What did they know?

Where is the one? Who killed the other?

On the same day Saddam Hussein was hauled out of his spider hole, Ryan Manelick was driving a 4x4 just south of Tikrit, near the Iraqi town of Balad, 10 miles from Camp Anaconda. A car pulled up alongside and someone inside opened fire with a machine gun. Manelick died instantly, a bullet through his brain.

[...]

"I'm in fear of my life, you know," he said to a gathering at a Baghdad restaurant, at which a Chronicle reporter was present.

"It's not Iraqis I'm worried about, either," added Manelick. "It's people from my own country."

[...]

According to Greg Manelick and other former associates, Ryan Manelick had earlier told Army investigators looking into von Ackermann's disappearance that large sums of money were being paid in kickbacks to a U.S. Army officer in Iraq in return for doling out lucrative contracts to another a business associate at Ultra Services.

Von Ackermann, who as a contract manager for Ultra Services spent a lot of time at various U.S. military bases in Iraq, knew all about it, did not approve and was about to blow the whistle to U.S. Army authorities, Ryan Manelick reportedly had maintained.
  SF Gate article

Ackerman disappeared before Manelick was killed. Simply disappeared. He called Manelick from somewhere out on the road saying he had a flat and no jack. When Manelick arrived, there was Ackerman's car, his cell phone, his laptop and $40,000 in $100 bills in a briefcase on the back seat. No footprints, no sign of struggle. No Ackerman.

More than a year later, an angry Greg Manelick wants answers.

"My son came out here to support the U.S. Army, not with his mouth or from a bar stool, but with his back and his brains. Somebody then blew them out. I think the least they can do is find out who it was."

[...]

U.S. military officials looking into both cases will not comment on the progress, if any, of their investigations.