Private Contractors and Torture at Abu Ghraib, Iraq

A "Khaki" Background

CACI, (referred to as "Khaki" in military circles) was originally called California Analysis Center Incorporated. It was formed in the 1960s by Harry Markowitz and Herbert Karr. Markowitz won a Nobel prize in economics in 1990 for his research on stock portfolio diversification. The company's first federal contracts were for custom-written computer languages that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

Up until this ugly juncture CACI, which employs roughly 6,300 people, had quietly pursued an aggressive business strategy, focused on expanding by acquiring weaker companies, and pumping up its business with the federal government such as personnel support at the Kelly Air Force base in Texas and the McLellan Air Force base in California. Its profits doubled between 2001 and 2003, shooting from $22 million (on total revenues of $557 million) to $44 million (on revenues of $843 million).

Today CACI, like most military industry players, boasts a roster of former soldiers and spies, including board member Michael Bayer (former Vice Chairman of the Pentagon's Business Board, and advisor to the Air Force, Army, U.S. Naval War College, and Sandia National Laboratory), Barbara McNamara (ex-Deputy Director of the National Security Agency), Arthur L. Money (former assistant Secretary of Defense), and Larry Welch, (an ex-Air Force General who served on the joint chiefs of staff during first Bush adminstration).

But unlike the other military contractors -- aerospace giant Boeing, whose former exec Darleen Druyun pled guilty last month to criminal conspiracy charges, or Halliburton, which is suspected of massively overcharging the Defense Department for gas trucked into Iraq -- CACI has generally stayed out of trouble.

more
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=10828

Employees from two companies, CACI International and Titan, participated in interrogation sessions at the Abu Ghraib prison as both interrogation specialists and linguists, according to an internal army report completed in late February.


An internal Army report exposed earlier by the New Yorker magazine named two civilian contractors as key figures in the abuses, which shocked the world after photographs of naked prisoners being humiliated by soldiers were aired by CBS television's 60 Minutes II on April 28.


CACI president Jack London said the company had not been told by the military of such allegations but CACI was launching its own investigation to get to the bottom of the story and would take immediate action if there was any wrongdoing.


'This pushes the envelope of military outsourcing almost as far as we can take it,' said Mr Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution. 'It's not an area where we had rules or regulations. We're just outsourcing without thinking about it.'

more
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,249280,00.html

The open discussion CACI is having with the press and its customers about the allegations is clearly a charm offensive, which it hopes will maintain an image of openness and trust. However, what is inevitable is that the longer the debacle continues, the more damage it is going to cause CACI.

Titan is currently undergoing an SEC investigation into alleged corruption. The company, which is currently being acquired by Lockheed Martin, came under a criminal investigation by the US Justice Department in early March for allegedly making illegal payments to certain international officials.

This scandal already put the proposed $2.4bn merger with Lockheed in doubt. Should Titan end up being implicated in the Iraq abuse case, this could become another stumbling block to the merger.

Yet perhaps the biggest threat to the long-term future of both CACI and Titan could be from the US Government itself. Keen to find some resolution to this political issue, it could end up pursuing a witch-hunt against any of the private contractors that have been involved in the alleged abuses.

more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/07/iraq_abuse_contractors/

The acquisition can be seen as a defensive move by CACI, which exists in the rapidly consolidating US government IT services sector. Two of CACI's rivals have been acquired by top-tier defense contractors in recent months.

Lockheed Martin earlier this month agreed to buy Titan for $2.4 billion, after paying $658 million for a "substantial portion" of the government sector business of Affiliated Computer Services, which gave it an additional 5,800 employees.

In June, General Dynamics signed a deal to buy Veridian for $1.5 billion in cash and assumed debt, adding $2 billion in additional revenue to the company's IT and network systems business with clients including US Air Force, the State of Texas, the US Navy, the US Army, and the US Coast Guard.

Prior to this in December, Computer Sciences Corp snapped up DynCorp for $1 billion.

Consolidation is driven by IT services providers scaling up to compete for a slew of major long-term government contracts, originating mainly from the new Department of Homeland Security, which is now the single largest US federal agency with a budget of $37.7 billion to invest in IT systems and infrastructure. The sector is also experiencing major investment from the General Services Administration Millenia project, which has a budget of $25 billion to invest in federal government IT services projects over an indefinite time period.

more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/30/caci_defence_contractor_gets_defensive/

Here is a business article from 9-11-2000 (yep) announcing the acquisition of Federal Data Corp/FDC by Northrop Grumman Corp./NG.
FDC was purchased by The Carlyle Group in 1995 and The Carlyle Group was involved in this deal for some of the government IT market-FDC's customer base includes NIH, NASA, and FAA.

FDC was folded into NG's Logicon, Inc. whose expertise is in C3 (command/control/communications), intelligence, weapons systems, training and simulation.

The Carlyle Group had purchased NG's commercial aerostructure works in July 2001 for $1.2bn. The Carlyle Group then worked with NG in their hostile takeover bid for TRW.

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0911/news-fdc-09-11-00.asp

So The Carlyle Group is tied to the FAA and other government IT bigtime through Logicon, Inc., and my tin foil hat got blown away when I saw the publication date of 9-11-2000, but that's just me:hi:

during the attacks. It's an annual meeting date for The Carlyle Group, regardless of the year, 9/11 is important to them.

But getting back on topic about the torturers from the private sector that have authority over US military (even though some of them lack security clearances) the fact that Richard Armitage came from CACI is just another criminal case to open imo.

No more hiding murderers, rapists, torturers, cultists behind the umbrella of National Security-nor those in government that allowed this to happen.

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.

By Guy Kewney, Newswireless.net
Published Friday 30th April 2004 10:03 GMT
Excitable American reports are suggesting that the attempts made last year by Congressman Darrel Issa to point "reconstruction" money in the direction of Qualcomm were not a silly season joke by one person, but an organised strategy, which may continue.

In a report in the LA Times (free reg needed) it is alleged that a "senior Defense Department official is under investigation by the Pentagon inspector general for allegations that he attempted to alter a contract proposal in Iraq to benefit a mobile phone consortium that includes friends and colleagues."

The original Issa story simply reported that the Congressman, who represents a constituency full of Qualcomm employees, was anxious to get Qualcomm-owned CDMA technology used in Iraq instead of "French" GSM phone systems.

Now, Issa is being mentioned as a bit-part player in the new saga of this official, who is being investigated.

The official is named: the LA Times says he is John A. Shaw, 64, the deputy undersecretary for international technology security. The allegation is simple: "He sought to transform a relatively minor police and fire communications proposal into a contract allowing the creation of an Iraq-wide commercial cellular network that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year," according to the paper's sources.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/30/iraq_cellphone_allegations/

Iraq Cellular Project Leads to U.S. Inquiry

A Pentagon official acted to award a contract to a group that included his friends.

By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

The consortium, under the guidance of a firm owned by Alaskan natives, consisted of an Irish telecommunications entrepreneur, former officials in the first Bush administration and such leading telecommunications companies as Lucent and Qualcomm, according to sources and consortium members.

http://ktla.trb.com/news/nationworld/nation/ktla-na-iraqphones29apr29-lat,0,4084337.story?coll=ktla-news-1