How is DOGE Like a Beirut Bank Heist?

A Guest Essay by Anti-Corruption Expert Jodi Vittori

In the midst of the worst days of the Lebanese civil war in 1976, one of the world’s most daring bank robberies took place along the so-called Green Line in Beirut. The Green Line ran north to south and split the city into East and West Beirut; it also went through the city’s financial center. Taking advantage of the chaos brought about by this division, the British Bank of the Middle East (BBME) was robbed. The thieves gained entry by punching a hole through a local Catholic church that shared a wall with the bank and explosives were used to blow open the bank vault. The thieves got away with between $50 million to $300 million (up to $2 billion adjusted to today’s value) worth of cash, gold, jewels, stocks, and gold bars. Neither the perpetrators nor the loot was ever found.

The identities of the bank robbers is a source of continued controversy. An account by British Sunday Times defense correspondent James Adams in his 1986 book The Financing of Terror asserted that two rivals--the…