home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Stories Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch

The Empire Viewed from Oceanside by Alexander Cockburn; Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Mysterious Career of Stephen Cambone by Jeffrey St. Clair; "We Want to Kill Westerners": Inside the Saudi Oil Bombings: by Patrick Cockburn; The Last Straw? Kerry, Judges and Abortion: Brandy Baker. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

CounterPunch's Favorite Albums!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!

Today's Stories

June 14, 2004

John Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins the Party

Uri Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True

June 12 / 13, 2004

Peter Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede

Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums

Jeffrey St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then

Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?

Brian Cloughley
US Military in Crisis

Antonio Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection

Ben Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider

Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"

Ron Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency

Forrest Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés

Christopher Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors

Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again

Wayne Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan

Anthony Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World

Michael Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous

Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?

Susan Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban

Joseph Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century

Wayne Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup

Poets' Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert

Website of the Weekend
Insurgent Music

 

June 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Reagan in Truth and Fiction

Ron Jacobs
Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit

Chris Floyd
Funeral Games

Steven Sherman
How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton

Mokhiber / Weissman
Remembering Reagan

Norman Solomon
Media's Mourning in America

Paul Alexander
The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson

CounterPunch Wire
The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba

 

 

 

June 10, 2004

Noam Chomsky
The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing

Gary Leupp
Bush, the Religious Scholar

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns

Saul Landau
Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade

Scott Evans
Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats

Jacob Levich
John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons

Zeynep Toufe
Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures"

Nico Pitney
Reform at Wal-Mart?

Dave Zirin
Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution

Jack McCarthy
Where Were You When Reagan Croaked?

Gary Corseri
Nouns That Should be Acronyms

David Price
Reagan and the Black Budget

Website of the Day
Inequality by the Numbers

 

June 9, 2004

Mustafa Barghouthi
Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed

Mike Whitney
Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture

John Chuckman
Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop

Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach
Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Put Reagan on the $3 Bill

Miguel D'Escoto
Reagan was the Butcher of My People

Becky Burgwin
The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero

Patrick Cockburn
The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad

 

June 8, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse?

Dave Lindorff
The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam?

Phillip Cryan
Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia

Mark Zepezauer
Getting Reagan Wrong

Mickey Z.
Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions

John L. Hess
Reagan and Bush in Normandy

Alex Dawoody
Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance

Christopher Fons
Reagan in a Word: Mean

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Some Tenets are More Important Than Others

Ahmed Bouzid
Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun

Michael Leon
Bush the Narcissist

June 7, 2004

Jason Leopold
New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes

Patrick Cockburn
The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing

Dennis Hans
From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy

Tracy McLellan
Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics

Bill Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War

Ben Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter

Susan Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell

Phil Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance

Website of the Day
A Child's ABCs of Terrorism

 

June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

 

June 4, 2004

Chris Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House

Cornwell / Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy

Wayne Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink

Greg Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq

Yitzak Laor
Before Rafah

Ghali Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?

Jane Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey

CounterPunch Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?

John Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush

Mike Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW

Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?

Website of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire

 

 

June 3, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma

Dr. Susan Block
America in tha Hood

Michael Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin

John Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged

Christopher Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month

Samia Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case

Diane Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead

Scott Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba

Paul de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective

 

 

June 2, 2004

Brian Cloughley
The Liars are Winning

Ray McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence"

Josh Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive

Mike Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots

Jackie Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana

Robert Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too

Alexander Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"

 

June 1, 2004

Gary Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him

William A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?

Kevin Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?

Jacob Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government

Website of the Day
Remind Us

 

 

May 29 / 31, 2004

Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day

Janine Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

 

May 28, 2004

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5

Greg Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib

Dave Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work

Norman Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times

Rep. Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba

Paul McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After

Alexander Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"

 

 

May 27, 2004

Amy Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times

Douglas Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs

John L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of

Stew Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist

Dave Dellinger
a 1993 Interview

Christopher Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids

Rampton / Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony

 

 

May 26, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours

Robert Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech

Zeynep Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation

Conn Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection

Tom Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes

Derek Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot

CounterPunch Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art

Andrew Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

 

May 25, 2004

Joe Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas

Col. Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity

Gary Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home

Toni Solo
A Developing War in the Andes

Marc Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11

Stephen Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops"

Website of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May 24, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages

Sam Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"

Mike Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb

Stan Goff
Open Season on MAMs

Image of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs

 

 

May 22 / 23, 2004

Paul de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary

Jeffrey St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer

Brian Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq

Saul Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People

Brandy Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry

Randall Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Rafah

Ben Tripp
Assume the Worst

Bruce Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business

Josh Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers

Peter Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib

Chloe Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy

Linda Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value

Adrien Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse

David Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy

Ron Jacobs
Turnaround

Poets' Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella

 


May 21, 2004

Ray Close
The Canards of the Apologists

Christopher Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"

Amira Hass
Darkness at Noon

Jack McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army?

Bill Kauffman
Nader v. Bush

Omar Barghouti
No More Tears for America

Ghali Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza

Christopher Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture

Website of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much

 

May 20, 2004

Andrew Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi

Kathy Kelly
A Visit from the FBI

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India

Tom Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.

Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy

Robert Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle

Billy Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year

Website of the Day
Rafah Today

 

 

 

 

Hot Stories

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

Subcomandante Marcos
The Death Train of the WTO

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?

Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians

Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

Wendell Berry
Small Destructions Add Up

CounterPunch Wire
WMD: Who Said What When

Cindy Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

June 14, 2004

Torture, Incorporated

Oliver North Joins the Party

By JOHN STANTON and WAYNE MADSEN

The U.S. Army has employed as many as 27 contractors to run its interrogation operations, according to media reports. But while CACI and Titan are getting all the mainstream media play, it appears that far more than 27 contract employees were involved in recruiting and placing interrogators in various locations. Some of the firms involved in the Bush administration's "TortureGate" include an odd assortment of telecommunications companies and executive placement firms that have jumped into the lucrative torture business in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and at secret locations throughout Central Asia and North Africa.

Interrogators can earn up to $120,000 per year plying their trade and most are former military and law enforcement personnel. More ominously, these so-called "private military contractors" are nothing of the sort. They are paramilitary organizations that are funded by the US Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State, and assorted other agencies through contract vehicles known as Basic Ordering Agreements or "BOAs" hidden throughout the vast US government bureaucracy. It now is well known that CACI got its money through a BOA with the Department of the Interior.

Ollie -- He's Baaack!

On January 12, 2004, United Placements ran an advertisement for Army Interrogators. "Job State: IRAQ, Job Number: 8. Interrogators: 30 Positions. Compensation to $120,000. Individuals must be trained Interrogators with at least five years of experience in interrogation. Individuals must be knowledgeable of Army/Joint interrogation procedures, data processing systems such as CHIMs and SIPRNET search engines. Knowledge of the Arabic language and culture a plus...Candidates must have documented in their resumes five years of Humint collection and/or interrogation experience. This is a requirement of the client. Some locations require individuals to work and live in a field environment with minimum medical facilities. Must possess the ability to work extended work hours in difficult surroundings for up to one year."

United Placements' lists none other than Oliver North--a member of Ronald Reagan's NSC and focal point of the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980's--as one of its two "Industry Associates." North is currently the host of Fox News Channel's "War Stories." United Placement's second "Industry Associate" is Intelligencecareers.com run by former intelligence analyst Bill Goldman.

While TortureGate festers, it is noteworthy that as late as May 7, 2004 the same posting for interrogators was listed through Design Staffing LLC. Evidently, a new batch of interrogators is needed to replace those now under criminal investigation. "Job Nr 85832--Conduct interrogations. Conduct pre-brief and debrief preparation which includes researching, compiling, and preparing supporting material; prepare all-source target overview/summaries to include cultural, religious, and sociological factors; and identify information required for immediate processing and dissemination including support to ongoing and planned operations and force protection. This listing opened 07-May-04 and is valid for 90 days." The listing goes on to say that the openings will be available "until filled." It was listed under the categories "Analyst (Intelligence) & Knowledge Specialists.

Another company, ZKD, Inc. ran advertisements for interrogators on February 4, 2004. "This listing opened 10-Feb-04 and is valid for 180 days. The company's closing date comments for this listing are: "Open Till Filled. Category: Military Arts, Operations and Science. Send resume to careers@zkdinc.com." It seems interrogators are not only knowledge specialists but artists too.

Who Are Those Guys?

Just who are these people? It shouldn't be a surprise that Oliver North is back in the war crimes business, but some of the organizations getting into the act seemingly don't belong in the murky field of recruitment for the US military's shadow paramilitary force. But, then again, some of these groups have some of the trademarks of CIA or other intelligence agency cut-out operations. Flush with seed money from existing government contracts, small and medium-sized government contractors and recruiting firms were able to launch major drives to draft language-capable interrogators from the ranks of America's ex-military, law enforcement, and intelligence cadres and the immigrant community.

ZKD, Inc., located in Fairfax, Virginia, bills itself as a veteran-owned, minority owned and women owned firm that provides "Staffing Solutions, Security and Language Services." It's President and CEO is Zachary K. Duck. The May 2004 issue of Black Enterprise states that ZKD, "as a staffing agency, analyzes current labor market trends and matches qualified applicants with employment opportunities. After 9-11, the company doubled its efforts to provide security services to meet increased demand. ZKD also offers a comprehensive communications service." ZKD has seen a meteoric rise in profits thanks mostly to the Pentagon and Transportation Security Administration. Black Enterprise states that ZKD was founded in 2001 with only two employees but now has more than 250 people with revenues totaling more than $ 10 million in 2003.

ZKD has a growing roster of clients, including the Transportation Security Administration and McNeil Technologies. In January of this year, ZKD was awarded a five-year, $ 53.7 million contract from the Department of Defense. The company now enjoys a solid $34.5 million in contracts for 2004 with another $13 million in the contracting queue.

It is noteworthy that according to The Washington Post, CACI and McNeil Technologies are the recipients of Federal contracts to process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Federal agencies, including the Pentagon and Homeland Security and Justice Departments. In what could be a major conflict of interest, any FOIA request from the public or the media for information on Pentagon or intelligence agency contracts with CACI or ZKD on their interrogation/translation work abroad could be handled by employees of CACI, an interrogation contractor, or McNeil, a client of ZKD, another interrogation contractor.

Design Staffing, LLC is located in Boyds, Maryland has all the trademarks of an operation run by an ex-military or intelligence agency veteran. The language is classic military gangland style "Beyond [the] core categories, we also assist companies with those hard-to-fill positions that do not fit in the traditional molds. Our method, which we call the Design Staffing Approach, DSA, is critical to the success of our business - and yours. The DSA model is an innovative systematic, seven-tier approach..."

A search of the U.S. Business Directory reveals Design Staffing, LLC is an "employment agency & opportunities firm" and has one employee, an unknown credit status, and a business address at 14024 Clopper Road, Boyds, Maryland. Its principal-listed by email as mpoage@designstaffing.com -is very particular about what he/she is looking for in an interrogator.

"For interrogators I look for experience conducting interrogations, conduct of personnel screenings of local nationals and conduct of tactical debriefings."

He/she goes on to imply that embellishment of experience may not be a bad idea to make the resume look stronger to the customer.

If North is There, the Carlyle Group Can't be Far Behind

Then there's CalNet, a Vienna, Virginia-based company that says it provides "Agile Solutions for the New Customer Economy." It is run by President and CEO Kaleem Shah. The U.S. Business Directory provides the following sketchy information on CalNet: its description is "Computer-Systems Designers and Consultants," and it has four employees. A CalNet Ltd., also listed as a "computer related" company and located in West Yorkshire, England, was dissolved on March 20, 2001.

According to its website, "Since 1989, CalNet has used its business and technology consultancy to help many of the largest telecom, financial, public sector, high-tech and services organizations remain agile by obtaining explicit business results through the rapid application and delivery of advanced information and telecom solutions." That may be so, but CalNet posted the same interrogators-wanted ad that United Placements ran in January of 2004. Interested parties are encouraged to apply for a position with the Iraq Survey Group. "...please send resume to bcoleman@CALNET.com. Reference job number DISG2."

USIS, or U.S. Investigations Services, bills itself as "one of the largest Intelligence and Security Services companies in North America." Hoover's Company Capsules has a very unusual descriptive background for the firm. "Formally a US government agency, USIS was spun off as a private company in 1996." A recent job fair it hosted in Falls Church, Virginia, sought "Interrogators, Strategic Debriefers and Protection Specialists for Overseas Assignments."

One of the USIS investors is the omnipresent Carlyle Group, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm with close ties to George H. W. Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major, and former Secretary of State James Baker, and past ties to the Saudi Bin Laden Companies, which has its tentacles into many of the Bush administration's major foreign adventures. USIS also owns a subsidiary, Total Information Services, Inc., of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which ironically is similar to the name of the defunct Pentagon program to glean personal information from databases on U.S. and foreign citizens. That program, called the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system was headed by Iran-contra felon retired Admiral John Poindexter before he resigned. TIA, according to media reports, is alive and well in the offices of DARPA in Northern Virginia.

Since the US Congress, the Pentagon, the White House and US Department of Justice seem determined to sweep the entire TortureGate disaster under the rug before the November 2004 elections, the only check on their power appears to be the financial markets. As was recently reported by the Washington Post, directors of one of CACI's pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, planned to meet with CACI in early July "...to discuss concerns about [CACI] management controls, training and legal procedures at the Arlington-based government contractor... What the management of this company owes [shareholders] is a full explanation of exactly what has occurred, exactly who was responsible and a full accounting of what will be done to reform its practices."

Maybe if the money talks, Bush--and the Gordon Gecko's of the defense contracting world--will walk.

John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer specializing in national security and political matters. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "A Power, But Not Super." Reach John at cioran123@yahoo.com.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates."

Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com


Weekend Edition Features for June 12 / 13, 2004

Peter Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede

Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums

Jeffrey St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then

Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?

Brian Cloughley
US Military in Crisis

Antonio Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection

Ben Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider

Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"

Ron Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency

Forrest Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés

Christopher Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors

Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again

Wayne Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan

Anthony Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World

Michael Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous

Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?

Susan Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban

Joseph Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century

Wayne Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup

Poets' Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert

Website of the Weekend
Insurgent Music

Google
WWW http://www.counterpunch.org

 

Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /