 |
| IRAQ: Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police
by Michael Moss and David Rohde, The New York Times Company
May 21st, 2006
Field training of the Iraqi police, the most critical element of the effort, was left to DynCorp International, a company based in Irving, Tex., that received $750 million in contracts. The advisers, many of them retired officers from small towns, said they arrived in Iraq and quickly found themselves caught between poorly staffed American government agencies, company officials focused on the bottom line and thousands of Iraqi officers clamoring for help. |
| US: Playing Politics With Federal Contracts
OMB Watch
May 17th, 2006
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Alphonso Jackson suggested at a forum in Dallas that federal contracts would not be awarded to those who have political disagreements with President Bush. |
| US: Protestors Arrested at Halliburton Annual Meeting
by Shaun Schafer, Associated Press
May 17th, 2006
Sixteen people protesting Halliburton Co.'s role as a military contractor were arrested Wednesday outside a building where shareholders discussed spinning off the subsidiary that provides meals, clean laundry and other services to U.S. troops in Iraq.
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| KATRINA: Northrop Makes Pitch for Storm Aid
by Leslie Wayne, The New York Times
May 10th, 2006
The Northrop Grumman Corporation, the largest builder of warships in the world, was on a charm offensive here Tuesday. Armed with slides and charts, Philip A. Teel, who runs Northrop's shipyards, led a phalanx of executives who laid out their case for another $200 million from Congress to cover losses from Hurricane Katrina.
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| KATRINA: Trailer deals go to Fluor ally
by James Varney, Times-Picayune
May 9th, 2006
Through a partnership with a smaller, minority-owned company, a sprawling multinational firm whose federal contract for travel trailers was up for rebidding has landed four new deals that could be worth $400 million, federal records show. |
| KATRINA: Complaints put FEMA trailer contracts on hold
by James Varney, New Orleans Times-Picayune
May 5th, 2006
A batch of lucrative federal travel trailer contracts along the Gulf Coast has been put on hold, and other contracts could be in jeopardy, after three companies that lost a rebidding process lodged formal protests with the Government Accountability Office, according to federal attorneys handling the complaints. |
| KATRINA: Complaints put FEMA trailer contracts on hold
Times-Picayune
May 5th, 2006
A batch of lucrative federal travel trailer contracts along the Gulf Coast has been put on hold, and other contracts could be in jeopardy, after three companies that lost a rebidding process lodged formal protests with the Government Accountability Office, according to federal attorneys handling the complaints. |
| US: Katherine Harris in Hot Water Over Defense Contractor
Associated Press
May 4th, 2006
A political strategist who left U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record)'s Senate campaign last month said Harris ignored her staff's recommendation to reject a defense contractor's $10 million appropriation request, now being challenged by a congressional watchdog group. |
| IRAQ: Green Zone Construction Boom
by David Sarasohn, Oregonian
May 3rd, 2006
In Baghdad, the United States is now building a monument to rank with Grand Coulee Dam, the Pentagon, Disney World and the Mall of America. It has elements of all four, plus a 15-foot stone wall and surface-to-air missiles.
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| US: Red Lights on Capitol Hill
by Ken Sliverstein, Harpers
May 3rd, 2006
I reported last Thursday that Shirlington Limousine and Transportation, Inc., a firm allegedly used by defense contractor Brent Wilkes to provide prostitutes to ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham, is headed by a man who has a long criminal rap sheet and is also a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It was Mitchell Wade, another defense contractor who has acknowledged bribing Cunningham, and who is cooperating with investigators, who reportedly told prosecutors about Shirlington's relationship with Wilkes and the latter's alleged pimping scheme. (Wilkes's attorney denies the charge.) |
| NETHERLANDS: The Dutch Try One of Their Own Over Links to Liberia
by Marlise Simons, The New York Times
May 3rd, 2006
Mr. van Kouwenhoven, 63, is also charged with war crimes. He is accused of supplying Mr. Taylor with militia fighters from his lumber companies. He is further charged with violating a United Nations embargo by smuggling weapons into Liberia. His trial, held under a new mix of national and international law, is drawing attention because it is the second time a Dutch court is prosecuting a Dutch businessman for being involved with human rights abuses on another continent.
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| US: Chief's Pay Is Docked by Raytheon
by Leslie Wayne, The New York Times
May 3rd, 2006
Raytheon directors punished the chief executive, William H. Swanson, by taking away almost $1 million from his 2006 compensation yesterday because he failed to give credit for material that was in a management book he wrote. |
| IRAQ: Death is a Price of Blood Money
by Vasemaca Rarabici, Fiji Times
May 2nd, 2006
In two weeks seven Fijian men serving as security guards in Iraq have died, leaving behind grieving wives and children with no fathers. But these are the risks they are willing to take, especially when you get to earn between $3000 to $6000 a month. |
| IRAQ: Huge fraud exposed in Iraq contracts
by Ewen Macaskill, The Age
May 2nd, 2006
The report says: "Corruption is another form of insurgency in Iraq. This second insurgency can be defeated only through the development of democratic values and systems, especially the evolution of effective anti-corruption institutions in Iraq." |
| IRAQ: Blood is Thicker Than Blackwater
by Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
May 1st, 2006
For most people, the gruesome killings of four private security contractors were the first they had ever heard of Blackwater USA, a small, North Carolina-based private security company. Since the Falluja incident, and also because of it, Blackwater has emerged as one of the most successful and profitable security contractors operating in Iraq.
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| US: Halliburton' Internment Camps
by Ruth Conniff, The Progressive
April 18th, 2006
KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary recently reprimanded for gross overcharging in its military contracts in Iraq, won a $385 million contract to build large-scale detention centers in case of an "emergency influx" of immigrants. |
| KATRINA: Rage renewed as FEMA redoes bids
by James Varney, Times-Picayune
April 12th, 2006
In a much anticipated rebidding of contracts to service travel trailers in Louisiana, the Federal Emergency Management Agency appears poised to dole out more than half the work to out-of-state companies, despite federal assurances that the process would favor local firms, FEMA documents show. |
| US: Who's watching the Presidio's gate?
by Julia Reynolds, The Monterey Herald
April 9th, 2006
Congressional investigators have reported that the Army hired companies that repeatedly botched and even falsified their training records and procedures, and have placed people with criminal records as security guards at U.S. military bases. |
| US: Contractor sues Pentagon seeking to keep records secret
by Rebecca Carr, Cox News Service
April 3rd, 2006
An investigation is seeking to determine whether mechanical failures have caused Black Hawk helicopters to crash in Iraq. The quest for information began in 2003 after several Sikorsky employees told him they were worried that defective parts had caused a series of deadly crashes in Iraq that year. |
| KATRINA: FBI investigating Katrina contracts
by Karen Turni Bazile, New Orleans Times-Picayune
March 30th, 2006
The FBI has launched a multifaceted investigation into post-Hurricane Katrina spending in St. Bernard Parish, examining several public contracts including a $370 million debris pickup deal that parish officials granted without bids five days after the storm and gave again to the same firm later last year despite receiving lower offers, according to interviews with competitors and a parish official who have been questioned by federal agents. |
| IRAQ: Documents track Halliburton battle
by David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle
March 29th, 2006
Federal auditors castigated Houston-based Halliburton Co. repeatedly for failing to control costs and adequately justify its billings when working to rebuild Iraq's southern oil industry, newly released documents show. |
| US: Halliburton's Performance Worsens under Second Iraqi Oil Contract
by Committee on Government Reform Minority Office, yubanet.com
March 28th, 2006
Today Rep. Waxman released the first analysis of Halliburton's RIO 2 contract to restore Iraq's southern oil fields. The examination of previously undisclosed correspondence, evaluations, and audits reveals that government officials and investigators have harshly criticized Halliburton's performance under RIO 2. The documents disclose an "overwhelmingly negative" performance. |
| IRAQ: The Fatal Divide at the Heart of the Coalition
by Max Hastings, The Telegraph
March 12th, 2006
US security contractors and regular US soldiers who are evangelical Christians," writes John Geddes, the ex-SAS soldier "see themselves in a crusade against the Muslim hordes. In my view, they're not much different to the Iraqi militiamen and foreign fighters who see themselves at the heart of a jihad against the Christian crusaders." |
| US: Contractor Found Guilty of $3 Million Fraud in Iraq
by Erik Eckholm, The New York Times
March 10th, 2006
In the first corporate whistle-blower case to emerge from Iraq, a federal jury in Virginia yesterday found a contractor, Custer Battles L.L.C., guilty of defrauding the United States by filing grossly inflated invoices for work in the chaotic year after the Iraqi invasion. |
| US: Democrats Want Tougher Government Contracting Terms
Reuters
March 2nd, 2006
Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a co-sponsor of the new bill, said the legislation would set new standards to "restore integrity to a federal contracting process that has too often been operated in a manner that neither ensures confidence nor that taxpayers get a fair return for what they have paid." |
| UK: UK attacked for Uganda arms deal
by Karen Allen, BBC News
March 1st, 2006
The UK has failed to act on promises to plug loopholes that allow the sale of arms to countries with poor human rights records, aid agency Oxfam says. It says that military vehicles were sold to Uganda by a South African subsidiary of the UK firm BAE Systems. |
| IRAQ: US Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Disputed Costs
by By James Glanz, The New York Times
February 27th, 2006
Even though the Pentagon auditors identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially unjustified, the Army has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq. |
| US: Defense Contractor Admits to Bribes
by Mark Sherman, Associated Press
February 24th, 2006
A defense contractor admitted Friday he paid a California congressman more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for millions more in government contracts in a scandal that prosecutors say reached into the Defense Department.
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| IRAQ: A Permanent Basis for Staying
by Tom Engelhardt , Tomdispatch
February 16th, 2006
Nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has been building in Iraq. Quite literally, multibillions of dollars have gone into them. |
| IRAQ: Australia May Be Forced to Suspend Wheat Monopoly
by Owen Brown, Dow Jones Newswires
February 15th, 2006
Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, who defended the AWB's monopoly during a World Trade Organization gathering of trade ministers in Hong Kong in December, has attempted to separate the wheat exporter's privileged sales position from the ongoing inquiry into its business dealings with the former Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. |
| US: Day in Court for Custer Battles
by Pauline Jelinek , Associated Press
February 15th, 2006
Whistleblowers Robert Isakson and William Baldwin are suing their former employer, Custer Battles, accusing company officials of defrauding the U.S. government of about $50 million while doing security work in Iraq. |
| IRAQ: BHP's '$US100m Loan' for Saddam
by Dan Silkstone,, The Age
February 14th, 2006
BHP executives planned a $US100 million loan to Saddam Hussein's regime in a bid to curry favour and gain rights to explore a massive Iraqi oil field, the Cole inquiry was told. |
| IRAQ: Billions Wasted
by Steve Kroft, CBS.com
February 12th, 2006
Billions of dollars are unaccounted for, and there are widespread allegations of waste, fraud and war profiteering. |
| IRAQ: Abu Ghraib Whistleblower Can't Find Job
by David Martin, CBSNEWS.com
February 10th, 2006
Torin Nelson was a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He was not implicated in any of the abuses, but his name has been linked to the scandal, and he has been unable to hold a job as an interrogator ever since.
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| US: The Secret World of Stephen Cambone: Rumsfeld's Enforcer
by Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch
February 7th, 2006
A Republican staffer on the Senate foreign relations Committee tells CounterPunch the little-known Cambone, who like so many others on the Bush war team skillfully avoided military service, has quietly become one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon, rivaling even Paul Wolfowitz. |
| IRAQ: Seized Money Found Squandered by Coalition
Associated Press
January 28th, 2006
"Tens of millions of dollars in cash had gone in and out of the South-Central Region vault without any tracking of who deposited or withdrew the money, and why it was taken out," says a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is in the midst of a series of audits for the Pentagon and State Department.
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| IRAQ: Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects
by James Glanz, The New York Times
January 25th, 2006
A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe. |
| IRAQ: Cronyism and Kickbacks
by Ed Harriman, London Review of Books
January 25th, 2006
Auditors who have discovered Iraq’s deepening financial crisis have been ignored. They asked the US ambassador and the US military commander in Iraq for their views. Neither replied. The US State Department was to submit estimates of how much it will cost to complete all American-funded projects in Iraq to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The Office won’t discuss the matter. Earlier this month, Brigadier-General William McCoy told reporters: ‘The US never intended to completely rebuild Iraq . . . This was just supposed to be a jump-start.’ |
| IRAQ: Rebuilding Effort Badly Hobbled, Report Says
by James Glanz, The New York Times
January 24th, 2006
The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft. |
| WORLD: Security Firms Try To Evolve Beyond The Battlefield
by Renae Merle, The Washington Post
January 17th, 2006
The industry grew rapidly when the government and corporations paid hundreds of millions of dollars for armed guards after Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. Now many industry insiders reason that demand for private security in Iraq will begin to decline, and they want to expand beyond just toting guns. |
| The Incredible Shrinking Company
by Christopher Moraff , Dollars and Sense
January 15th, 2006
Between 2002 and 2005, St. Augustine, Fla., exercise equipment vendor Raul Espinosa watched mystified as, one after another, a series of Air Force contracts he had placed bids on were given to other companies. Of the 14 bids that Espinosa has documented, his company, FitNet International, did not win one. To his surprise, Espinosa learned that some of the competitors he was losing contracts to had never even bothered to bid on them. |
| US: Class-action case sought over Katrina oil spill
by Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters
January 13th, 2006
Attorneys argued in federal court on Thursday over whether homeowners whose property fell victim to an oil spill from Hurricane Katrina can band together and sue Murphy Oil Corp in a class-action lawsuit. |
| US: 600 People Monitoring Hurricane Contracts
by Charles R. Babcock, Washington Post
January 13th, 2006
The federal government has sent nearly 600 auditors and investigators to the Gulf Coast region to monitor $8.3 billion in contracts awarded to help victims of last year's hurricanes, according to year-end figures released by the Department of Homeland Security. |
| US: Fed Contract Website Found Insecure
by John Markoff, The New York Times
January 13th, 2006
The General Services Administration has shut a Web site for government contractors after a computer industry consultant reported that he was able to view and modify corporate and financial information submitted by vendors. |
| US: Army May End Lockheed Spy Plane Contract
Associated Press
January 12th, 2006
The Army is expected to cancel a Lockheed Martin Corp. contract to build a new spy plane, according to industry and Pentagon officials, despite efforts by the defense contractor to solve problems that include lightening the plane's weight.
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| US: Boeing-Lockheed Granted Monopoly
by Andy Pasztor and Jonathan Karp, Wall Street Journal
January 7th, 2006
The Pentagon has given preliminary approval to a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. for military-rocket launches, endorsing a rare monopoly that could set a precedent for defense contractors facing slower military spending, said industry and government officials.
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| IRAQ: Pentagon Paid Sunni Clerics To Aid Propaganda Effort
by David S. Cloud and Jeff Gerth, The New York Times
January 2nd, 2006
A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees. |
| US: Four Major Katrina Recovery Deals Planned
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
December 28th, 2005
Nearly four months after the storm flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and left more than 30,000 ruined vehicles in public rights of way, Mayor Ray Nagin is poised to award a large contract to a private company that will oversee the collection and disposal of the wreckage, city officials said.
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| US: New licenses for RV sales halted in Louisiana
by Melinda DeSlatte, Associated Press
December 20th, 2005
Hoping to protect Louisiana businesses and stem an onslaught of out-of-state trailer salesmen setting up shop after the hurricanes, a state panel on Tuesday halted the issuance of new licenses for people to sell motor homes and travel trailers. |
| US: Security for Sale
by Sarah Posner, The American Prospect
December 20th, 2005
Less than three years after Sept. 11, the brief but uninspiring history of DHS proves how little has actually changed in Washington, where the institutional cultivation of influence peddling, cronyism, and waste continues to thrive unimpeded. |
| IRAQ: US Army officer Charged in Iraq Fraud Scam
Reuters
December 15th, 2005
The U.S. Justice Department said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Debra Harrison, 47, who served with the Coalition Provisional Authority, was arrested on charges involving bribery, money laundering and fraud. |
| US: Panel rejects subpoenas of White House Katrina documents
Associated Press
December 14th, 2005
The Republican chairman of a special House panel investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina decided Wednesday to reject, at least for now, a proposal to subpoena the White House for documents detailing internal communications before and after the storm hit on August 29. |
| US: Biloxi Axes Corps, Ashbritt
WLOX
December 14th, 2005
Jackson County supervisors disappointed in Army Corps and Ashbritt, who have hardly done any cleanup in and around Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula since Katrina. |
| US: U.S. Arranges 'Pre-Deployment' Training for Haiti-Bound Private Police
by Stephen Peacock, NarcoNews
December 13th, 2005
The U.S. State Dept. is reaching out to independent contractors to train other private contractors who will be deployed as “civilian police” -- hired guns for so-called peacekeeping missions taking place in Haiti and other geopolitical hotspots. The senior adviser selected for the task “must oversee pre-deployment training currently being conducted” by Dyncorp International, Civilian Police International and Pacific Architects and Engineers/Homeland Security Corporation, according a recently released procurement document.
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| IRAQ: Pentagon's Information Campaign under Fire
by Stephen j. Hedges, The Chicago Tribune
December 11th, 2005
On Capitol Hill inquiries have been launched into everything from the Pentagon's use of prewar intelligence to bolster the case for the war to the Defense Department's reliance on public relations firms to shape the images and messages of war.
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| IRAQ: Aussie Companies Snare $1.9 Billion in Contracts
by Richard Baker, The Age
December 10th, 2005
Austrade is refusing to release the identity of all Australian companies with reconstruction work, claiming many want details kept secret for security reasons. But last year, the Federal Government was more willing to reveal the identities of the companies. |
| IRAQ: How Iraq's Future Went Up in Smoke
by Richard Baker, The Age
December 10th, 2005
As the handover deadline approached, the US officials on the board had gone on a spending spree, directing billions from the Development Fund for Iraq to projects that were in many cases poorly planned or had already received substantial US taxpayer funding commitments.
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| US: Stench of sleaze Rises from Congress
by Editorial, The DesMoines Register
December 2nd, 2005
It takes two to commit bribery — the person who takes the bribe and the person who gives it. Justice demands the next prosecution be of the defense contractors who kept the San Diego-area congressman supplied with an eye-popping flow of cash, luxury cars, yachts and other amenities. |
| US: Rep. Randy Cunningham’s Corruption Put Troops at Risk
by George E. Condon Jr., Copley News Service
November 30th, 2005
Cunningham betrayed his friends, his constituents, his colleagues and, certainly most important, the U.S. combat troops he so loudly championed. By steering contracts vital to the Iraq war effort to cronies, he risked putting those troops in greater peril as long as it meant money for him.
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| US: Defense Contractor Spends Big on Key Lawmakers
by Matt Kelley and Jim Drinkard,, USA Today
November 30th, 2005
Brent Wilkes, the founder of defense contractor ADCS Inc., gave more than $840,000 in contributions to 32 House members or candidates, campaign-finance records show. He flew Republican lawmakers on his private jet and hired lobbyists with close ties to those lawmakers.
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| US: The Hazy Story of the Lincoln Group
by Jason Vest, Government Executive
November 30th, 2005
At the December 2004 Destination Baghdad Expo in Iraq, Iraqex listed itself as Iraq-based, but provided only its Washington telephone and address. Then, in March 2005, it changed its name yet again, to Lincoln Group, a communications and PR firm "providing insight and influence in challenging and hostile environments." And on June 11, along with SYColeman and Science Applications International Corp., Lincoln Group got its JPSE contract. |
| U.S. Military Covertly Pays Company to Place Stories in Iraqi Press
by Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi, The Los Angeles Times
November 30th, 2005
Designed to mask any connection with the US military, The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets. |
| US: Congressmen Took Bribes to Steer Defense Contracts to Conspirators
by Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post
November 28th, 2005
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty today to fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and tax evasion. Shortly after entering his plea, Cunningham announced that he is immediately resigning his seat. His resignation comes after he admitted "he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators." |
| US: Military Vests Recalled
by James Bernstein, Newsday
November 20th, 2005
Army, Marines claim thousands more protective body armor vests made by Point Blank Body Armor Inc., failed to pass ballistic tests. |
| AFGHANISTAN: A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks
by Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, The Washington Post
November 20th, 2005
At the outset, the Louis Berger Group Inc., failed to provide adequate oversight and USAID officials were unable to identify the location projects in the field. Officials at contracting companies and nonprofit groups complain that they were directed to build at sites that turned out to be sheer mountain slopes, a dry riverbed and even a graveyard. |
| US: The Man Who Sold the War
by James Bamford, Rolling Stone
November 19th, 2005
John Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. The Pentagon secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. He is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media. |
| IRAQ: Pair Accused of Contract Fraud with US-Controlled Iraqi Assets
by Charles R. Babcock and Renae Merle, The Washington Post
November 18th, 2005
According to affidavits filed by government investigators, the two men allegedly conspired, starting in late 2003, to rig bids on contracts in the south-central region of Iraq from a CPA office in Al Hillah. One was the controller and funding officer at that office, in charge of some $82 million from the Development Fund for Iraq, which is made up of repatriated assets, receipts from the sale of Iraqi oil and transfers from the U.N. oil-for-food program.
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| US: Payments on Katrina Contract Halted After Billing Questions
by Charles R. Babcock, Washington Post
November 17th, 2005
The federal government has suspended payments on an $80 million contract to an Alabama company that built base camps for emergency workers responding to Hurricane Katrina after auditors reported finding billing and documentation problems, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday. |
| IRAQ: American Faces Charge of Graft for Work in Iraq
by James Glanz, New York Times
November 17th, 2005
In what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts, according to a complaint unsealed late yesterday. |
| WORLD: Private Military Industry Booming
candada.com
November 13th, 2005
The industry brings in about $100 billion US a year in revenues and operates in over 50 nations. But, since it is largely unregulated, there are no firm numbers worldwide on how many private contractors or companies there actually are. |
| US: Firm Helps Pentagon Mold News Abroad
by Stephen J. Hedges, The Chicago Tribune
November 13th, 2005
The Rendon Group has garnered more than $56 million in work from the Pentagon since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. These contracts list such activities as tracking foreign reporters; "pushing" news favorable to U.S. forces; planting television news segments that promote American positions, and creating a grass-roots voting effort in Puerto Rico on behalf of the U.S. Navy.
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| WORLD: Soldiers of Fortune
by David Pugliese, canada.com
November 12th, 2005
In the lawless reality of much of the post-Cold War world, private security is a booming business. And Canada, once noted for peacekeeping, is emerging as a source of talented guns for hire. David Pugliese reports. |
| US: Company under fire won Katrina contracts
by Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY
November 8th, 2005
A defense contracting firm tangled in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy and an international bribery scheme has been awarded federal government contracts for Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. |
| US: Immigrants Often Unpaid for Katrina Work
by Justin Pritchard, Associated Press
November 5th, 2005
A pattern is emerging as the cleanup of Mississippi's Gulf Coast morphs into its multibillion-dollar reconstruction: Come payday, untold numbers of Hispanic immigrant laborers are being stiffed. |
| IRAQ: Green Zone Private Security Switch Causes Anxiety
by Paul Martin, The Washington Times
November 4th, 2005
One concern is that Triple Canopy employees have been recruited mainly in Latin America and speak little English. Global Strategies relies heavily on British-trained Nepalese Gurkhas and Sri Lankans, a majority of whom speak at least some English and often speak it well.
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| US: Tender Mercenaries: DynCorp and Me
by Jeremy Scahill, Common Dreams
November 1st, 2005
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, journalist Jeremy Scahill investigated the role of private security companies like Blackwater USA, infamous for their work in Iraq, that deployed on the streets of New Orleans. His reports were broadcast on the national radio and TV show Democracy Now! and on hundreds of sites across the internet. In response to Scahill's recent cover story in The Nation magazine "Blackwater Down," the President and CEO of DynCorp, one of the largest private security companies in the world, wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation. Dyncorp CEO Stephen J. Cannon's letter is reprinted below, followed by Scahill's response. |
| US: Iraq Rebuilding Poorly Planned, Inspector General Says
by Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg
October 30th, 2005
The assessment marks the first time a sitting inspector general -- in this case a former White House deputy assistant to President George W. Bush -- has formally criticized the prewar planning process. Most of the authoritative criticism to date has come from retired military or diplomatic officers or academics who worked in the reconstruction effort. |
| US: Bribe Inquiry Looks at Sale of Field Gear to Military
by Leslie Wayne, The New York Times
October 28th, 2005
In a widening scandal at the United States Special Operations Command, federal investigators are looking into a bribery scheme as well as accusations of improper influence involving millions of dollars in battlefield equipment used by Navy Seals and Army Green Berets and Rangers. |
| U.N.: Massive Fraud in Iraq Oil Program
by Maggie Farley, The Los Angeles Times
October 27th, 2005
The United Nations' oil-for-food program was so badly managed and supervised that more than half of the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, finds an independent investigation into the program.
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| US: Rules Tightened for Contractors in Combat Zones
by Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg
October 27th, 2005
The new rules mandate background checks and permission from the military before a contractor can carry a weapon, and they spell out conditions for medical care and evacuation. At least 524 U.S. military contract workers, many of them Iraqis, have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
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| US: Pentagon Settles Some Halliburton Billing Disputes
by Tom Fowler, The Houston Chronicle
October 26th, 2005
The Army Corps of Engineers has settled payment disputes for six out of 10 task orders costing about $1.4 billion under its Restore Iraqi Oil contract with Houston-based Halliburton. Auditors concluded the military had been overcharged by about $108.4 million for fuel brought into Iraq from Kuwait under the orders. |
| IRAQ: OPEC and the Economic Conquest of Iraq
by Greg Palast, Harper's/gregpalast.com
October 24th, 2005
According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein.
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| US: Technology Company Hired After 9/11 Charged Too Much for Labor, Audit Says
by Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham, The Washington Post
October 23rd, 2005
Federal auditors say the prime contractor, Unisys Corp., overbilled taxpayers for as much as 171,000 hours' worth of labor and overtime by charging up to $131 an hour for employees who were paid less than half that amount while working on a $1 billion technology contract to improve the nation's transportation security system. |
| IRAQ: Making a killing
by Jon Swain, The Sunday Times
October 23rd, 2005
The American government is hiring private security firms to stabilise Iraq — and paying them a fortune to do it. But many of them are unregulated and operate outside the law. |
| IRAQ: Into a War zone, on a Deadly Road
by Cam Simpson, The Chicago Tribune
October 13th, 2005
Thousands of workers are needed to meet the demands of the unprecedented privatization of military support operations unfolding under the watch of the U.S. Army and KBR, its prime contractor in Iraq. KBR, in turn, KBR, outsources much of the work to lowly-paid workers imported from developing nations.
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| IRAQ: War Fuels Human Labor Trade
by Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani, The Chicago Tribune
October 13th, 2005
The United States has long condemned the practices that are now part of the privatization of the American war effort and which is central to the operations of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military's biggest private contractor in Iraq. |
| IRAQ: Rescue Spares Some Workers
by Cam Simpson, The Chicago Tribune
October 10th, 2005
Footage of 12 of their countrymen executed at the hands of insurgents in Iraq last year set off a panic among Nepalis who didn't want to risk the same fate. But a manager for First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., issued an ultimatum: Agree to travel to Iraq and they would get more food and water. Refuse, and they would get nothing and be put out on the streets of Kuwait City to find their way home. |
| US: Lobbyists Advise Katrina Relief
by Alan C. Miller and Ken Silverstein, The Los Angeles Times
October 10th, 2005
Lobbyists representing transportation, energy and other special interests dominated panels that advised Louisiana's U.S. senators crafting legislation to rebuild the storm-damaged Gulf Coast, records and interviews show.
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| US: Katrina work goes to officials who led Iraq effort
by Adam Entous, Reuters
October 6th, 2005
Top officials who managed U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq have been hired by some of the same big companies that received those contracts and which are now involved in a rush of deals to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. |
| AFGHANISTAN: Blackwater Broke Rules, Report Says
by Griff Witte, The Washington Post
October 5th, 2005
A private contracting firm flying in Afghanistan for the U.S. military was in violation of numerous government regulations and contract requirements when one of its planes crashed into a mountainside in November 2004, killing all six on board, according to an Army report made public yesterday. |
| US: Minority Firms Getting Few Katrina Pacts
by Hope Yen, Associated Press
October 4th, 2005
Minority-owned businesses say they're paying the price for the decision by Congress and the Bush administration to waive certain rules for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts. |
 | US: Magazine ad "unleashes hell" for Boeing and Bell
by Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times
October 1st, 2005
Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago - and again this week by mistake - depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque. |
| US: U.S. Paying a Premium to Cover Storm-Damaged Roofs
by Aaron C. Davis, Knight Ridder
September 30th, 2005
Across the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, thousands upon thousands of blue tarps are being nailed to wind-damaged roofs, a visible sign of government assistance.
Construction crews working with TJC Defense, out of Alabama, install a blue tarp on a home in Kenner, Louisiana. Ian McVea, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The blue sheeting - a godsend to residents whose homes are threatened by rain - is rapidly becoming the largest roofing project in the nation's history.
It isn't coming cheap. |
| US: Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, The New York Times
September 26th, 2005
Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La. |
| US: Auditors investigate Katrina contracts
by Hope Yen, Associated Press
September 22nd, 2005
Government auditors are questioning whether several multimillion-dollar Katrina contracts” including one involving a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co.” invite abuse because they are open-ended and not clearly defined. |
| IRAQ: Contractor Charged in Baghdad Badge Scam
by Jerry Markon and Josh White, The Washington Post
September 21st, 2005
A military contractor returning from Iraq was charged yesterday with distributing identity badges that control access to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone to people not allowed to receive them, including an Iraqi woman he was dating. |
| WORLD: Steady Growth Expected for Private Security Industry
by Stephen Fidler, The Financial Times
September 13th, 2005
There are estimated to be more than 20,000 armed expatriates working for private security companies in Iraq, more than all the non-US troops combined and contrary their numbers do not appear to have fallen appreciably. The Baghdad bubble, as it has been dubbed, has yet to burst.
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| US: Disaster Hacks
by Editorial, The Los Angeles Times
September 11th, 2005
As with the hurricane, there were warnings that FEMA was turning into a disaster. The union representing its career employees wrote to members of Congress last year that politically connected contractors and novices without disaster-relief experience had taken over and trashed FEMA's professionalism. |
| IRAQ: Security Contractors in Iraq Under Scrutiny After Shootings
by Jonathan Finer, The Washington Post
September 10th, 2005
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.
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| US: Boeing May Avoid Criminal Prosecution
by Jame Gunsalus and Cary O'Reilly , Bloomberg
September 10th, 2005
Boeing is in talks with the Justice Department to pay a fine and avoid criminal charges related to the scandals through a "deferred prosecution." The fine may be as high as $500 million. |
| US: Private Sector Poised to Reap Windfall from Katrina
by John Broder, The New York Times
September 10th, 2005
Private contractors, guided by two former directors of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other well-connected lobbyists and consultants, are rushing to cash in on the unprecedented sums to be spent on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction. |
| IRAQ: Security Contractors Under Scrutiny After Shootings
by Jonathan Finer, The Washington Post
September 10th, 2005
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians. |
| UK: War Opponent Holds Stake in Iraq Security Firm
by Isabel Oakeshott, The Evening Standard
September 9th, 2005
Sir Malcolm has been a fierce critic of the war, but an investigation into his financial interests shows his share options in a private security firm are rocketing in value as the company wins new contracts while the insurgency in Iraq continues.
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| US: Bush Insider Pushes Clients for Hurricane Rebuilding
by Thomas B. Edsall, The Washington Post
September 8th, 2005
After leaving FEMA in March 2003, Joe M. Allbaugh, who managed the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, founded Allbaugh Co., a lobbying-consulting firm with many clients in the disaster-relief business. The firm's Web site quotes Allbaugh: "I'm dedicated to helping private industry meet the homeland security challenge."
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| IRAQ: Extra Funds Needed for Iraq Reconstruction
by Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters
September 7th, 2005
Stuart Bowen, U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said it is unclear where the new funds would come from, but it is not the right time to discuss more money to given the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf region. |
| US: Halliburton for Help on Hurricane Damaged Bases
by Jon H. Cushman Jr., The New York Times
September 4th, 2005
It is a familiar role for KBR, which under longstanding contracts has delivered the engineering equivalent of first aid to the Navy and other military and government agencies after natural disasters for more than 15 years. This time, the Halliburton unit's performance is likely to be watched especially closely, as its work under separate contracts in Iraq has come under extensive criticism in the past two years. |
| US: Pentagon Acquisition Needs Cultural Change
by Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters
September 3rd, 2005
Some lower-level U.S. Air Force and Pentagon officials do not yet fully recognize the need to overhaul defense procurement to make it more transparent and avoid problems of the past, the U.S. military's top internal watchdog said on Thursday. |
| US: Defense firms feast on Bush’s 'War on Terror'
Taipai Times
August 29th, 2005
According to reports, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Honeywell and United Technologies posted all-time best-ever profits in the first half of this year and they still have a huge list of orders. |
| IRAQ: Re-engineering Iraqi agriculture
by Jeremy Smith, Global Research
August 27th, 2005
Under the guise of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally re-engineer the country's traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. They’ve even created a new law – Order 81 – to make sure it happens. |
| US: Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, The New York Times
August 26th, 2005
Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La. |
| US: AS US Falter in Iraq, China Gains
by Tom Plate , The Seattle Times
August 23rd, 2005
It looks as if history will judge Mahathir to have been the wiser of the two owls. The U.S. military is enmeshed in a vicious insurgency and there may be no way out — except, in fact, to get out, outright. |
| US: Lockheed Martin Is Hired to Bolster Transit Security in N.Y.
by Sewell Chan and Shadi Rahimi, The New York Times
August 23rd, 2005
A new world of transit security in New York City began to take form this morning, as officials disclosed plans to saturate the transit system with 1,000 video cameras, 3,000 motion detectors and a wide array of sophisticated gadgets, all intended to buffer the city's subways, bridges and tunnels from a terror attack.
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| IRAQ: Mercenaries Mount Offensive
by John Hanchette, Niagra Falls Reporter
August 23rd, 2005
Retention of key combat personnel is being eroded by far better money offers from federally hired "private security companies" -- as their executives insist they be called. Once on board and back in the private sector of dangerous military operations in Iraq, these highly trained fighters and specialists can make up to a quarter of a million dollars or more (most of it tax-free) in a year's worth of salary -- certainly better than Army pay.
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| US: Business booming for U.S. defense contractors
by Peter Bauer, Menafn
August 20th, 2005
U.S. defence contractors are riding high these days, buoyed by rising Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the high cost of homeland security in the U.S.-declared war on terror.
The fiscal 2006 defence budget is set to climb to 441 billion dollars, an increase of 21 billion dollars over 2005. It envisions an additional 50 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. |
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