Romero_Trial_Transcript_8_25_04_53_2

8-25-04 Trial Transcript
16 money. And --
17 Q. What do you mean, trouble accounting for it?
18 A. Well, for example, there were not very good accounts.
19 There was over a million dollars a day entering El Salvador.
20 It is a very small country that had no history of being used
21 to those kind of revenues. And when it came to the Congress
22 asking for accounts of where that money was going, it was
23 clear that no one seemed to know where very significant
24 amounts of money were going.
25 I became part of an investigation that documented
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1 what were called "ghost brigades." Ghost brigades were
2 brigades that were made up by military officers. They would
3 make up a brigade of a whole group of people, say a hundred
4 soldiers, that simply didn't exist. They would collect
5 salaries for that brigade, and it would enter a salary, but in
6 fact there was no brigade.
7 Another time I investigated U.S. food aid. We gave a
8 great deal of food aid in El Salvador that was to be
9 distributed among poor, and it was marked specifically "not
10 for sale." So I documented its sale in markets throughout El
11 Salvador by members of the military or their families.
12 MR. Van AELSTYN: Your Honor, as a footnote, Michael
13 Barnes has submitted a declaration in this matter.
14 THE COURT: Thank you.
15 BY MR. Van AELSTYN:
16 Q. Moving up two entries, we have an entry, "Report and
17 Recommendation on Congressional Delegation to El Salvador,"
18 sponsored by Congressman Edward Roybal, in January of 1987.
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