The story of a missing 2.3 trillion had already appeared by at the latest March 3, 2000:
http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002hxm-----
Pentagon's finances in disarray
By JOHN M. DONNELLY The Associated Press 03/03/00 5:44 PM Eastern
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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...
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http://www.defense-and-society.org/fcs/comments/c399.htm-----
Tighten Pentagon's Purse Strings Until It Passes an Audit
JACK SHANAHAN and FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
Los Angeles Times
December 29, 2000
...
The picture becomes even more horrifying when the Pentagon's financial transactions are examined. The Defense Department's inspector general recently identified $6.9 trillion in accounting entries, but $2.3 trillion was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine its validity.
Another $2 trillion worth of entries were not examined because of time constraints, and therefore, the inspector general was able to audit only $2.6 trillion of accounting entries in a $6.9-trillion pot...
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While I have no interest in exculpating the Bush administration on anything, the above reports make it clear that there was nothing special about the September 10, 2001, announcement and that the story had been in the news before Bush took office.