After decades of waste, overpayments, trillions of missing or improperly accounted for dollars, and most recently losing track of 44,000 US soldiers, the Pentagon is about to undergo its first audit in history conducted by 2,400 auditors from independent public accounting firms to conduct reviews across the Army, Navy, Air Force and more – followed by annual audits going forward.
The announcement follows a May commitment by Pentagon comptroller David Norquist, who previously served as the CFO at the Department of Homeland Security when the agency performed its audit. “Starting an audit is a matter of driving change inside a bureaucracy that may resist it,” Norquist told members of the Armed Services Committee at the time when pressed over whether or not he could get the job done at the DHS.
According to the DoD release:
The audit is massive. It will examine every aspect of the department from personnel to real property to weapons to supplies to bases. Some 2,400 auditors will fan out across the department to conduct it, Pentagon officials said.
“It is important that the Congress and the American people have confidence in DoD’s management of every taxpayer dollar,” Norquist said. -defense.gov
The Pentagon is no stranger to criticism over serious waste and purposefully sloppy accounting. A DoD Inspector General’s report from 2016 – which appears to be unavailable on the DoD website (but fortunately WAS archived)- found that in 2015 alone a staggering $6.5 trillion in funds was unaccounted for out of the Army’s budget, with $2.8 trillion in “wrongful adjustments” occurring in just one quarter.
In 2015, the Pentagon denied trying to shelve a study detailing $125 billion in waste created by a bloated employee counts for noncombat related work such as human resources, finance, health care management and property management. The report concluded that $125 billion could be saved by making those operations more efficient.
On September 10th, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that “According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,” after a Pentagon whistleblower set off a probe. A day later, the September 11th attacks happened and the accounting scandal was quickly forgotten.
And twenty years before that, DoD analyst Franklin C. Spinney exposed what he called “accounting games,” saying “Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year.” In a 2002 testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, Spinney laid out the DoD’s accounting quagmire of un-auditable books and budget projections which don’t match reality.
Finally, those of us old enough to remember the 80’s, let’s not forget the bombshell report on overpayments the Pentagon made for simple items, such as $37 screws, $7,622 coffee makers, and $640 toilet seats which Sen. William Roth Jr (R-DE) was able to whittle down to $200.
The announcement of the audit comes amid a looming government shutdown battle which was given a two-week extension last week until December 22. If this occurs, military personnel would report to work as usual, but the DoD would not pay them until the shutdown ends.
“I cannot emphasize too much how destructive a shutdown is,” Norquist said. “We’ve talked before about the importance of maintenance on weapons systems and others, but if it’s not an excepted activity, there’ll be work stoppage on many of those maintenance functions.”
With both parties standing to lose more than gain from a shutdown, that is unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, with decades of lost confidence in the Pentagon’s accounting practices, we eagerly await the results of this “massive” audit to see exactly how much dirt – and where – previous administrations have swept under the rug.
Source
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Tier1Gear: A plane will conveniently crash into the one room where all the audit files are located
lisabauer58: I remember a few decades ago (90s?) that the IRS came up for audit. It seems that the IRS randomly audits organizations and their own name came up. The audit was held by (I believe) a congressional audit panel and the IRS completely failed as huge amounts of money disappeared and couldn’t be accounted for. The explanation from the IRS was that they were using out dated computer systems because the government wouldn’t upgrade them. The IRS received no fines etc, only a hand slap. Of course their budget was increased so they could upgrade.
I cant give a link because this comes from my memory of watching TV news at the time.
SuperPoop: Nothing will come of this because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
__G_A_R_D_E_N_E_R__: CBO, GAO, and the Pentagon do not talk. Whoops.
ManIsBornFree: Two most dangerous jobs in the military is explosive ordinance disposal, and accounting for missing trillions.
Just wear the blast-suits while you count, lads
The Conspiracy Theory…
Mmmm let me get this straight. Rumsfeld on 9/10 said 2 trillion missing. The very NEXT day, 9/11 happened. Then a “plane” crashed into the side of the pentagon that destroyed files of the missing trillions!? … did I miss anything?
Someone please tell me that this is the most ridiculous cover story ever. Were they drunk when they come up with this idea or are they rubbing our faces in it because they know us sheep can’t do zip about it?
______
remington_smooth: I don’t think it’s crazy at all. It’s sane… very sane.
Look at it from their perspective. You can’t hide 2 Trillion missing dollars forever. Too many people involved in that much money, even if all of them got paid, it’s unlikely they would of be able to cover that shit forever.
So what do you do when the truth coming out is unacceptable? You make it so that the truth can never possibly come out, and even if nuggets of truth emerge, they are deniable.
It’s why murderers dissolve bodies in vats of acid. No body, no murder.
So how do you make enough money that if you put it in cash it would fill the Grand Canyon “disappear”? Well, money is basically imaginary, so you don’t have to make the money disappear, you just have to make records of it disappear.
But in this case, the records would have been in the Pentagon, one of the most secure installations on earth. You can’t just burgle the filing cabinet with the invoices. You have to think bigger than that. The pentagon has to burn.
But there’s the problem… how do you burn down the most secure building on the planet? It can’t be done by normal means, but Rumsfeld et. al. had the literal Army at their disposal. They could just blow it up.
How frustrating that must have been. They had the means to solve their problem in 5 minutes, but couldn’t just start lobbing artillery rounds at the Pentagon, so they got creative. They probably thought: “What is the best way to get away with a crime that can’t be hidden?”
The mob does this all the time. They get a hit man to shoot someone, and the hit man just leaves the gun right next to the body. Why? To make it easier for the cops to close the case. If the investigation drags on, they may get unlucky and get the only honest cop on the force investigating it. And the thing is, investigations tend to uncover threads, and threads get followed, and pretty soon the boss has to worry about that one time 15 years ago that he was with the hit man at the mob office Christmas party xeroxing their drunken asses and putting it in everyone’s mailbox.
So you just file off the serial number and drop the gun on the body. The cop gets to close the case, doesn’t have to do extra paperwork, and everybody wins. So that’s what they did. Only instead of a snub nose .38, it was a Boeing 747, or a Tomahawk cruise missile depending on who you ask. And instead of filing off the serial numbers, they left them on there, metaphorically speaking, because they knew it would lead back to their guy Osama, no love lost there…
And hopefully nobody would ever find that pic of Rumsfeld and Osama xeroxing their drunken asses at the CIA Christmas party…
fullspeedornothing-: If you look at the footage, to me it very doubtfully looks like a plane explosion. Too small and a very brief flash. Not at all a fireball of death.
Looks more like a missile.
twsmith: In fact, no, neither of those things happened. Rumsfeld didn’t say anything about missing money, he mentioned long-known accounting problems in a routine speech on 9/10/2001. And the part about “destroyed files of the missing trillions” is a hoax.
Rumsfeld didn’t announce anything new on September 10, 2001. He briefly mentioned accounting problems in a routine speech titled [*DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff—Bureaucracy to Battlefield*](https://web.archive.org/web/20100301161721/http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430): “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it’s stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”
The 2.3 trillion dollar figure comes from [this audit report from the year 2000 (PDF)](https://media.defense.gov/2000/Aug/18/2001713967/-1/-1/1/00-179.pdf) about fiscal year 1999 (Oct. 1998-Sep. 1999).
Even before the final report was issued, the story was in the news. From **March 5, 2000**, eighteen months before 9/11:
> [*Pentagon’s Finances Just Don’t Add Up*](http://articles.latimes.com/2000/mar/05/news/mn-5519)
> Audit: Hundreds of computer systems fail to keep running totals of income and outgo. Last year, the Defense Department’s bookkeeping errors totaled more than the entire federal budget.
> March 05, 2000|JOHN M. DONNELLY | ASSOCIATED PRESS
> WASHINGTON — The military’s money managers last year made almost $7 trillion in adjustments to their financial ledgers in an attempt to make them add up, the Pentagon’s inspector general said in a report released Friday.
> The Pentagon could not show receipts for **$2.3 trillion** of those changes, and half a trillion dollars of it was just corrections of mistakes made in earlier adjustments.
> Each adjustment represents a Defense Department accountant’s attempt to correct a discrepancy. The military has hundreds of computer systems to run accounts as diverse as health care, payroll and inventory. But they are not integrated, don’t produce numbers up to accounting standards and fail to keep running totals of what’s coming in and going out, Pentagon and congressional officials said.
Rumfeld was [asked to look into the accounting problems at his confirmation hearings](http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4521969/sen-byrd-rumsfeld-nominatin-hearing). That discussion was mentioned in the news, for example [on the PBS newshour]).
Other mentions of the $2.3 trillion from before 9/11 are collected here: http://www.911myths.com/html/rumsfeld__9_11_and__2_3_trilli.html
As to the plane crash destroying files relating to the audit, that’s a hoax. The offices involved with the audit were the [Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Finance_and_Accounting_Service), the [Office of the Inspector General](http://www.dodig.mil/), and the [Comptroller](http://comptroller.defense.gov/).
None of those were in the area of the Pentagon that was hit.
[This book documents which offices in the Pentagon were hit.](http://web.archive.org/web/20150910075856/www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/p/pentagon-9-11-footnotes.html) (Also available [as PDF](http://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/pentagon/Pentagon9-11.pdf) There is no DFAS, Inspector General, or Comptroller there.
The Defense Department [continued to work to reconcile the numbers after 9/11](https://web.archive.org/web/20120414183438/http://www.defense.gov//News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=43927).
The main Defense Department accounting office is the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), which has 12,000 employees, located all over the world. Most of the 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions were because of communication problems between the DFAS offices in Kansas City and Cleveland, copying transactions from the Marine Corps ledgers to the Navy ledgers (the Marine Corps is part of the Navy) in order to prepare reports.
Note that Kansas City and Cleveland are not in the Pentagon. Not only are the primary computers involved not in the Pentagon, the backups are not either. The Defense Department and the National Archives and Records Administration maintain an extensive system of records located all over the country.
Korlis: Another cute little tidbit:
The WTC was the largest repository of Gold in the west, possibly the globe. It was where “World Trade” occurred. If one country owes another country, some dude would wheel a big ol’ cart o’ gold bricks from one country’s cage to another to make payments.
When the towers fell, that gold was not recovered.
I remember reading a report at the time about discovery of an abandoned transport truck in the lower workings of the towers. The trailer was loaded up with about 1/8th of the total amount of gold known to be on site. The truck (and attendant escort motorcycles had been abandoned before they could be moved off-site. The other 7/8ths or whatever of the gold was never recovered.
2 trillion in the Pentagon, God knows how many millions or billions in bullion… The dual insurance payoffs for the fallen towers.
A select few people made obscene amounts of money by murdering lots of their own countrymen…
ottoshade: [This is thoroughly debunked](https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-rumsfeld-says-2-3-trillion-missing-from-the-pentagon.t165/)
LordPotsmoke: That’s about it. Oh yeah, no plane wreckage and the hole left had evidence of been hit by the wings, which are often filled with fuel.
Peanuttles: That is correct. And things just continued on as usual because most people remain blissfully unaware. Sad, isn’t it?
CVORoadGlide:
Big Story ? with not much media coverage ?
From One America News Network:
An economics professor at Michigan State University made a shocking discovery while reviewing the finances of the federal government.
Dr. Mark Skidmore claims he and a group of graduate students discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998.
In one instance, the team found an unauthorized transfer of $800 billion dollars from the Treasury Department to the U.S. Army.
The transfer is labeled as an “adjustment” and indicates it was to reconcile past years.
However, Skidmore says he finds it troubling since the report also shows multiple transfers of around $130 billion.
He says he tried to talk to those who created the report, but stopped when officials disabled the online links to view the documents.
“If trillions of dollars are flowing in and flowing out, it appears to be outside of our Constitution and outside of the rule of law,” said Skidmore. “If that’s the case, that really is troubling.”
The professor believes the missing funds could even be a national security issue.
He says it’s unacceptable, and is urging the American people to “stand up.”
http://archive.is/Mjjj2#selection-223.0-223.64
this should be good – lol – in a few years (?)
After decades of waste, overpayments, trillions of missing or improperly accounted for dollars, and most recently losing track of 44,000 US soldiers, the Pentagon is about to undergo its first audit in history conducted by 2,400 auditors from independent public accounting firms to conduct reviews across the Army, Navy, Air Force and more – followed by annual audits going forward.
heastout: Watch the entire video of that speech, at no time did he say that $2T was missing. He eas making a statement about how hard it was to track transactions. He talks about they’re still using old accounting HW & SW and they’re in need of updates to keep up.
This is about as stupid as the Silverstein pull it theories. The idea that you all think these people are admitting to crime and coverup to rooms full of people and literally millions watching TV is an absurd. Thought process
Yachtking: And we started a war in the Middle East over this which made those people hate us. Then we have the decency to say WE HATE MUSLIMS and call them violent when we have ruined them for generations to come
dukey: You could add in that the plane that crashed, was thought by people that were tracking it to be a military plane due to the way it moved. And the guy that apparently flew it couldn’t even fly a single engine cessna, yet it is supposed to have pulled off a move most professional pilots couldn’t even pull off.
LunaticOnDaGrass: Kinda reminds me of that crazy gunman who walked into that pizza place & fired at the one hard drive that would probably reveal something we’d like to know. But, it’s just a coincidence.
axolotl_peyotl: You got it!
_chaseyola88_: Yuuuuuuuuup crazy but yes
IAMAExpertInBirdLaw: Only thing about this theory is it takes longer than 12-18 hours to set something like this up
4brkfast: Not to mention Building 7, the command center of WTC, which was not hit by a plane and which made history by collapsing into it’s own basement due to fire(excluding the Towers in this instance which did the same thing).
Building 7 had the ENRON files, among other things, another interesting coincidence.
of_mendez: The second
yourtastyliltreat: Learning this, re-learning this, and the casual broadcasts that came out about this economic “whoops” – AND NO BODY FLINCHES? It hurts. I know.
_Dangma_Dzyu_: Make it a MEME and Red Pill the normies on facebook, twitter, instagram, etc
HussellWilson: If it’s a cover story it probably would have been smart of him to not admit to the 2 trillion…
BeatnikMessiah: Nothing is coincidence
monsterknob: Yep, pretty much.
Esdarke: Is that actually the story? The hell? That IS suspicious. Anyone in the military can tell you stories of disgusting amounts of loss, waste and fraud. They didn’t need to make a cover story, the story is just ‘whoops we lost the files’ and everyone would believe it because they can’t even find my leave form the day after I submitted it.
Dhylan: I don’t believe in coincidences at this level, and I certainly don’t believe what the US Government tells me.
ragegenx: The idea that files were destroyed by the “plane crash” is so ridiculous. It was 2001, not 1967.
Darthtrapgod: BUT who or what organization has the two trillion that would make that person the richest on earth if it’s a single man wouldn’t it? We know it’s not George bushes baby back bitch ass. Who ever did this killed
So many many people the diff is it was done in the technology time we’ve done this many times before just way less press and way more ignorant humans/
Joe_Sapien: It wasn’t a plane. It was a missile from a sub.
ShadowSeeker1499: The side the plane crashed into was under construction. And think about it. It happened in 2001. Most of their files were digital. Although 9/11 was a conspiracy, this facet of the conspiracy is disinfo.
mtlotttor: Yes, the coincidence and the fact there was no plane that hit the Pentagon. One would think it was worth investigating a little further.
TruthHammerOfJustice: Yep … So now that they are been audited expect shit to happen.
Pentagon Announces First-Ever Audit Of The Department Of Defense
andywarhaul: They are auditing themselves? I’m sure that will be effective
Novusod: Shouldn’t the audit be the other way around. The Department of Defense (civilian controlled) auditing the Pentagon (military).
millipedecult: Man, you will find some 600 dollar hammers and 70 dollar bagels real quick.
$21 Trillion Missing From The Federal Budget Dating Back To 1998
An economics professor at Michigan State University discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998
- $21 Trillion dollars over 19 years.
- $1.1 Trillion dollars per year. Divided by a population of 350 million.
- $3157.00 per citizen, per year.
- $60,000 is the total for 19 years.
From One America News Network:
Here’s what one trillion dollars looks like:
rustiesbagel: We see politicians padding their expenses by charging $300 for staplers. This is just the tip of the iceberg. A while back one got busted for stealing $30k worth of stamps. They don’t even have to pay for their own stamps. What do they spend their money on besides hot dogs, pizza and hookers?
jopesy: No healthcare. No schools. No food. No jobs. We can’t afford it.
10Cb: The links disappearing is also concerning. It’s getting harder and harder to know what is actually going on. Scientists lie, the news is no longer investigative, and politicians are just money grubbing people that are out for themselves.
yourmovebro: Black Budget…. we could knock the debt clock down quite a bit
CloudsHideNibiru: Have they built underground doomsday bunkers for the global elite, with taxpayer money, so they can survive the Planet X Nibiru Poleshift? Notice anything strange about the rising and setting sun, and all those suspicious jets, transponders turned off, fogging up our skies?
No heads up or warning for us plebs!
HibikiSS: Well, I wonder how much more will go missing with the coming banking crisis?
thebabyseagull: What’s the non conspiratorial reason for losing 21 Trillion?
I mean How many aeroplanes or tanks or whatever would that buy?
onetimerone: Yet politicians have done such an outstanding job of obfuscation most people at ground level buy the bullshit that the problem is healthcare, SSI for the elderly and a sandwich for a downtrodden school kid….
Arkfort: National Tax refund please…
Whaddaya Say?