Screwed Again (or who else is getting paid to screw up)

Stephen Pizzo
http://www.newsforreal.com/

Screwed Again

Are you sitting down? Glad I was when I read this morning that the Treasury Dept… the people in charge of our national checkbook -- wasted $173 million on a failed human resources computer system. That’s right. This comes one day after we learned the FBI wasted $170 million on a computerized case management system.

When I wrote about the FBI boondoggle I wondered out loud just who got most of that money. I was going to find out who got paid for failing. Well I did and I was not surprised to discover that it was San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., a company I have been writing about since 1993 when they ended up with the exclusive contract to register Internet domain names. A look at SAIC’s board of directors at the time read like a Who’s Who of retired CIA, NSA and Pentagon brass.

(SAIC blames the 9/11 attacks for failure of their Virtual Case File system.)

Years later I would write again about SAIC, this time because it, along with Halliburton and Computer Science Corp. (CSC) were landing millions in no-bid contracts in Iraq.

Oh, look! What a coincidence! When I checked to see who got paid to install the failed human resources system at the Dept. of Treasury it was… ta da… CSC. A subsidiary of CSC, DynCorp, is the largest and most controversial provider of private security services in Iraq. When the company was hired by the US to provide the same kind of security services in Kosovo some of CSC’s thugs ended up being charged by UN officials with being part of a sex-slavery operation.

Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor filed a lawsuit in Britain in 2001 against DynCorp for firing her after she reported that Dyncorp police trainers in Bosnia were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex trafficking. Many of the Dyncorp employees were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity. But none were prosecuted, since they enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. (www.corpwatch.org)

Nevertheless, CSC and its subsidaries continue getting plenty of taxpayer monehy. DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai. DynCorp planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions over the coca crops in Colombia. Dyncorp is in charge of the border posts between the US and Mexico, Pentagon's weapons-testing ranges and the entire fleet of Air Force One presidential planes and helicopters. (Talk about holding the President's life in your hands!)

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