Embedded deep inside the brain of Washington D.C. is the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Despite having 44,000 employees along with 9,000 active federal contracts worth $8 billion, its hand has remained invisible to the public eye.
No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy. SAIC almost never touts its activities in public, preferring to stay well below the radar. An SAIC executive once gave a press interview and referred to the enterprise as a "stealth company," a characterization that is accurate and that has stuck. "Nobody knows who they are," says Glenn Grossenbacher, a Texas lawyer who has battled SAIC in court on a whistle-blowing case.
SAIC is nothing if not well connected. The company is packed with generals, admirals, diplomats, spies, and Cabinet officers of every kind. It was involved in every step of the life cycle of the Iraq war and has called the global war on terror ‘a lucrative growth industry'.
David Kay, who in 1998 was serving as director of SAIC’s Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis, spent four years fabricating intelligence to support the Iraq invasion.
Kay and others associated with SAIC hammered away at the threat posed by Iraq. Wayne Downing, a retired general and a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi, proselytized hard for an invasion of Iraq, stating that the Iraqis "are ready to take the war ... overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us." In many of his appearances on network and cable television leading up to the war, Downing was identified simply as a "military analyst." It would have been just as accurate to note that he was a member of SAIC's board of directors and a company stockholder. In the run-up to the war, David Kay remained outspoken. He told NBC News in October of 2002, "I don't think it's possible to disarm Iraq as long as Saddam is in power and desires to maintain weapons of mass destruction."
SAIC paid discredited Iraqi exiles to make nuclear claims about Saddam’s regime and then reported this ‘intelligence’ to Douglas Feith, who worked under Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and whose deputy was Christopher "Ryan" Henry, a former SAIC senior vice president.
Khidhir Hamza, a onetime atomic-energy official in Iraq, who insisted that Saddam posed an imminent nuclear danger to the United States—would in time receive paychecks from SAIC. Although his evidence had long been discredited by weapons experts, Hamza was among about 150 Iraqi exiles designated by the Pentagon as members of the newly chartered Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council. The plan was that, once American troops secured Iraq, the I.R.D.C. recruits would move into influential positions in a rebuilt Iraqi government. SAIC served as the paymaster for the Iraqi exiles under a $33 million government contract. It brought them all together in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, rented apartments for them, paid their living expenses, provided various support services, and, later, after the invasion and occupation, flew them to their jobs in the new, democratic Iraq.
After helping build the case for war, SAIC would be rewarded with several federal contracts in Iraq. It received $82 million to establish a media network in the country, despite being involved in Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence which fed disinformation to the foreign press.
Three former SAIC employees were appointed by president Bush to the commission which investigated its ‘intelligence failures’. Gordon Oehler and Sam Visner each served as vice president for corporate development at SAIC. Jeff Cooper was vice president for technology at an SAIC subsidiary.
SAIC would go on to receive a $280 million contract to create the NSA’s secret eavesdropping program. Visner returned to SAIC to become a senior vice president of the company’s intelligence group. It has helped to develop intelligence ‘fusion’ centers where the Army, FBI, state police and others combine to avoid restrictions on military spying upon the domestic population.
One SAIC contractor, Neoma Syke, worked at such a fusion center, wearing two hats:
During 2003-2004, she was "working for SAIC" as a force protection analyst with "SAIC’s" 205th Military Intelligence Battalion. And while she was "a contractor for SAIC"...apparently she served as Counterintelligence Watch Officer at USARPAC’s Crisis Action Center.
Another contracted intelligence officer from a fusion center in Washington state lists on her resume as being certified to employ a restricted interrogation techinique – sleep deprivation.
The nexus between the profit-seeking private industry and the public duty to provide security needs to be more closely and urgently examined as the CIA Inspector General’s torture report is released this week. The question should be asked why a corporation intricately linked to facilitating a war under false pretenses as well as using employees trained with interrogation techniques which are banned under international law is now being given the responsibility of collecting and analyzing the personal information of all Americans.
Update: SAIC was awarded this month with a new $388 million contract by the cybersecurity office of the Department of Homeland Security.
Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) announced it has been awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Cybersecurity and Communication. SAIC will provide scientific, engineering and technical services in support of the National Communications System (NCS), a cornerstone of the country's ability to provide key communications services to support government functions during emergencies.
...The NCS is an office within DHS charged with enabling national security and emergency preparedness communications using the national telecommunications system. The NCS assists the President, National Security Council, Homeland Security Council, the Directors of the Offices of Science and Technology Policy and Management and Budget in the exercise of the telecommunications functions and responsibilities. It also coordinates the planning for and provision of national security and emergency preparedness communications for the federal government. The system comprises the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service and Wireless Priority Service, which give authorized users top priority on networks during national emergencies.
Under the contract, SAIC and other contractors will have a competitive opportunity to provide support as required in areas including operations, national security/emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications, and government and industry interface. Contractors may also help stand-up offices within the DHS Cyber Security and Communications Directorate, and provide program management, training, emergency operations, critical infrastructure protection, and modeling and analysis support. These services will support all areas of communications sustaining NCS NS/EP programs, including architectures, networking, emergency communications, operations, restoration protocols, industry and government guidelines, and pursuing new technical initiatives.
2nd Update: Democracy Now! recently reported on a case where a retired military operative working out of a fusion center in Washington state went undercover to spy on a peace activist group.
Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. "This could be one of the key revelations of this era," said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations.
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