Pay Any Price by James Risen Read Free Book Online

el-Zein, who worked for the U.S. Army before joining Bowen’s staff, had been told that billions of dollars from the jingle flights had gone missing and was now being hidden in Lebanon. Based on el-Zein’s information, Bowen’s office opened the most secret investigation that it conducted during the entire Iraq war. Bowen’s investigators code-named the case “Brick Tracker.” The case has never been previously disclosed.
    Eventually, Bowen’s investigators obtained information from an informant in Lebanon who identified a bunker there that contained mountains of U.S. dollars, staggering amounts of cash that had been shipped from Iraq for safekeeping and was being carefully hidden. There was between $1.2 and $1.6 billion in cash in U.S. dollars in storage. In addition, there was approximately $200 million in gold—belonging to the Iraqi government. Bowen’s investigators were also told that some powerful Iraqi political figures had ties to the bunker and the cash.
    Eventually, the special inspector general for Iraq and his team became confident that they had discovered the secret hiding place of a major portion of the U.S. currency that had been missing since the cash was shipped to Baghdad. The investigators determined that there was so much cash that the people hiding it were reluctant to try to move it.
    In addition to the cash in the bunker, Wael el-Zein said he later discovered at least several hundred million dollars more in U.S. currency hidden in other locations in Lebanon. Including this cache, the total amount of U.S. currency flown from the United States to Iraq and then stolen and hidden in Lebanon was approximately $2 billion.
    Some of the serial numbers on the U.S. currency flown from the United States to Iraq had been recorded by the U.S. government, which would have made it possible to trace. But slipshod recordkeeping in the early days after the U.S. invasion meant that not all of the serial numbers had been recorded by the Americans before the cash departed, and it is not known whether the stolen currency now hidden in the bunker in Lebanon and elsewhere is among the former or the latter, according to former staffers with Bowen’s office who investigated the matter. Even with the records of the serial numbers for some of the cash, however, the chances that the United States would ever be able to trace and prevent the cash from being used is remote.
    Still, the people controlling the hidden cash have apparently been hesitant to move it in large quantities into the international banking system and so have mostly been spending it in Lebanon. Wael el-Zein said he had received reports that some had been used to buy weapons for backers of several political parties in Iraq. It is believed that several powerful Iraqi political figures have been involved with the stolen cash, and that they still control the money with the help of the Lebanese money launderers who first provided the bunker and other secure hiding places.
    Meanwhile, Bowen found to his dismay that no one else in the U.S. government seemed particularly interested in uncovering the truth. By the time Bowen’s team discovered the cash-laden Lebanese bunker, most of official Washington had long since forgotten about the cash flights. The Obama administration was in the process of winding down the war in Iraq, and the White House was not interested in opening up old wounds. Since the cash from the Development Fund of Iraq was not American taxpayer money, administration officials were not especially interested in getting it back. The Obama White House wanted to forget about Iraq.
    Another possible explanation for the lack of interest in Washington could be that the White House did not want to pursue an investigation which might implicate some of the most powerful officials in Iraq. The United States needed to continue to work with them.
    When Bowen’s staff met with CIA officials to discuss the cash-laden