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Months after the fury surrounding AIG's more than $180 billion government bailout reached fever pitch, there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the insurance giant's messy deals that threatened to bring down the entire global financial system.

Back in March, CEO Edward Liddy faced congressional outrage over the payment of bonuses worth hundreds of millions to the same people widely seen as responsible for the company's ruination – the infamous financial products division whose risky credit default swap transactions threatened to swallow up its parent company when they went sour.

Liddy termed those payments "distasteful" back then, though he insisted he was contractually obligated to pay them.

About a week later, Jake DeSantis, who worked in A.I.G.F.P., sent his letter of resignation to the company and the world through its publishing in the New York Times. In it, DeSantis wrote of being unfairly vilified by Congress and the media and of feeling betrayed by a company he had invested most of his time and efforts trying to restore.

He and his co-workers weren't the greedy, short-sighted snake oil salesmen everyone assumed them to be, he insisted.

But if DeSantis and all those like him in the company weren't to blame for A.I.G.'s collapse, who was?

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