats could be dealt with. But he felt the MIC was worthy of special attention.

What has happened since then? Read the article. How many wars and special operations have they waged for no good reason whatsoever?

[ancianita]

76. The MIC has got to find and return that money the way it tried to find Bin Laden.Sequester continues

conditional upon the return of that lost money.

I say that for every billion dollars the military and its private contractors returns, it gets to not have a base -- any of the 700 official and 300 unofficial bases -- closed. What are they going to do if we don't fund them -- shoot us all?

They can pull themselves up by their overpriced bootstraps.

[Hubert Flottz]

77. The "BAD APPLES"

Are from the TOP down.

[Ace Acme]

87. Right. That's called "trickle down". nt

[marmar]

84. Disgusted K/R

[ronnie624]

89. Clearly illustrating the sound reasoning for this claim:

Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024124437

[WinkyDink]

93. But we're blaming retirees for our problems??