History's Biggest Heist - And Why No One Ever Investigated It
1. AndWhy No One Ever Investigated It
True Events that Inspired
Martin Roy Hill’s NewThriller,
The Butcher’s Bill
Definition of Butcher’s Bill:Old naval term for the cost of a battle in human lives.
2. Meet Bill Butcher, akaThe Butcher.
He knows who stole $9 billion in cash from Iraq.
They want him dead. Cops want him for murder.
His only hope—NCIS agent Linus Schag.
With a plot torn from today’s headlines …
The Butcher’s Bill
3. Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Bush Administration makes a controversial
decision.
Billions of dollars belonging to Saddam Hussein and
his government sit in frozen U.S. accounts.
TheWhite House decides to confiscate those funds
and use them to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq.
4. That, itself, was not controversial ...
How theWhite House did it was.
5. Rather than place the Iraqi funds in a holding
account and pay contractor bills as they came due,
the Bush converted the holdings into $40 billion in
U.S. greenbacks and flew it to Iraq by the planeload.
Once in Iraq, the cash was handed out to contractors
without much regard to receipts for work performed.
Some witnesses claim the money was stuffed into
duffle bags then handed over to contractors.
6. While the haphazard distribution of $31 billion was
controversial enough, there was an even greater
outrage.
Nearly $9 billion in cash—$8.9 billion to be precise—
simply disappeared, apparently stolen.
Any attempt to investigate the theft was blocked at
the highest levels of the government.
7. Some of the cash was found hidden in a bunker—in
Lebanon.
How it got there was never determined.
Did some of the missing money go to Iraqi
insurgents?
Did some of it go to corrupt politicians in Iraq and
the U.S.?
No one knows, because no one was allowed to ask.
8. Graft and corruption plagues every war, but the Iraqi
conflict may have seen the most overt war
profiteering in history.
The Bush administration's excessive use of private
contractors for everything from operating mess halls
to building bases set the stage for widespread illegal
activities.
The president's granting of immunity from
prosecution to all contractors for any questionable
activity only exacerbated the problem.
9. Contractor-operated mess halls knowingly served
rancid food to troops.
Construction of facilities for both U.S. and pro-U.S.
Iraqi troops was, at best, careless. Several American
service members died when electrocuted by
improperly wired barracks.
Inadequately constructed plumbing poured raw
sewage into newly built buildings, rendering them
uninhabitable.
10. The widespread use of so-called "security
contractors"—i.e., armed mercenaries—was the
most controversial.
These private military companies claimed their
personnel were highly trained former military or law
enforcement professionals.
In fact, many of these security contractors had little
or no military or law enforcement background.
Many had criminal backgrounds and some were
known former members of Latin American death
squads.
11. Security contractors were responsible for some of
the most egregious acts.
There were allegations of security contractors
smuggling weapons into Iraq, possibly to sell to
insurgents.
Some were accused of smuggling drugs, which they
sold to U.S. troops.
Many security contractors were accused of killing
Iraqi citizens without cause
12. These are the facts behind the plot of …
The Butcher's Bill.
13. In the novel, NCIS Special Agent Bill Butcher finds
himself in the middle of this byzantine environment
when posted to Iraq during the war.
A former Navy SEAL, Butcher is a man of high moral
standards, with a strong sense of right and wrong,
especially when it involves the welfare of serving
men and women.
14. When Butcher is pulled off the investigation into the
missing $9 billion in cash, he refuses to give up.
He continues to probe the theft even after returning
to the States.
His obsession with the missing funds will cost him his
job and his marriage.
When Butcher discovers the truth behind the
missing money, it threatens to cost him his life.
15. Those who stole the money want Butcher dead.
The cops want him for murder.
Butcher's only hope is his former NCIS colleague and
closest friend, Linus Schag.
Working from opposite ends, Schag and Butcher
peel back the layers of conspiracy, revealing a
criminal enterprise reaching into the highest levels of
government.
16. Taken straight from today's headlines, the plot of
The Butcher's Bill ranges from the California
mountains to the waters of the Pacific, and will keep
readers on edge until its final, explosive climax.
The Butcher's Bill is available in paperback and Kindle
e-book at Amazon.com, and in paperback from
Barnesandnoble.com.
17. For more information on the missing cash, go to
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/world/investig
ation-into-missing-iraqi-cash-ended-in-lebanon-
bunker.html
For more information on war profiteering by
contractors, go to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/iraq-
reconstruction_n_2819899.html
For more information on security contractor abuses,
go to https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-dark-
truth-about-blackwater/
