FASAB-56 Concealment Authority
Idea
A 2018 federal accounting rule that legally lets US agencies keep two sets of books — a classified true version and a sanitized public version — and forbids them from revealing whether any given report has been altered, so the question itself cannot be answered. Combined with $21 trillion in unreconciled Pentagon and HUD adjustments (1998-2015), the entry presents it as the exact mechanism for funding massive unacknowledged programs invisibly.
The engine's definition — word for word
**Plain read:** A 2018 federal accounting rule change that legally authorizes US federal agencies to keep two sets of books — a classified true version and a public sanitized version — AND makes it legally FORBIDDEN for agencies to disclose whether they've sanitized any given report. You can't ask 'has this report been modified under FASAB 56?' because the answer itself is classified. This is the single most important piece of 21st-century federal financial legal architecture almost nobody knows about. Combined with $21 trillion in unreconciled Pentagon+HUD adjustments (1998-2015), it provides the exact mechanism to fund massive unacknowledged programs invisibly.
TECHNICAL: Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56 — 'Classified Activities' — issued October 2018. Permits federal entities to (a) omit required disclosures, (b) move line-item amounts without explanation, (c) consolidate component entities into different reporting structures, (d) explicitly alter net results of operations AND net position. Forbids agencies from disclosing whether SFFAS 56 has been applied.
Walk this on the live map →