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SAIC and the Justice Department
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Matt Carmody
You just can't make this stuff up.
The company that recently took
$170 million taxpayer dollars to upgrade the FBI's computer systems
and then didn't deliver as promised was a weird choice for the
contract in the first place.
SAIC has extensive government contracts, yet the company's history
with the very agency it was to provide computer services to should
have set off some alarms. Here is what Lynn Landes wrote about SAIC
at Dissidentvoice.com on August 19, 2003:
"The federal government, its main customer, often doesn't want
the public to know what the company [SAIC] is doing and, as one of
the nation's largest employee-owned corporations, it escapes investor
scrutiny," writes AP correspondent Elliot Spagat, in a July
26, 2003 article.
J. Robert Beyster founded SAIC on February 3, 1969, "with a couple of
consulting contracts, one from Los Alamos and one from Brookhaven National
Labs," according to the SAIC website. Today, SAIC has racked up more
than $5.9 billion in annual revenues.
Bev Harris and her investigative team have dug up some interesting facts
about SAIC. It seems that SAIC has had its share of legal troubles.
In a 1995 article in the Web Review, editor Stephen Pizzo paints a disturbing
picture of SAIC. "In 1990 SAIC was indicted by the Justice Department
on 10 felony counts for fraud in its management of a Superfund toxic cleanup
site. (SAIC pleaded guilty.)
In 1993 the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an
F15 fighter contract.
In May 1995, the same month SAIC purchased NSI (Network Solutions Inc.),
the company settled a suit that charged it had lied about security system
tests it conducted for a Treasury Department currency plant in Fort Worth,
TX.
"Is it just me or does this relationship stink from the beginning?
It's kind of like the Good Housekeeping column, "Can this marriage
be saved?" only more tawdry.
For further proof of the overall weirdness of the choice of this
company to do the needed work for DoJ consider this: SAIC is the company
that is supposed to vet Diebold's election machines country-wide. We
all know how well that went on 2 November and we will have ample time
to remember it during the next four years.
Perhaps most telling in the choice of this company for the contract
with DoJ is the pedigree it carries. It's probably no coincidence that
the company is privately owned and, therefore, not required to disclose
its particulars to the SEC. With a group like the following collecting
company paychecks I would shy away from the glare of disclosure too.
Here, again, from the Landes article:
Recently, SAIC got the contract to assist other corporations, including
Northrop Grumman, in training of the Iraqi Army.
The specter of corporations, littered with ex-CIA types, that both
control the voting systems and train the armies of countries around
the world, is an emerging and frightening reality.
"Currently on SAIC's board is ex-CIA director Bobby Ray Inman,
director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the
CIA, and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According
to the OC (*Orange County) Weekly, "Inman worked at the highest
levels of American intelligence during an era (President Ronald Reagan)
when it displayed a stunning lack of it. Inman's achievements include:
failing to predict the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union; prolonging
violent, useless civil wars in Central America; and giving arms to
terrorists in exchange for hostages (Iran Contra)."
"During the Bush administration, Inman, Perry and Deutch -
while directors of Science Applications (SAIC), were also members
of the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), an advisory group
reporting to the President and the director of Central Intelligence,
which deals with production, review and coordination of foreign intelligence," reports
the Crypt. Both Inman and Deutch were former Directors of the CIA.
William J. Perry was also a former Secretary of Defense during the
Clinton Administration.
SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime
clients. DARPA is the controversial Department of Defense (DOD) subsidiary,
which until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra
fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA
was prepared to trade "futures" in terrorist attacks. DARPA
has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has
civil libertarians in an uproar.
And, silly me, I actually thought that there was a chance of unseating
the emperor on 2 November.
Matt Carmody
Washingtonville, NY
[BuzzFlash Note: See also
"The FBI's Big Glitch" in the Mailbag 1/17/05.]
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
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