The Iraq War Profiteers

[high_treason]

This is part one of ten:CACI, TITAN/L3 and Bechtel

No. 1: CACI (Providing Israeli interrogators and interpreters)

CACI, founded in the early 1960s as California Analysis Center Inc., is almost entirely a Beltway Bandit—some 94 percent of its revenue is derived from contracts with the U.S. government. About two-thirds of that revenue comes from the Pentagon, but CACI also enjoys the patronage of the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Commerce, Justice and Transportation. At the end of its last fiscal year, CACI had a contract backlog worth some $6.4 billion.
The company started out in the field of simulation software and then rode the wave of increased federal spending on information technology and networks. It has grown to a $2 billion business in part through an aggressive program of acquisitions of other federal contractors. In recent years, many of those purchases were of companies profiting from the boom in outsourcing by U.S. civilian intelligence agencies and the intelligence branches of the military.
One of those acquisitions made CACI somewhat less cocky. When reports of inmate torture and abuse at the U.S-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to light in 2004, there were charges that civilian interrogators employed by a recently acquired CACI subsidiary were involved. CACI managed to avoid prosecution by the federal government, but it is facing civil litigation brought in U.S. courts on behalf of the Iraqi victims.

Location:

Headquarters
1100 North Glebe Road
Arlington, VA, 22201
United States

Financial Information:

Stock ticker symbol: CAI
Total revenue: $1.9 billion
Fiscal year: 2007
Net Income: $78.5 million

Key Players:
 
J.P. London ex CEO (2007)
Paul Cofoni Current CEO

No. 2: Titan/L3 Communication/TMsd (Providing Israeli interrogators and interpreters)

Titan Corporation was a United States based company founded in 1981, with its headquartered in San Diego, California. It was acquired by L-3 Communications on June 3, 2004 and is currently operating as the "Titan Group" of L-3 Communications. In early 2007, divisions using the Titan Group name were internally told to stop using it and were given new names.

Titan have specialized in providing information and communications products, solutions and services for intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security. Titan provides information systems solutions, support services and communications products to the federal government, especially to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
In recent years, like many other defense companies, Titan has diversified through a series of acquisitions, 10 since 2000 alone. The firm got into the linguistic business in the wake of 9/11 by acquiring Fairfax, Va.-based BTG Inc., which had a $10 million military contract dating back to 1999. When the demand for linguists grew after the United States launched the war on terror, so did the size of Titan's contracts.

Titan was hired by the US military in 2003 to provide translation services, receiving $112.1 million. This accounted for 96 percent of its total revenue for 2003, according to its annual report.[1] The company had 12,000 employees worldwide, with annual revenues in the neighborhood of $2 billion and was traded on the NYSE as TTN. Titan has a $54.8 million contract with the Airborne Warning and Control System to support the development of spy planes. They also have an $18 million to design war games for the US Navy.

Titan received a competitive contract with a potential value of $163.9 million from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command on behalf of the U.S. Northern Command for the US Joint Task Force Civil Support on January 12, 2005. The contract is "to provide a full range of planning, analysis, exercise, and information technology services for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosive (CBRNE) Consequence Management operations," a Titan press release announced.

Titan announced on February 14, 2006, they had received a "$350 million, five-year, multiple award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) task-based contract" from the Department of Homeland Security to support the National Exercise Program.  As a public military contractor the company employed some of the personnel who were implicated in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Involving mostly Titan and CACI International employees, the U.S. Army "found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of the [Abu Ghraib] proven incidents and identified 6 employees as individually culpable",[2] although none have faced prosecution unlike US military personal.

In May 2004, a civilian contractor and Titan employee Adel Nakhla, an Egyptian-born American citizen, was "terminated" from the job, after he admitted he held down inmates that were "nude, handcuffed to each other and placed in sexual positions." (as described by the Taguba Report)

The company was in the process of being acquired by the Lockheed Martin Corporation but the attempted merger fell through on June 26, 2004:

Lockheed Martin Corporation announced that it has terminated the merger agreement with The Titan Corporation because Titan did not satisfy all the closing conditions on or before June 25, 2004. Under the terms of the amended merger agreement, either party could terminate the merger agreement if Titan either (i)  had not obtained written confirmation from the Department of Justice that the investigation of alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations was resolved as to Titan and the Department did not intend to pursue any claims against Titan; or (ii) Titan had not entered into a plea agreement on or prior to June 25, 2004, provided that the terminating party had not contributed to the failure to consummate the merger through a breach of its obligations in any material respect. Titan did not satisfy either requirement.
On March 2, 2005, the company admitted to illegally providing $2 million to the 2001 re-election campaign of President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, and agreed to pay $28 million in penalties. Titan pled guilty and paid the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history for bribery and filing false tax returns.
Titan Corp briefly partnered with SkyWay Communications and owned stock in several other corporations related to SkyWay, whose former DC9 aircraft, N900SA, was captured in April 2006 with 5.5 tons of cocaine on board. Investigation of the cocaine bust by Mad Cow Morning News has led to the discovery that Titan had employed Makram Chams, a Lebanese national, who owned a Kwik-Check convenience store in Venice, Florida, where the biggest overseas money transfer to the terrorists, $70,000 from the UAE, was sent, according to the testimony of FBI agents during the 9/11 Commission hearings.

Location:

L-3 Communications Corporate Headquarters
600 Third Avenue
New York, New York 10016
(212) 697-1111

Financial Information: (2nd qtr 2005)

The Titan Corporation (NYSE: TTN), a leading national security solutions provider, today reported record quarterly revenues of $620 million for the second quarter of 2005, a 21% increase over revenues of $515 million for the second quarter of 2004.
Stock ticker symbol: LLL

Key players:

Gene Ray ex CEO and founder
Frank C. Lanza current CEO

No. 3: Bechtel (Engineering and construction)

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 9th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. With headquarters in San Francisco, Bechtel had 40,000 employees as of 2006 working on projects in nearly 50 countries with $20.5 billion in revenue.

A government oversight agency has found that Bechtel National successfully completed less than half of the reconstruction jobs that the government hired it to perform in Iraq. In a report released yesterday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction analyzed 24 job orders that Bechtel contracted to perform at a total direct cost of $761.2 million. Of those, 11 were successfully completed, 10 were incomplete, canceled or transferred to someone else, and the final status of 3 could not be determined.
   
"This is emblematic of the problem that contractors have experienced in Iraq reconstruction," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the inspector general for Iraq. He said his office has found that 40 percent of projects in Iraq were in danger of not being completed under the original contract.

"When you enter a contract, you expect the work to be done," Bowen said. "If half the job orders aren't met, you didn't get what you bargained for."

"It has been typical for [contractors] to have projects delayed because of security or delays by subcontractors," he said. "That's why virtually every project in Iraq has cost more or taken longer than expected, and as is the case with the Bechtel contract, some projects didn't get finished at all."

Bechtel was hired under a $2 billion contract to provide engineering, procurement and construction services and to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq. The report pointed out that Bechtel did finish several of its costliest undertakings, including an $88.4 million project to do maintenance work, provide spare parts and train Iraqis at 19 power plants, and a $126.5 million project to build and refurbish electrical substations.

Among the jobs that Bechtel did not successfully complete was one to build a landfill in Baghdad. After security problems and troubles with the land's ownership arose, the $3.7 million job was canceled. Bechtel was paid for its work, and $2.6 million worth of equipment was turned over to the Iraqis.

"We couldn't find an adequate site for the landfill," said Bill Shoaf, program director for Bechtel's work in Iraq. "It was determined the most beneficial use was for Bechtel to turn over the equipment. We had gone through all the options, and it was difficult finding a suitable site. So in time, the job order was amended."

Bechtel started work on a new $24.4 million water-treatment plant in Baghdad's volatile Sadr City district but did not finish the job. The company turned the project over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after completing 88 percent of the work.
In another case, Bechtel did not finish building a children's hospital in the southern city of Basra because of security threats. The hospital, championed by first lady Laura Bush, was supposed to provide state-of-the-art care. Bechtel transferred the hospital to the Corps of Engineers after completing 45 percent of the work.

Location:
San Francisco, California (Corporate Headquarters)
50 Beale Street
San Francisco, CA 94105-1895
Tel: (415) 768-1234
Fax: (415) 768-9038

Financial information:
Parent Companies: Bechtel Systems & Infrastructure, Inc , Bechtel Group, Inc
Also Does Business As: Bechtel
Est. Annual Sales: $1,345,000,000
Est. Employees: 21,000
Est. Employees at Location: 465
Privately held and does not trade its stocks

Key players:
Riley P. Bechtel is the CEO of Bechtel. With a net worth of $3.2 billion, he is the 50th richest person in the U.S. and the 127th richest in the world. In February 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade issues. He served for one year. Bechtel is a Jewish family

More to come to soon

[tranquill]

Many Israeli officials argued against the Iraqi war. Like Shoher here: http://samsonblinded.org/blog/iraq