Free Republic

The Pentagon’s books are a mess, and D.O.G.E just ripped the lid off one of the biggest financial disasters in government history. The Department of Defense (DoD) lost track of $824 billion last year, and their latest audit only confirms what most already suspected—no one knows where the money went. This isn’t a small accounting error. The DoD’s $4.1 trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in liabilities were put under scrutiny, and the results are just embarrassing. Out of all the entities inside the Pentagon, only nine managed to pass their audits. One got a “qualified” rating, meaning the books...

The White House budget office launched USASpending.gov in 2007 to track federal spending after scores of lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, successfully pushed through a bipartisan bill to ensure greater transparency with the funding. At last check, less than 8 percent of the site’s spending information was accurate, and federal agencies had failed to report nearly $620 billion in grants, loans and other forms of assistance awards, according to a recent report from Congress’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

Launched in December 2007, USASpending.gov was meant as a way of tapping modern technology to hand the American public the means to track what the federal government spends. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that, in 2012 at least, more than $619 billion in federal awards that should be accounted for on the site weren't. Agencies, GAO found, are generally reporting on the contracts that they hand out. What's missing from the site are grants and awards, a range of federal spending that covers everything from agricultural development to research on new naval reconnaissance. The absent...

Saddam's missing billions and link to al-Qaida Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday April 16, 2003 The Guardian In the days before the fall of Baghdad, and the explosion of looting on the streets of the capital, a far more damaging form of looting was already under way as Iraqi bank accounts were ransacked and millions of dollars were transferred into private accounts abroad, Middle Eastern banking sources said yesterday. The flurry of transfers that have been spotted, going mainly through Europe to accounts in Jordanian and Palestinian banks, are thought to be the tip of a vast financial iceberg, kept...