The big question at the State Department briefing today was Claudia Rosett’s scoop in The New York Sun about the administration’s decision to settle an old claim by Iran with a plane load of foreign cash totaling $400 million and $1.3 billion in interest. In respect of the particulars, the administration has clammed up tighter than a conch in a mudslide. One can see this most majestic of mollusks in the video, above, of the briefing, in which Foggy Bottom spokesman, Mark Toner, is being questioned by the dean of the Foggy Bottom press corps, Matt Lee.

The story broke earlier this month with the Wall Street Journal’s disclosure of the $400 million payoff in foreign currency stacked on pallets in a cargo plane — and how it was used, en passant, to ransom American hostages. But the administration has refused to come clean with anyone in respect of how it dealt with the $1.3 billion in interest that had been accruing while we were (for good reason, in our view) holding the $400 million.

What Ms. Rosett discovered — she is one of newspaperdom’s most tenacious reporters — is that two days after the settlement was announced by President Obama, $1.3 billion — or $1,299,999,999.87, to be exact — was paid out to the State Department from a special account at the Treasury Department known as the Judgment Fund. It was paid in 13 transfers of $99,999,999,999.99.

No one in the government will confirm that these 13 payments are part of the Iran payout. Nor why each of the payments came to one cent under $100 million. The Web immediately lit up with speculation that this was, in effect, some kind of structuring to avoid a limit on withdrawals, or simply to prevent the transfers from appearing to be so obvious on the government’s Web site. There may well be a more prosaic and less scandalous explanation.

We make no allegation one way or another. The story, though, throws into sharp relief the old adage that the scandal often lies not in what’s illegal but in what’s legal. That is the Judgment Fund itself. It has a long history in Washington. The Fund, according to a Treasury Department Web site, is “a permanent, indefinite appropriation” used to pay monetary awards against U.S. government agencies in certain cases.

It may be that we’re just old fashioned. But what in the name of Scrooge McDuck is a “permanent, indefinite appropriation”? The whole idea strikes us as a prima facie affront to one of the most bedrock prohibitions on Congress, laid down in the Constitution itself in Article 1, Section 9, wherein are listed the things that the government can never do. The first one is that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

It used to be that there was a $100,000 limit on tapping the Judgment Fund. That pesky procedure went by the board in the 1970s, not so long after the Congress abandoned money redeemable in gold and went to a system of fiat money, which has no legislated value and became a license for the government to run up these enormous deficits for no good reason. If the money isn’t going to mean anything, why should the Judgment Fund?

Now suddenly the Judgment Fund is parceling out 13 transfers of $99,999,999.99 in one day to one payee, and no one except Claudia Rosett seems to notice. And the administration doesn’t feel the least compunction to explain. Ms. Rosett’s story itself brought rumblings that Congress will open a hearing. The New York Post news story on the matter predicted that it would prove to be “a rich trove for congressional investigators.” You can bet your last $99,999,999,99 on it.