Inside the world of war profiteers

[flashl]

Source: Chicago Tribune

From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the U.S.

ROCK ISLAND, Ill.—Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

...

A common thread runs through these cases and other KBR scandals in Iraq, from allegations the firm failed to protect employees sexually assaulted by co-workers to findings that it charged $45 per can of soda: The Pentagon has outsourced crucial troop support jobs while slashing the number of government contract watchdogs.

Chicago Tribune

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kbr-war-profiteers-feb21,1,5231766.story

[acmavm]

1. Looks like Dick Cheney's Halliburton dumped this company just in the

nick of time.

:sarcasm:

[east texas lib]

2. Ah yes...

The fabled "efficiency" of the private sector.

[AzDar]

3. K & R...

:kick:

[JohnyCanuck]

4. The People vs. the Profiteers

The People vs. the Profiteers
Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers' behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?

by David Rose November 2007

SNIP

One can be forgiven a little frivolity. In his functional home-office in Orlando, and at the Beltway headquarters of his law firm, Grayson & Kubli, Grayson spends most of his days and many of his evenings on a lonely legal campaign to redress colossal frauds against American taxpayers by private contractors operating in Iraq. He calls it "the crime of the century."

His obvious adversaries are the contracting corporations themselves—especially Halliburton, the giant oil-services conglomerate where Vice President Dick Cheney spent the latter half of the 1990s as C.E.O., and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, now known simply as KBR. But he says his efforts to take on those organizations have earned him another enemy: the United States Department of Justice.

Over the past 16 years, Grayson has litigated dozens of cases of contractor fraud. In many of these, he has found the Justice Department to be an ally in exposing wrongdoing. But in cases that involve the Iraq war, the D.O.J. has taken extraordinary steps to stand in his way. Behind its machinations, he believes, is a scandal of epic proportions—one that may come to haunt the legacy of the Bush administration long after it is gone.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/halliburton200711

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007

SNIP

The unhappy business practices of the past few years in Iraq—cost overruns, incompetence, and corruption on a pharaonic scale—have made the American public keenly aware of the activities of mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Although SAIC takes on government projects such as those pursued by contractors like these, it does not belong in exactly the same category. Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government's brawn. They pour concrete, roll out concertina wire, build infrastructure. They call on bullnecked men to provide protection.

In contrast, SAIC is a body shop in the brain business. It sells human beings who have a particular expertise—expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about "information dominance" and "information warfare." If the C.I.A. needs an outside expert to quietly check whether its employees are using their computers for personal business, it calls on SAIC. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service needs new record-keeping software, it calls on SAIC. Indeed, SAIC is willing to provide expertise about almost anything at all, if there happens to be a government contract out there to pay for it—as there almost always is. Whether SAIC actually possesses all the expertise that it sells is another story.

What everyone agrees on is this: No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy. SAIC almost never touts its activities in public, preferring to stay well below the radar. An SAIC executive once gave a press interview and referred to the enterprise as a "stealth company," a characterization that is accurate and that has stuck. "Nobody knows who they are," says Glenn Grossenbacher, a Texas lawyer who has battled SAIC in court on a whistle-blowing case. "Everybody knows Northrop Grumman and G.E., but if you went out on the street and asked who the top 10 contractors are, I can guarantee you that SAIC would not be one of them."

Which is all the more remarkable in light of two developments. The first is a mounting collection of government audits and lawsuits brought by former employees for a variety of reasons, some of them personal and some coming under federal whistle-blower statutes. In a response to written queries, SAIC characterized itself as a "highly ethical company and responsible government contractor, committed to doing the right thing." But a review by Vanity Fair of thousands of pages of documents, including corporate e-mail messages, offers disturbing revelations about the company's inner workings, its culture, and its leadership.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703?currentPage=2

[flashl]

6. Very good articles. nt

[sattahipdeep]

7. Political change causes scarcely a ripple

SAIC served as the paymaster for the Iraqi exiles under a $33 million government contract.
It brought them all together in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, rented apartments
for them, paid their living expenses, provided various support services, and,
later, after the invasion and occupation, flew them to their jobs in the new, democratic Iraq.
This SAIC operation reported to Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy at the
Pentagon, a key assistant to Rumsfeld, and one of the architects of the Iraq invasion and occupation.
Feith's deputy was Christopher "Ryan" Henry, a former SAIC senior vice president.

It was understood in Washington, long before the actual onset of "shock and awe," that
the Iraq war would be a Klondike gold rush for contractors. Prior to the war, SAIC was
awarded seven contracts, together worth more than $100 million, without competitive bidding.
The Defense Department's justification for the no-bid contracts: "We need the immediate services
of a fully qualified contractor who has the unqualified support and confidence of the Pentagon leadership."
SAIC's personnel, designated "subject-matter experts," were expected to lend a hand on such matters as
"business development, international and regional political relations, the role of women in
government, and government reform." Among SAIC's subject-matter experts was Shaha Riza, an Arab
feminist and communications adviser at the World Bank. Riza also happened to be the girlfriend
of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703?currentPage=5

[Pooka Fey]

5. K&R

[DeepModem Mom]

8. K&R

[Blue_Tires]

9. rec'd

[saigon68]

10. Gangster Cheney "on the March" to Billionaire status

[mhatrw]

11. Very Organized Crime. n/t

[tanyev]

12. I always feel a little nausea when I read these kind of stories.

It's appalling.

[Supersedeas]

13. the true Bush legacy that the MSM wants us to ignore