Boeing expects to weather economy
The Boeing Co. is well positioned to weather the current U.S.
financial crisis, the company's chairman and chief executive
said Thursday, but there could be implications, such as having
to help customers finance airplane purchases.
* Read the full article at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/381608_boeing03.html
RuralVotes.Com: http://208.76.81.148/cms/
Link to Original: http://ruralvotes.com/cms/images/stories/pdfs/mccainfraud.pdf
Hilltown View by Matt L. Barron
John McCain and Defense Fraud: Two Peas in a Pentagon Pod
Part 1
Rural people are by nature frugal and self-reliant. We abhor waste as much at the kitchen table or in the feedlot as we do in federal agencies.
Which brings us to Sen. John McCain’s track record regarding waste, fraud and abuse connected to the Department of Defense (DoD). McCain holds himself out as a fiscal conservative who is tight with a buck. Each year, when Congress takes up the various appropriations bills, McCain rails against the various earmarks which his fellow senators insert to direct spending to their states.
On May 23 of this year, McCain lashed out at the DoD’s deal with Boeing on aerial tankers saying “I am extremely disappointed that the Department of Defense has approved the lease of Boeing 767 aircraft for use as aerial tankers, a profligate waste of federal revenues. This is a great deal for the Boeing Company that I’m sure is the envy of corporate lobbyists from one end of K Street to the other. But it’s a lousy deal for the Air Force and for the American taxpayer.” McCain continued “In all my years in Congress, I have never seen the security and fiduciary responsibilities of the federal government quite so nakedly subordinated to the interests of one defense manufacturer.”
These statements ring hollow given the fact that between 1985-1992 McCain pocketed $8,000 in PAC money from Boeing. Since 1990 the company has had 36 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct concerning the area of government contracts. Boeing has paid $357,973,000 in fines/penalties, restitutions and settlements as a result of their taxpayer rip-offs. In 1998 Boeing was charged with 207 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Boeing allegedly unlawfully exported defense articles to Russia, Ukraine and Norway. The company paid a $10 million civil penalty. In 2000, Boeing was charged with 110 violations regarding the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The charges pertained to munitions and defense articles (technical data) exported to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Turkey, Spain and Italy. Boeing paid a civil penalty of $4.2 million. In April 2006, Boeing paid a fine of $15 million to settle federal allegations that it broke the law by selling commercial airplanes equipped with a small chip that has military applications. It is among the largest fines a company has ever faced for violations of the Arms Control Export Act, which regulates the sale of defense products to overseas interests. In May 2006, Boeing agreed to pay $615 million to end a three-year Justice Department investigation into reported defense contracting scandals.
McCain’s hypocrisy is significant because as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (he is now the ranking minority member), he has feasted on PAC money from the defense industry. During his first term in the Senate, McCain accepted campaign cash totaling $58,200 from political action committees of corporations and prime defense contractors who were convicted of defrauding the Pentagon on weapons contracts, or have been accused of cheating the American taxpayer.
Consider the following examples from early in McCain’s Senate tenure:
GTE Corporation: In September 1985 its Government Systems Division pleaded guilty to improperly obtaining internal Pentagon planning documents, and agreed to pay $580,000 to DoD for the costs of the investigation. Total contributions to McCain: $5,000.
Litton Industries: In July 1986, the massive shipbuilder agreed to pay $15 million in penalties and restitution to DoD. It had pleaded guilty to defrauding the Pentagon of $6.3 million in its military work at that time. Total contributions to McCain: $10,300.
Unisys Corporation: In June 1991, the firm paid a $190 million fine for a wide-ranging conspiracy to use inside information to defraud the government to bid on Pentagon contracts. Total contributions to McCain: $2,300.
United Technologies Corporation: On August 28, 1992, the company pleaded guilty to four felony counts and agreed to pay $6 million in penalties for admitting to conspiring to defraud the government by using insider information to bid on two Pentagon contracts. Total contributions to McCain: $5,600.
So while McCain talks tough today about the Boeing tanker deal today, he has looked the other way early in his career when the Reagan and Bush I administrations did not aggressively prosecute military contract fraud under the False Claims Act. In fact in McCain’s first Senate term, the Department of Justice succeeded in pushing Congress to consider weakening the act by prohibiting government employees from bringing cases under it. In about half of the more than 300 False Claims lawsuits filed by citizens since the law was strengthened, the government decided to take no action at all during that timeframe.
In the Pentagon/Justice Department joint undercover sting Operation Ill Wind to crack down on Pentagon fraud, the total penalties of $420 million was less than half the cost of a single B-2 stealth bomber.
Next week in Part II: McCain’s defense fraud connections from the last decade.
Link to Original: http://ruralvotes.com/cms/images/stories/pdfs/mccainfraud2.pdf
Hilltown View by Matt L. Barron
John McCain and Defense Fraud: Two Peas in a Pentagon Pod
Part 2
It was fitting that this week; Sen. John McCain took off on the maiden voyage of his new campaign aircraft – a Boeing 737, dubbed the “Plane Talk Express.” Boeing has a lengthy record of taxpayer rip-offs, fines, penalties, restitutions and settlements concerning its misconduct in the area of government defense contracts. The Seattle-based firm has also been a big contributor to McCain over the years from its Boeing PAC. The fuselage of McCain’s plane bears the campaign motto “Reform, Prosperity, Peace.” A more accurate description might be “Status Quo, Hypocrisy, War Monger.”
Between 1998 and 2004, as McCain increased his seniority on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he continued to pocket thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the largest defense contractors and weapons makers. Despite an occasional call for reining in the rape of the federal treasury by these multinational arms makers, McCain never felt the need to return their donations to his political committee.
Consider these connections to Arizona’s senior senator for the years 1998-2004:
Employees of Northrop Grumman PAC: This giant defense contractor has a long history of fraud and abuse relating to government contracts. In 1997 the company allegedly over billed the government on a Low Rate Initial Production contract for the B-2 bomber. They reached a settlement with the government worth $34.8 million. In 2000 according to a Department of Defense inspector general press release, Northrop Grumman “intentionally overestimated the cost to purchase B-2 bomber instruction and repair manuals from subcontractors.” The company settled with the government for $1.4 million. Since 1990, Northrop Grumman has had 21 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct and paid $87,876,581 in fines/penalties, restitution and settlements. Total contributions to McCain: $500.
General Electric: According to a 2002 study by the Project on Government Oversight of misconduct by the top 43 government contractors, GE ranked at the top of the list of “repeat offenders,” with 63 instances of actual or alleged misconduct since 1990 resulting in $982,859,555 in fines, judgments and out-of-court settlements. GE’s reported acts included environmental violations, fraud in dealing with the government and consumers, workplace safety violations and employment discrimination. Total contributions to McCain: $7,000.
Honeywell International Inc.: This firm has 25 instances of misconduct resulting in more than $595 million in fines and penalties according to the project on Government Oversight. Total contributions to McCain: $10,000.
Lockheed Martin: The world’s number one military contractor, Lockheed Martin was charged with 30 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations in 2000. The violations were regarding the transfer of space launch assistance technologies to China. Lockheed Martin paid a civil penalty of $13 million. Since 1990 the company has had 63 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct and paid total fines/penalties, restitution and settlements of $231,872,404. Total contributions to McCain: $18,000.
Raytheon Co.: In January 2003, Raytheon, the former parent company of Vertex Aerospace, reached a $4 million settlement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas after Raytheon had improperly billed the pentagon for product liability insurance, the Washington Post reported. The improper billing occurred between 1988 and 1999, and the company changed its practices in 2000. In February 2003 Raytheon paid one of the largest penalties ever assessed against a US company for export violations. The defense contractor paid $25 million in civil fines to settle federal charges it tried to evade export laws in the attempted sale of sensitive radio technology to Pakistan from 1990 to 1997. The Project on Government Oversight lists Raytheon as having 24 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct since 1990 and the company paid a total of $128,652,919 in fines/penalties, restitution and settlements. Total contributions to McCain: $5,500.
Science Applications International Corp.: Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC as it is commonly known, is owned by its 40,000 or so employees. It is the country's largest employee-owned research and engineering company, chalking up revenue of $5.9 billion in 2002. SAIC's largest customer by far is the U.S. government, which accounts for 69 percent of its business, according to its SEC filings. The company also derives a sizeable chunk of its revenue from state, local and foreign governments.
Since February 2003, SAIC has been in charge of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, a Pentagon-sanctioned group made up of Iraqis that is effectively functioning as the country's temporary government. The senior members of IRDC hold positions at each of 23 Iraqi ministries, where they worked closely with U.S. and British officials, including L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The Council's official task is to rebuild the structures of a government that are expected to eventually be handed over to an independent Iraqi authority. Members of the IRDC are officially employed by SAIC. Another Pentagon contract calls for SAIC to, in effect; rebuild Iraq's mass media, including television stations, radio stations and newspapers. SAIC runs the "Voice of the New Iraq," the radio station established in April 2003 at Umm Qasr that is funded by the U.S. government. Just how the company is going about the task of rebuilding Iraq's media and the overall cost remains a mystery, however. The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to release any specific information on SAIC's media reconstruction work, which has been dubbed the Iraqi Media Network. What little information that has leaked out about the SAIC effort has come mainly from disgruntled employees and press freedom advocates, who have charged the company has bungled the job badly. One report said SAIC had ordered equipment that was incompatible with existing systems in Iraq. SAIC, which appears to have little experience in mass media, was also reported to have been caught flat-footed on programming for the reconstructed network. Its initial solution was to enlist Voice of America, the foreign language broadcasting service of the U.S. government, to patch together a short nightly news show made up entirely of dubbed stories from U.S. television network news shows. There have also been widespread complaints from press freedom organizations about the SAIC effort, including charges of military censorship and cronyism. SAIC has been awarded seven contracts by the Defense Department to provide experts and advisers on development of representative government in Iraq; restore and upgrade the country's broadcast media; and provide a group of Iraqi expatriates to assist coalition officials working in the country. The value of the contracts, which were obtained by the Center for Public Integrity under the Freedom of Information Act, was blacked out in copies provided by the Defense Department. A Pentagon FOIA officer said keeping the information secret "was an appropriate way to avoid substantial competitive harm to the contractor" and was "due to the sensitive nature of the Iraqi contracts." SAIC officials referred all media calls to the Pentagon.
In April 2005, SAIC paid $2.5 million to settle allegations that it made false claims and engaged in defective pricing on delivery orders with the Air Force for environmental clean-up at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
In March 2004, the Pentagon’s inspector general released a report on Iraq humanitarian assistance contracts awarded for Coalitional Provisional Authority. A large portion of the contracts under review were awarded on a sole-source basis to SAIC. The inspector general found irregularities in both the award and administration of the contracts, including instances of improper or unsupported billing and weak oversight. Total contributions to McCain: $4,000.
As Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell famously said during the Watergate scandal “Don’t watch what we say, watch what we do.” That statement is appropriate for John McCain’s posturing as a fiscal conservative while he undercuts his own rhetoric by padding his campaign account with PAC checks from those firms who embody all that is wrong with the military-industrial complex.
The following is text from a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.
20. Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.
Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.
The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.
The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.
Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.
The savings and loan fraud -- which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" -- cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.
And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year -- and on down the list.
19. Corporate crime is often violent crime.
Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can’t compare street crime and corporate crime -- corporate crime is not violent crime.
Not true.
Corporate crime is often violent crime.
The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year.
Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice.
These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws.
18. Corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live.
The mafia, no.
The gangstas, no.
The street thugs, no.
But the corporate criminal lobby, yes. They have marinated Washington -- from the White House to the Congress to K Street -- with their largesse. And out the other end come the laws they can live with. They still violate their own rules with impunity. But they make sure the laws are kept within reasonable bounds.
Exhibit A -- the automobile industry.
Over the past 30 years, the industry has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and willful violations of the federal auto safety laws. Today, with very narrow exceptions, if an auto company is caught violating the law, only a civil fine is imposed.
17. Corporate crime is underprosecuted by a factor of say -- 100. And the flip side of that -- corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say -- 100.
Big companies that are criminally prosecuted represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing.
For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught.
For every company convicted of polluting the nation’s waterways, there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail in exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or high-level executives.
For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are thousands who give money legally through political action committees to candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that effectively has legalized bribery.
For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides remain legal.
For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a worker, there are hundreds of others that don’t even get investigated for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few district attorneys across the country have historically investigated workplace deaths as homicides.
White collar crime defense attorneys regularly admit that if more prosecutors had more resources, the number of corporate crime prosecutions would increase dramatically. A large number of serious corporate and white collar crime cases are now left on the table for lack of resources.
16. Beware of consumer groups or other public interest groups who make nice with corporations.
There are now probably more fake public interest groups than actual ones in America today. And many formerly legitimate public interest groups have been taken over or compromised by big corporations. Our favorite example is the National Consumer League. It’s the oldest consumer group in the country. It was created to eradicate child labor.
But in the last ten years or so, it has been taken over by large corporations. It now gets the majority of its budget from big corporations such as Pfizer, Bank of America, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Kaiser Permanente, Wyeth-Ayerst, and Verizon.
15. It used to be when a corporation committed a crime, they pled guilty to a crime.
So, for example, so many large corporations were pleading guilty to crimes in the 1990s, that in 2000, we put out a report titled The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s. We went back through all of the Corporate Crime Reporters for that decade, pulled out all of the big corporations that had been convicted, ranked the corporate criminals by the amount of their criminal fines, and cut it off at 100.
So, you have your Fortune 500, your Forbes 400, and your Corporate Crime Reporter 100.
14. Now, corporate criminals don’t have to worry about pleading guilty to crimes.
Three new loopholes have developed over the past five years -- the deferred prosecution agreement, the non prosecution agreement, and pleading guilty a closet entity or a defunct entity that has nothing to lose.
13. Corporations love deferred prosecution agreements.
In the 1990s, if prosecutors had evidence of a crime, they would bring a criminal charge against the corporation and sometimes against the individual executives. And the company would end up pleading guilty.
Then, about three years ago, the Justice Department said -- hey, there is this thing called a deferred prosecution agreement.
We can bring a criminal charge against the company. And we will tell the company -- if you are a good company and do not violate the law for the next two years, we will drop the charges. No harm, no foul. This is called a deferred prosecution agreement.
And most major corporate crime prosecutions are brought this way now. The company pays a fine. The company is charged with a crime. But there is no conviction. And after two or three years, depending on the term of the agreement, the charges are dropped.
12. Corporations love non prosecution agreements even more.
One Friday evening last July, I was sitting my office in the National Press Building. And into my e-mail box came a press release from the Justice Department.
The press release announced that Boeing will pay a $50 million criminal penalty and $615 million in civil penalties to resolve federal claims relating to the company’s hiring of the former Air Force acquisitions chief Darleen A. Druyun, by its then CFO, Michael Sears -- and stealing sensitive procurement information.
So, the company pays a criminal penalty. And I figure, okay if they paid a criminal penalty, they must have pled guilty.
No, they did not plead guilty.
Okay, they must have been charged with a crime and had the prosecution deferred.
No, they were not charged with a crime and did not have the prosecution deferred.
About a week later, after pounding the Justice Department for an answer as to what happened to Boeing, they sent over something called a non prosecution agreement.
That is where the Justice Department says -- we’re going to fine you criminally, but hey, we don’t want to cost you any government business, so sign this agreement. It says we won’t prosecute you if you pay the fine and change your ways.
Corporate criminals love non prosecution agreements. No criminal charge. No criminal record. No guilty plea. Just pay the fine and leave.
11. In health fraud cases, find an empty closet or defunct entity to plead guilty.
The government has a mandatory exclusion rule for health care corporations that are convicted of ripping off Medicare.
Such an exclusion is the equivalent of the death penalty. If a major drug company can’t do business with Medicare, it loses a big chunk of its business. There have been many criminal prosecutions of major health care corporations for ripping off Medicare. And many of these companies have pled guilty. But not one major health care company has been excluded from Medicare.
Why not?
Because when you read in the newspaper that a major health care company pled guilty, it’s not the parent company that pleads guilty. The prosecutor will allow a unit of the corporation that has no assets -- or even a defunct entity -- to plead guilty. And therefore that unit will be excluded from Medicare -- which doesn’t bother the parent corporation, because the unit had no business with Medicare to begin with.
Earlier, Dr. Sidney Wolfe was here and talked about the criminal prosecution of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin.
Dr. Wolfe said that the company pled guilty to pushing OxyContin by making claims that it is less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications and that it continued to do so despite warnings to the contrary from doctors, the media, and members of its own sales force.
Well, Purdue Pharma -- the company that makes and markets the drug -- didn’t plead guilty. A different company -- Purdue Frederick pled guilty. Purdue Pharma actually got a non-prosecution agreement. Purdue Frederick had nothing to lose, so it pled guilty.
10. Corporate criminals don’t like to be put on probation.
Very rarely, a corporation convicted of a crime will be placed on probation. Many years ago, Consolidated Edison in New York was convicted of an environmental crime. A probation official was assigned. Employees would call him with wrongdoing. He would write reports for the judge. The company changed its ways. There was actual change within the corporation.
Corporations hate this. They hate being under the supervision of some public official, like a judge.
We need more corporate probation.
9. Corporate criminals don’t like to be charged with homicide.
Street murders occur every day in America. And they are prosecuted every day in America. Corporate homicides occur every day in America. But they are rarely prosecuted.
The last homicide prosecution brought against a major American corporation was in 1980, when a Republican Indiana prosecutor charged Ford Motor Co. with homicide for the deaths of three teenaged girls who died when their Ford Pinto caught on fire after being rear-ended in northern Indiana.
The prosecutor alleged that Ford knew that it was marketing a defective product, with a gas tank that crushed when rear ended, spilling fuel.
In the Indiana case, the girls were incinerated to death.
But Ford brought in a hot shot criminal defense lawyer who in turn hired the best friend of the judge as local counsel, and who, as a result, secured a not guilty verdict after persuading the judge to keep key evidence out of the jury room.
It’s time to crank up the corporate homicide prosecutions.
8. There are very few career prosecutors of corporate crime.
Patrick Fitzgerald is one that comes to mind. He’s the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. He put away Scooter Libby. And he’s now prosecuting the Canadian media baron Conrad Black.
7. Most corporate crime prosecutors see their jobs as a stepping stone to greater things.
Spitzer and Giuliani prosecuted corporate crime as a way to move up the political ladder. But most young prosecutors prosecute corporate crime to move into the lucrative corporate crime defense bar.
6. Most corporate criminals turn themselves into the authorities.
The vast majority of corporate criminal prosecutions are now driven by the corporations themselves. If they find something wrong, they know they can trust the prosecutor to do the right thing. They will be forced to pay a fine, maybe agree to make some internal changes.
But in this day and age, in all likelihood, they will not be forced to plead guilty.
So, better to be up front with the prosecutor and put the matter behind them. To save the hide of the corporation, they will cooperate with federal prosecutors against individual executives within the company. Individuals will be charged, the corporation will not.
5. The market doesn’t take most modern corporate criminal prosecutions seriously.
Almost universally, when a corporate crime case is settled, the stock of the company involved goes up.
Why? Because a cloud has been cleared and there is no serious consequence to the company. No structural changes in how the company does business. No monitor. No probation. Preserving corporate reputation is the name of the game.
4. The Justice Department needs to start publishing an annual Corporate Crime in the United States report.
Every year, the Justice Department puts out an annual report titled "Crime in the United States."
But by "Crime in the United States," the Justice Department means "street crime in the United States."
In the "Crime in the United States" annual report, you can read about burglary, robbery and theft.
There is little or nothing about price-fixing, corporate fraud, pollution, or public corruption.
A yearly Justice Department report on Corporate Crime in the United States is long overdue.
3. We must start asking -- which side are you on -- with the corporate criminals or against?
Most professionals in Washington work for, are paid by, or are under the control of the corporate crime lobby. Young lawyers come to town, fresh out of law school, 25 years old, and their starting salary is $160,000 a year. And they’re working for the corporate criminals.
Young lawyers graduating from the top law schools have all kinds of excuses for working for the corporate criminals -- huge debt, just going to stay a couple of years for the experience.
But the reality is, they are working for the corporate criminals.
What kind of respect should we give them? Especially since they have many options other than working for the corporate criminals.
Time to dust off that age-old question -- which side are you on? (For young lawyers out there considering other options, check out Alan Morrison’s new book, Beyond the Big Firm: Profiles of Lawyers Who Want Something More.)
2. We need a 911 number for the American people to dial to report corporate crime and violence.
If you want to report street crime and violence, call 911.
But what number do you call if you want to report corporate crime and violence?
We propose 611.
Call 611 to report corporate crime and violence.
We need a national number where people can pick up the phone and report the corporate criminals in our midst.
What triggered this thought?
We attended the press conference at the Justice Department the other day announcing the indictment of Congressman William Jefferson (D-Louisiana).
Jefferson was the first U.S. official charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Federal officials alleged that Jefferson was both on the giving and receiving ends of bribe payments.
On the receiving end, he took $100,000 in cash -- $90,000 of it was stuffed into his freezer in Washington, D.C.
The $90,000 was separated in $10,000 increments, wrapped in aluminum foil, and concealed inside various frozen food containers.
At the press conference announcing the indictment, after various federal officials made their case before the cameras, up to the mike came Joe Persichini, assistant director of the Washington field office of the FBI.
"To the American people, I ask you, take time," Persichini said. "Read this charging document line by line, scheme by scheme, count by count. This case is about greed, power and arrogance."
"Everyone is entitled to honest and ethical public service," Persichini continued. "We as leaders standing here today cannot do it alone. We need the public’s help. The amount of corruption is dependent on what the public with allow.
Again, the amount of corruption is dependent on what the public will allow."
“"f you have knowledge of, if you’ve been confronted with or you are participating, I ask that you contact your local FBI office or you call the Washington Field Office of the FBI at 202.278.2000. Thank you very much."
Shorten the number -- make it 611.
1. And the number one thing you should know about corporate crime?
Everyone is deserving of justice. So, question, debate, strategize, yes.
But if God-forbid you too are victimized by a corporate criminal, you too will demand justice.
We need a more beefed up, more effective justice system to deal with the corporate criminals in our midst.
Russell Mokhiber is the editor of Corporate Crime Reporter.
Insider’s Projects Drained Missile-Defense Millions
Friday 10 October 2008
by: Eric Lipton, The New York Times
Washington - They huddled in a quiet corner at the US Airways lounge at Ronald Reagan National Airport, sipping bottomless cups of coffee as they plotted to turn America's missile defense program into a personal cash machine.
Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress for defense companies. Now, Mr. Cantrell decided, it was time to take a cut.
"The contractors are making a killing," Mr. Cantrell recalled thinking at the meeting, in 2000. "The lobbyists are getting their fees, and the contractors and lobbyists are writing out campaign checks to the politicians. Everybody is making money here - except us."
Within months, Mr. Cantrell began getting personal checks from contractors and later returned to the airport with Mr. Ennis to pick up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000. The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, prompting them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges.
Mr. Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures.
Recent scandals involving former Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, both now in prison, provided a glimpse into how special interests manipulate the federal government.
Mr. Cantrell's story, by contrast, pieced together from federal documents and dozens of interviews, is a remarkable account of how a little-known, midlevel Defense Department insider who spent his entire career in Alabama skillfully gamed the system.
Mr. Cantrell worked in a division that was a small part of the national missile defense program. Determined to save his job, he often bypassed his bosses and broke department rules to make his case on Capitol Hill. He enlisted contractors to pitch projects that would keep the dollars flowing and paid lobbyists to ease them through. He cultivated lawmakers, who were eager to send money back home or to favored contractors and did not ask many questions. And when he ran into trouble, he could count on his powerful friends for protection from Pentagon officials who provided little oversight and were afraid of alienating lawmakers.
Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, for example, chewed out Pentagon officials who opposed a missile range Mr. Cantrell and his contractor allies were seeking to build in Alaska, prompting them to back off, while a staffer for former Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, intervened when the Pentagon threatened to discipline Mr. Cantrell for lobbying, a banned activity for civil servants.
"I could go over to the Hill and put pressure on people above me and get something done," Mr. Cantrell explained about his success in Washington. "With the Army, as long as the senator is not calling over and complaining, everything is O.K. And the senator will not call over and complain unless the contractor you're working with does not get his money. So you just have to keep the players happy and it works."
The national missile defense program has cost the United States more than $110 billion since President Ronald Reagan unveiled his Star Wars plan 25 years ago. Today, the missile defense effort is the Pentagon's single biggest procurement program.
The Army declined to discuss the Cantrell case, other than to say it had taken steps to try to prevent similar crimes from happening again.
But some current and former Defense Department officials say the exploiting of the system that preceded Mr. Cantrell's kickback scheme has had a damaging impact, slowing progress toward building a viable missile defense system by diverting money to unnecessary or wasteful endeavors. That pattern of larding up the defense budget with pet projects pushed by lawmakers and lobbyists is a familiar one.
"What they did may have been a scandal," said Walter E. Braswell, Mr. Ennis's lawyer, referring to the actions of his client and Mr. Cantrell. "But even more grotesque is the way defense procurement has disintegrated into an incestuous relationship between the military, politicians and contractors."
Dr. J. Richard Fisher, one of Mr. Cantrell's former bosses, said: "The system needs to change. But it is not likely to do that. There is just too much inertia - and too much self-interest."
Getting Around the System
Towering over the highway near the entrance to Huntsville is a replica of the Saturn V rocket, the powerful missile that lifted the first man to the moon.
Created in Huntsville, it is a fitting icon for this once-sleepy cotton mill town, now so dominated by the aerospace industry that it is nicknamed Rocket City. An estimated 18,000 uniformed and civilian federal employees work in the aerospace industry in the Huntsville area today, augmented by about 40,000 others, who work for federal contractors.
Michael Cantrell grew up on a dairy farm nearby, listening to the rumble of rocket test flights. As a young engineer, he became a civilian employee of the Army and quickly impressed his bosses. "Mike moved at the speed of sound," said Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly headed the missile command.
By 1990, Mr. Cantrell, then 35, took over an experimental program to develop faster, cheaper and lighter missiles that could intercept and knock out enemy missiles flying within the atmosphere. Under the Reagan administration, money was plentiful for such research, but with the fall of the Soviet Union and the arrival of the Clinton administration, Pentagon bosses were forced to make budget cuts.
Like other Army employees, Mr. Cantrell was prohibited from lobbying or even visiting Capitol Hill unless he had permission from his agency's Congressional liaison, a prohibition intended to block employees from promoting initiatives that Pentagon leaders did not see as a priority.
But General Garner said it was obvious to his managers what they had to do if they did not want their programs - and jobs - eliminated.
"If the money does not end up in the palm and you need it," he said in an interview, "the only other place you can go to get it is the Congress."
Soon enough, Army missile program managers started opening what amounted to their own lobbying shops in Washington, according to Mr. Cantrell and his former supervisors.
Mr. Cantrell became a regular on Capitol Hill, both in the halls of Congress and in the bars and restaurants where Hill staffers gather after hours. He set up a makeshift office in the US Airways lounge at Reagan National Airport, where he followed up on pitches for money to lawmakers and hid out from his Defense Department bosses. He identified lobbyists who could prove useful and contractors - many of them campaign donors - with projects that needed nurturing.
With the backing of the New York Congressional delegation, for example, he blocked cuts in financing for a sophisticated wind tunnel in Buffalo, where he promised to test his missile components. With help from then Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who wanted Army assistance for a "technology corridor" in his district, Mr. Cantrell managed to get millions more for his program. Eventually, a dozen or so lawmakers helped him.
"It was like I was going hunting in Washington," Mr. Cantrell said. "And I would always come up with money." One colleague was so impressed with Mr. Cantrell's record that she gave him a bobblehead doll carrying a briefcase marked with dollar signs.
The Pentagon had objected to Mr. Cantrell's financing requests, but he was not discouraged. "He kept trying to kill our programs," Mr. Cantrell said of one supervisor. But "we would go around" and get a lawmaker "to whack him."
Inspired by his successes, Mr. Cantrell soon embarked on a more ambitious project that would all but guarantee sustained financing.
His proposal, which was based on the premise that Congress would significantly increase annual financing for his experimental missile defense work, involved not just five test launchings, but the construction of a new launching site on a remote Alaskan island and the lease of a mothballed Navy helicopter carrier, which would be used to send the simulated attack missile.
The Launching Project
It was easy to find willing partners.
The program's main contractors, including the defense giant Lockheed Martin, prepared presentations for Congress making the case for an extra $25 million to $50 million a year for the project.
Officials in Alaska, who had been seeking money for a spaceport on Kodiak Island to launch commercial satellites, eagerly chimed in. And nearly a dozen lawmakers also did their part, Mr. Cantrell said, including Senator Stevens of Alaska; Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama; Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine; and Representative C. W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, all members of the Appropriations or Armed Services committees with missile defense contractors in their districts.
But the military already had rocket launching sites around the globe, and Gen. Lester L. Lyles of the Air Force, who then ran the missile defense program, had no intention of spending money on another one.
General Lyles and his deputy, Rear Adm. Richard D. West of the Navy, were particularly incensed when they learned of the plans to lease the helicopter carrier, the Tripoli, and spend several million dollars renovating it.
Summoned to Washington in 1997 to explain the project, Mr. Cantrell offered little information. That only further infuriated his bosses.
"Who in the hell is in charge of this program?" Admiral West finally demanded in an exchange both men recall.
Mr. Cantrell was ordered to remove his experimental equipment from the planned launching. But the money kept coming. Mr. Stevens's office had called to insist that the Kodiak project proceed, Admiral West and Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson, then the head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in interviews.
"I got hammered pretty hard," Admiral West recalled. The military men backed off, and the construction at Kodiak continued.
Mr. Cantrell said he knew that building a new launching facility was wasteful. "It doesn't make sense," he said. "The economics of it, they just don't work."
But he did not care.
"I went up there to get the money," Mr. Cantrell said of his dealings on Capitol Hill. "And we got what we needed."
Mr. Cantrell and his deputy, Mr. Ennis, visited Kodiak Island on the afternoon of the inaugural test launching in November 1998. The Air Force had substituted other equipment for Mr. Cantrell's payload.
The two men, armed with a cooler filled with Miller Lite beer, watched the launching from a trailer, emerging just in time to see the missile burn an orange streak into the sky. They had hidden out to avoid any local newspaper reporters who might discover that Mr. Cantrell's missile parts - the justification for millions of dollars in spending - were not even being tested. "There is no way we can explain this," Mr. Cantrell remembered telling Mr. Ennis.
Fearless
The hand that grabbed Mr. Cantrell by the shoulder startled him.
It was General Lyles, who happened to be on Capitol Hill when he spotted Mr. Cantrell outside Mr. Lott's office. It was February 1998, even before the dispute over the Alaska project had played out. But the general said he immediately suspected Mr. Cantrell was up to no good.
"Are you over here lobbying?" General Lyles asked in an exchange the two men recalled.
Mr. Cantrell had been working with Mr. Lott, then Senate majority leader, for several years. The lawmaker included several million dollars in the defense budget for an acoustics research center in his home state, and Mr. Cantrell made sure it went to the intended recipients: the University of Mississippi in Oxford and a Huntsville defense contractor that had a branch office in Oxford. In turn, Mr. Lott's office helped get extra financing - $25 million or so every year - for Mr. Cantrell's program.
It was an arrangement that Mr. Cantrell did not want to discuss with General Lyles. While he did not consider himself to have been lobbying that day, he readily acknowledges that he often did.
"I just mumbled a lot," he recalled of his response to the general.
By then, Mr. Cantrell felt confident that he could find his way out of any trouble with the help of his many friends in Washington. Several were lobbyists or consultants working on his behalf; he had /placed them with friendly contractors, allowing them to bill the government for the costs, even though federal law prohibits paying any expenses associated with lobbying.
For example, Mr. Cantrell arranged for James Longley, a former Republican congressman from Maine who started his own consulting firm, to be hired as an employee by Computer Systems Technology, a missile defense contractor.
"The man could put ‛honorable' in front of his name and go places with that," Mr. Cantrell explained, saying that Mr. Longley introduced him to lawmakers and appealed to senior Pentagon officials to protect Mr. Cantrell's program.
Mr. Longley, in an interview, insisted that he never sought money from Congress, but simply provided strategic advice to Mr. Cantrell.
But several people, including Dr. Fisher, one of Mr. Cantrell's bosses, thought the arrangement improper.
"Here is an ex-congressman out there promoting Mike's programs," Dr. Fisher said. "He can call himself what he wants, but he is basically a lobbyist."
The incident with General Lyles prompted a formal investigation into Mr. Cantrell's activities that same year.
But Mr. Cantrell got Mr. Longley to call Army officials. Then Mr. Lott's office requested that the case be closed, Mr. Cantrell said. Eric Womble, a former aide to Mr. Lott, said he could not remember taking such a step, but added that it would not have been surprising.
"Senator Lott's staff protects people who are trying to help us and help the nation," Mr. Womble said.
Soon, the investigation of Mr. Cantrell came to a close. He got only an oral warning from his boss.
That episode would embolden Mr. Cantrell. On several occasions, he would again be caught violating Pentagon rules and each time escape with nothing more than a reprimand.
"If you have the Senate majority leader's office calling over to get you out of trouble, you can't help but get a little cocky," Mr. Cantrell said.
The Fallout
From the US Airways club, Mr. Cantrell could see the symphony of the arriving and departing planes, the Potomac River and off in the distance, the Capitol dome.
One day in 2000, Mr. Cantrell met in the airport lounge with Mr. Ennis, his deputy, and a Maine contractor to figure out how to pocket some of the government's money.
There were easy ways to cheat. The prototype missile nose cone and heat shields that the Army had paid the Maine company to design for the Alaska tests. Why not hire the business to pretend to design them again? Mr. Cantrell asked.
The ballute - an odd cross between a balloon and a parachute - had been rejected by experts as a tool to strike an enemy missile. But why not pay the Maine company to develop them anyway? Mr. Cantrell suggested.
He could pull off such shenanigans because, by then, he had an extraordinary degree of independence. Mr. Cantrell's experimental missile program, which had cost nearly $250 million, was about to be canceled. No working missile system had been built - and almost none of the components had ended up being tested in real launchings as planned. The effort had produced some benefits for the players involved: Congress sent an annual allotment of extra money to the Alaska launching site now totaling more than $40 million, and one of the contractors that had worked with Mr. Cantrell initially to pitch the space port, Aero Thermo Technology, had secured a no-bid federal contract to provide launching services.
Now Mr. Cantrell was on to another assignment overseeing missile defense research in Huntsville, and through his friends on the Hill, he was once again getting money for projects that the Pentagon did not want.
Mr. Cantrell, who by now was helping to oversee 160 or so contractors and managing a $120 million a year contracting budget, said he knew that if he only requested a few million dollars at a time for his scheme, there would be little scrutiny of his requests or demands that he prove that the work was actually done.
For example, the missile nose cones and other parts now made round trips from Huntsville to Maine with little or no change. Mr. Cantrell or his deputy simply marked off the work as complete, and that was the end of it.
For nearly six years, from 2001 to 2007, the men collected kickbacks from contractors. During one visit to the US Airways Club, Mr. Ennis picked up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000 in cash, according to federal court records. Mr. Cantrell also got checks, ranging from $5,000 to $60,000, once or twice a month, court records show.
The Maine contractor, Maurice H. Subilia, is under investigation; his lawyer, Toby Dilworth, a former federal prosecutor, declined to comment. Dennis A. Darling, a Florida contractor who got government research grants and then divvied them up with Mr. Cantrell, was indicted last month on a charge of paying Mr. Cantrell $400,000 in bribes from 2005 to 2007.
With his new wealth, Mr. Cantrell, now 52, built himself a $1.25 million home in an exclusive Huntsville neighborhood called the Ledges.
Mr. Cantrell, who received the bulk of the kickbacks, acknowledges his crime but he ticks off the failings of the system that he exploited: lawmakers who are eager to please contractors and campaign donors; unwillingness by the Army to push back against members of Congress whose agendas were at odds with those of the military; and little scrutiny.
"We just paid for meaningless work," he said. "And there was so little oversight that no one noticed."
Admiral West, the former deputy director of the Pentagon missile defense program, faults Mr. Cantrell for wrongdoing, but says there were multiple missed opportunities to investigate his activities.
"The blame needs to go around widely here," he said. "Congress should know better; the contractors, too."
Mr. Cantrell, who is awaiting sentencing on conspiracy and bribery charges, now spends his days sitting in the kitchen of his father-in-law's house; his dream home was seized by the federal government.
On top of the kitchen table, next to a King James Version of the Bible and bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin, is a stack of books on how to master poker. Mr. Cantrell has reduced them to mathematical formulas pinned onto a bulletin board in front of a computer terminal, where he plays Internet poker for hours at a time. Even now, he is trying to beat the system
Tuesday 07 October 2008
by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
US Army Specialist Megan Lynn Touma was killed in June 2008 in a motel room in North Carolina. (Photo: AP)
"My daughter's dream became a nightmare," sadly said Gloria Barrios, seven months after her daughter, US Air Force Senior Airman Blanca Luna, was murdered on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.
On March 7, 2008, Senior Airman Luna, 27, was found dead in her room at the Sheppard Air Force Base Inn, an on-base lodging facility. She had been stabbed in the back of the neck with a short knife. Luna, an Air Force Reservist with four years of prior military service in the Marine Corps including a tour in Japan, was killed three days before she was to graduate from an Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Heating training course.
When she was notified of her daughter's death, she was handed a letter from Major General K.C. McClain, commander of the Air Force Personnel Center, which stated that her daughter "was found dead on 7 March 2008 at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, as the result of an apparent homicide." When her body was returned to her family for burial, Barrios and other family members saw bruises on Blanca's face and wounds on her fingers as if she were defending herself. One of the investigators later told Mrs. Barrios that Blanca had been killed in an "assassin-like" manner. Friends say that she told them some in her unit "had given her problems."
Seven months later, Luna's mother made her first visit to the base where her daughter was killed, to pry more information from the Air Force about her daughter's death. Although the Air Force sent investigators to her home in Chicago several times to brief her on the case, she was concerned that the Air Force would not provide a copy of the autopsy report and other documents, seven months after Luna was killed. The Air Force says it cannot provide Mrs. Barrios with a copy of the autopsy as the investigation is "ongoing." Mrs. Barrios plans to have an independent autopsy conducted.
She was accompanied by her sister and six persons from a support group in Chicago and by several concerned Texans from Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton. The Chicago support group, composed of long-time, experienced social justice activists in the Hispanic community, also included Juan Torres, whose son John, an Army soldier, was found dead under very suspicious circumstances in 2004 at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Because of his battle to get documents from the Army bureaucracy on the death of his son four years ago, Torres has been helping the Barrios family in their effort to gain information about the death of Luna.
When Mrs. Barrios and friends arrived on the Air Base they were greeted by five Air Force officials. Mrs. Barrios requested that her support group be allowed to join her in an Air Force-conducted bus tour of the facilities where her daughter went to school and the lodging facility where she was found dead, but the request was denied. Mrs. Barrios then asked that her friend and translator, Magda Castaneda, and I be allowed to go on the bus and attend the meeting with the base commander and investigators.
After consultation with the base public affairs officer, Deputy Wing Commander Colonel Norsworthy decreed that only Mrs. Barrios' sister and Mr. Torres could accompany her. Mrs. Barrios, her sister and Mr. Torres are not fluent in English. Mrs. Barrios told the Air Force officers she did not feel comfortable with having translators provided by the Air Force and again asked that Mrs. Castaneda be allowed to translate for her as Mrs. Castaneda had done numerous times during Air Force briefings at her home. She asked that I be allowed to go, as I knew the military bureaucracy.
In front of the support group, the Air Force public affairs officer, George Woodward, advised Colonel Norsworthy not to allow Mrs. Casteneda and me to come on the base and attend the meetings as both of us were "outspoken in the media and their presence would jeopardize the integrity of the meeting with the family."
Mrs. Castaneda countered that during a previous meeting with the Air Force investigators in Chicago, she had been told by one investigator that she asked too many questions. Could that be the reason that she was unable to accompany Mrs. Barrios, she asked? Mrs. Barrios also reminded the officers that after she was interviewed for an article about her daughter that was published in July in the Chicago Reader, "Murder on the Base", she was warned by an Air Force official not to speak to the media again.
Mrs. Castaneda demanded that Woodward provide her a copy of the article on which he based his decision to recommend to the deputy base commander that she not be allowed on the base to translate for the family. Several hours later, Woodward gave Castaneda an article from Indy media in which she was quoted as the translator for Mrs. Barrios, and in which she had translated Barrios' statement: "Luna a four year Marine veteran."
While Colonel Wright (the author of this article) has written numerous articles concerning the rape and murder of women in the military, she reminded the officers that she holds a valid military ID card as a retired colonel, that she had not violated any laws or military regulations by writing and speaking about issues of violence against women in the military and that most families of military members who have been killed are at a disadvantage in dealing with the military bureaucracy in finding answers to the questions they have about the deaths of their loved ones. She reminded the officials that the parents of NFL football player Pat Tillman, who after three Congressional hearings on the death of their son in Afghanistan in 2002, still don't have answers to the questions of who killed their son and why the perpetrator of the crime hasn't been brought to justice. Families of "ordinary" service members, and particularly families with limited knowledge of the military and with limited financial means find themselves at the mercy of the military for information.
The base Catholic chaplain and the staff Judge Advocate, both colonels, were silent during the exchange. One would have thought that perhaps a chaplain who watched as Mrs. Barrios, a single mother whose only daughter had been killed and whose English was minimal, broke down in tears and sat sobbing on the curb as the public affairs officer described her friends as "outspoken and a threat to the integrity of the meetings" would have been sensitive to a grieving mother's need for a family friend who had translated in all the previous meetings with the Air Force investigators - but he was silent. Likewise, the senior lawyer on the base, who no doubt had handled many criminal cases, would have recognized that a distraught mother would need someone who could take notes and understand the nuances of the discussion in English during the very stressful discussions with the investigators - but he was silent. Instead, the colonels bowed to the civilian public affairs officer's advice that "outspoken" women were a threat to the "integrity of the meeting."
Eventually, Mrs. Barrios, her sister Algeria and Juan Torres met with Brigadier General Mannon, commander of the 82nd Training Wing, and with three members of the Office of Special Investigations. Mrs. Barrios said they were given no new information about the investigation and questioned again why her friends, who over the past seven months have been a part of the briefings from the Air Force, had been kept out of meetings where the Air Force officials knew they were not going to provide any new information.
Since 2003, there have been 34 homicides and 218 "self-inflicted" deaths (suicides) in the Air Force, and in 2007-2008 alone, five homicides and 35 "self-inflicted" deaths according to the Public Affairs Office of the 82nd Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force base.
On the same day that Mrs. Barrios went to Sheppard Air Force Base, October 3, 2008, the US Army announced that a US Army woman sergeant had been killed near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by a stab wound in the neck. Sergeant Christina Smith, 29, was stabbed on September 30, 2008, allegedly by her US Army husband Sergeant Richard Smith, who was accompanied by Private First Class Matthew Kvapil.
Smith was the fourth military woman murdered in North Carolina in the past nine months.
On June 21, 2008, US Army Specialist Megan Touma, 23, was killed inside a Fayetteville, North Carolina, hotel, less than two weeks after she arrived at Fort Bragg from an assignment in Germany. She was seven months pregnant. Sergeant Edgar Patino, a married male soldier assigned to Fort Bragg, whom Touma knew from Germany and who reportedly was the father of the unborn child, has been arrested for her murder.
On July 10, 2008, Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, an Army nurse at Fort Bragg, was killed. Her estranged husband, Marine Corporal John Wimunc of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, has been arrested in her death and the burning of her body and Lance Corporal Kyle Alden was arrested for destroying evidence and providing a false alibi.
Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach had been raped in May 2007 and protective orders had been issued against the alleged perpetrator, fellow Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean. The burned body of Lauterbach and her unborn baby were found in a shallow grave in the backyard of Laurean's home in January 2008. Laurean fled to Mexico, where he was captured by Mexican authorities. He is currently awaiting extradition to the United States to stand trial. Lauterbach's mother testified before Congress on July 31, 2008, that the Marine Corps ignored warning signs that Laurean was a danger to her daughter.
On Wednesday, October 8, at 11:30 a.m., a vigil for the four military women and all victims of violence will be held at the Main Gate at Fort Bragg, followed by a discussion on violence against women at the Quaker Peace Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and by a wreath laying at Lafayette Memorial Park. The events are sponsored by the Coalition to End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in the Military, Veterans for Peace and the Quaker Peace Center.
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Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the Department of State on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq war. She has written several articles on violence against women in the military, including "Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?", "U.S. Military Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers' 'Suicides'?" and "Is There an Army Cover Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?". She is also the co-author of the book, "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Neil Gordon, POGO Investigator, 202-347-3122
POGO Releases Contract of Contractor Hired to Investigate Contractors: What's Wrong with This Picture?
POGO is making public for the first time an unredacted copy of a $4.4 million contract between the U.S. State Department and U.S. Investigations Services (USIS), an information services company, to staff a special team that investigates possible crimes committed by American private security contractors (PSCs) working in Iraq. This contract was first reported last week on the ABC News web site, but POGO has now released the full and unedited document.
This contract could violat