“Every year, the U.S. Congress appropriates more than $1 billion in military aid to Egypt. But that money never gets to Egypt. It goes to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then to a trust fund at the Treasury and, finally, out to U.S. military contractors that make the tanks and fighter jets that ultimately get sent to Egypt,” begins an illuminating report aired on NPR last week.

Many of the M1A1 Abrams tanks that the United States sends to Egypt never make it out of the warehouse, insists Shana Marshall of the Institute of Middle East Studies at George Washington University.