So $30,000 in cash went missing when U.S. Navy SEALs rescued cargo ship captain Richard Phillips from the Somali pirates who had abducted him. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service administered polygraphs to the SEALs in an attempt to identify who took the money. Surprise, surprise, the perpetrator(s) was/were not identified!
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/11/30g-went-missing-in-seal-rescue-capt-philli... ...
The unvarnished story begins on April 8, 2009. Four armed Somali pirates scurried up the side of a large cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, and took the crew, including Phillips, hostage. In a failed attempt to get the pirates to leave, Phillips gave them $30,000 from the ship safe. The pirates eventually abandoned the Maersk, jumping into a lifeboat and taking the cash and Phillips at gunpoint.
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The $30,000 was never recovered. As part of the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, SEALs were polygraphed, according to former and current law enforcement and military officials who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk about the case. It's not clear if all the SEALs who responded to the hijacking were polygraphed.
Nobody was exempt from questioning. Investigators interviewed Capt. Frank J. Michael, who was the executive officer of the Boxer and among of the highest-ranking Navy personnel to enter the lifeboat after Phillips had been saved, a former U.S. official said.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Courtney L. Hillson declined to discuss SEAL tactics or specifics of the case but said: "The case was ultimately closed without evidence of wrongdoing."
Weinstein said his client [the surviving pirate, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse], who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly 34 years, had no idea who took the money, and he didn't think the pirates threw it overboard. Weinstein said there were plenty of people who had access to the lifeboat after the shooting stopped.
He said the crime scene was "contaminated." According to Phillips' account of the kidnapping, the money could have easily been concealed in a small bag or someone's pockets.
In his book, Phillips writes that while he was held hostage on the lifeboat, a pirate took the money out of the bag and began dividing up into piles. There were "two stacks of hundreds, one of fifties, then twenties, fives, and tens ... I never saw the money again. Later, when they gave me a sack to lean against, I felt the stacks of money inside, but I never spotted the cash out in the open again."
Kevin Speers, a spokesman for Maersk Line Ltd., said the missing money remains a mystery: "We simply don't know."
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Polygraph Fails to Identify Who Stole $30,000 During Rescue of Captain Richard Phillips (Read 31213 times)
