No, the US government didn’t ‘mysteriously lose’ trillions of dollars the day before 9/11

CLAIM: The U.S. government “mysteriously lost” trillions of dollars the day before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. That long-circulating claim misrepresents remarks about $2.3 trillion in accounting entries that officials at the time said were insufficiently documented because of outdated technology. The entries were made during fiscal year 1999 and detailed in an early 2000 report.

THE FACTS: More than two decades after the 9/11 attacks, false claims and conspiracy theories about the events continue to surface online.

One meme being shared ahead of the 22-year anniversary is repeating a debunked assertion that the attacks were somehow related to “trillions” of taxpayer dollars going missing.

“The US Government when they found a way to distract people from the trillions of dollars they mysteriously lost on Sept. 10, 2001,” the Instagram post reads. The post uses visuals, including a photo of the Twin Towers, to suggest the attacks were the purported distraction.

But it’s not true that the government “mysteriously lost” trillions the day before 9/11.

Instead, the long-circulating claim refers to remarks that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave on Sept. 10, 2001, about the Pentagon’s business practices.

“The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector,” Rumsfeld said at one point. “But not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”

But Rumsfeld wasn’t saying the Department of Defense was missing $2.3 trillion. He was using the number to illustrate that the department was having trouble keeping track of its finances because of outdated technology.

Moreover, while Rumsfeld did reference the figure the day before 9/11, it wasn’t new information.

The figure was included in a February 2000 audit report for fiscal year 1999 by the Defense Department’s inspector general, which noted: “For the accounting entries, $2.3 trillion was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity.”

Later that year, Robert Lieberman, who was then the assistant inspector general for the department, cited the $2.3 trillion number during testimony before a congressional task force in which he discussed “how difficult it has been for DOD to emulate private sector financial reporting practices.”
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Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin contributed to this report.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.