Nearly 100,000 Pentagon Whistleblower Complaints Have Been Silenced
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I don't know if I'd have the nerve to be a whistleblower. I'd like to think
I would. We all like to think we would, just like we all like to think we
could catch the game-winning touchdown, triumph on "America's Got Talent,"
and fold a fitted sheet quickly and without cursing.
But to blow the whistle on a huge organization with a lot of power, likely
drawing that power to come crashing down on your head-that takes some
serious spine-age. Now, imagine the organization you're calling out is
arguably the largest, most powerful, most secretive and most violent
organization on planet Earth. I'm speaking, of course, of the U.S.
Department of Defense.
Yet thousands, even tens of thousands, of people have taken that step over
the past five years. (More on this in a moment.)
All the while our organized human murder machine continues its work around
the world. Every day. Every hour. Never a moment of rest. Never pausing to
clip their toenails or scratch their ass. Bombs dropped. Buildings blown up.
People killed or imprisoned. No end in sight.
By the way, that's the term I like to use instead of "military"-Organized
Human Murder Machine.
It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? "Mili-tary" sounds too boring, too
banal. Sounds like a super-lame couple you met at a party. "Yeah, Millie and
Terry over there are accountants. If I have to hear one more joke about
capital gains taxes, I'm gonna kill myself."
But that's not what the military is. The military is a gigantic organized
human murder machine, and even if you "support" every action our military
has ever taken, you can still acknowledge it's an organized human murder
machine. (You would just bizarrely argue that all the murder has been just
and sound and pure.)
Eleven months ago I covered $21 trillion of unaccounted-for adjustments at
the Pentagon over the past 20 years. Don't try to think about the number $21
trillion because you'll pass out and hit your head on the desk. If your
salary is $40,000 a year, in order to earn $21 trillion, it would take you
525 million years. (At which point you can't even enjoy the new jet ski you
just bought with all your money because you're almost certainly a brain in a
jar . though a nice embroidered jar that only the rich brains can afford.)
Over the past year there has been a little more coverage of the utterly
preposterous amount of money unaccounted for at our human murder machine.
The Nation magazine, Forbes and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all
covered it. Then the white blood cells of the military-industrial complex
kicked into action in order to destroy the "infection." The New York Times
and Vox both claimed the $21 trillion is merely the result of large-scale
misdocumentation and therefore doesn't matter at all. Of course, the idea
that tens of TRILLIONS of dollars of unaccountable adjustments don't matter
and couldn't mask any fraud, abuse or corruption is an assertion that makes
Charlie Sheen's statement that he runs on tiger blood seem downright
levelheaded.
Probably the best article to date on the $21 trillion was written a few
weeks ago by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone.
Point is, even though most of the mainstream media won't get near this
subject (or worse yet-actively attack those who do), the word is getting
out: There is a giant sucking sound in the center of the Pentagon, and
whatever's down there feeds on trillions of secretive dollars, then shits
out incalculable death and destruction. (It's the Death Star if officials at
the Death Star spent $10,000 on a toilet seat.)
A month ago the Government Accountability Office came out with a report
showing the total number of whistleblower complaints over the past five
years at the Department of Defense. It's nearly 100,000. Here's the only
part of the report that references that number:
"
The Department of Defense Inspector General identified 8 substantiated
violations of whistleblower confidentiality between fiscal years 2013 and
2018, representing approximately .01 percent of the 95,613 contacts handled
by the Inspector General during that time..
95,613 whistleblower complaints over five years.
Sadly, the Government Accountability Office was trying to brag in that
sentence. They were proudly stating, "We only breached the confidentiality
of .01 percent of our 95,000 whistleblower complaints. Aren't we heroes?!"
It's kind of like saying, "Of the 10,000 dolphins I've killed, not a single
one has accidentally been a human." The sane response is, "Well, I'm glad to
hear that, but did you say you killed 10,000 dolphins?"
To try to get the 95,000 number to make a little more sense, that averages
out to a whistleblower every six minutes of every weekday for five straight
years. (That waiting room must be truly nuts. I bet all the good magazines
were claimed years ago.)
But maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Perhaps the number 95,613 shouldn't
be all that shocking, and I need to roll my tongue back up and store it back
within my mouth. When you have $21 trillion of unaccounted-for adjustments,
it means a seizure-inducing amount of money, parts, pieces, bombs, missiles,
manpower and devices are flying around with no accountability-likely
creating loads of fraud, which would probably create loads of
whistleblowers. Hence, maybe we all should have expected this number of
whistleblowers rather than being shocked.
For example, there's the time in 2003 when the U.S. flew $12 billion in cash
to Iraq and promptly lost track of it. As the Guardian makes clear in this
article, this was not an instance of hackers on a computer system stealing a
bunch of ones and zeroes. This was giant pallets of cash money vanishing
without a trace. In fact, it was 281 million $100 bills, weighing in at 363
tons. That's not really the type of thing you can just smuggle away in your
sweatshirt while humming "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain."
Or here's another example journalist David DeGraw highlights from the
Government Accountability Report:
"
. according to a Department of Defense official, during an initial audit,
the Army found 39 Blackhawk helicopters that had not been recorded in the
property system. [$819 million in value] Similarly, the Air Force identified
478 buildings and structures at 12 installations that were not in the real
property systems. .
The Army lost and then found 39 helicopters.
The Air Force lost and then found 478 buildings.
How does one lose a goddamn building? Unless you just had a bad breakup with
David Copperfield, there's no explanation for losing a building. (Side note:
It must suck divorcing David Copperfield. "Really, honey? You think you're
gonna take the house?? PAFOOMPF! What house?!")
Ya see, this madness stems from the fact that the Pentagon has a standard
operating procedure of simply making up numbers to fill their books-which
for normal human beings is termed "fraud." But in the case of the Pentagon,
it's termed, "We get to make shit up because . ummm. national security."
Here's more from a 2013 Reuters article:
"Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony
numbers in the Department of Defense's accounts. . 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."
Have no fear, patriotic Americans, this is not "lying to the American
people, stealing their money, and using it for war," this is just
"unsubstantiated change actions." Try that on your next tax return. Put in
$10,000 marked "Unsubstantiated change actions." I'm sure they'll love that.
So let's sum this up, shall we? The Pentagon sucks up 55% of all the
discretionary tax money we pay to our government (thanks to our bought-off
Congress who receive more Christmas cards from weapons contractors than they
do from relatives). Those who work at the Pentagon have no idea where or how
the money is spent. They make up many of the numbers resulting in tens of
trillions of dollars of unaccounted-for adjustments. They lose helicopters,
buildings and, in a few instances, even nuclear warheads. There is an
unimaginable amount of fraud and corruption at every level and literally
thousands of whistleblowers have tried to come forward every single year-one
every six minutes. When they do take that incredibly brave action, over 90%
of the claims are dismissed without even being investigated.
You would think, in this topsy-turvy world, if there were one organization
we could trust with a trillion dollars a year of our taxpayer money, it
would be the Department of Unauthorized Highly Secretive Mass Human Murder.
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This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV
show "Redacted Tonight."
Lee Camp
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp
is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show "Redacted Tonight With Lee
Camp" on RT America. He is a former comedy writer for.
Lee Camp