Oh Say Can You CACI

By Dave Marino-Nachison
May 28, 2004

Shares of defense, intelligence, and other government services contracting firm CACI (NYSE: CAI) fell more than 11% in yesterday's trading following the release of a statement about the government's concerns over CACI contracts for work in Iraq. The U.S. General Services Administration has asked for information to help it rule on whether CACI is eligible for future government contracts.

CACI, caught up along with Titan (NYSE: TTN) in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, has seen its shares fall precipitously since earlier this month when news of its involvement hit the presses. (Titan shares have also fallen, though not nearly as far as CACI's have.)

These are supposed to be good times for CACI, which only recently celebrated the acquisition of American Management Systems' (Nasdaq: AMSY) defense and intelligence businesses for $415 million in cash. (American Management Systems had to divest the operation to merge with Canadian IT services firm CGI Group (NYSE: GIB), a deal announced in March and finalized earlier this month.)

On Wednesday, meanwhile, CACI said it expects fiscal first-quarter sales growth of more than 50%, along with net income growth of between 23% and 30%. It also noted an $88 million Navy contract. If the government eventually disqualifies CACI from bidding on federal contracts, however, the good news mentioned above will be moot -- and then some. Heck, fully 92% of the company's revenues came from the government in the fiscal year ended June 30, a large chunk of that coming from the Army. Surely the potential for losing that much business is worth more than an 11% drop? Perhaps, but investors are seemingly betting that won't happen



more
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04052804.htm

Commentary: The wacky world of government contracts

By Michael Collins, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:07 PM ET May 28, 2004

ARLINGTON, VA (CBS.MW) -- We learned this week that civilian interrogators used by the Army at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad were hired under a Department of the Interior contract for information technology.

Yes, the Interior Department, best known for running the national parks, apparently has a side business administering contracts for other government agencies. And under what is known as a "blanket purchase agreement" for the government to buy technology services from CACI International of Arlington (CAI: news, chart, profile), the Army was able to order up prison interrogators.

Welcome to the wild, wacky world of government contracting.

It's strange enough that Iraq intelligence gathering is contracted out to the private sector, and even stranger that Baghdad prison interrogators are working under an Interior Department technology contract. But what really bothers me is this type of thing is not that uncommon, and it's seen as "efficiency" in the federal government.

It's hard for an outsider to see what's efficient about the complex web of government contracting. I'm sure it made sense, to someone, for the Army to ask a technology company to hire interrogators -- but to me it seems like going to a lumber yard to buy a computer.

Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby said Tuesday the department's inspector general wants to find out if it was proper to hire interrogators under an information technology contract. He was speaking on a conference call, so we don't know if he was able to keep a straight face

more
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BF8607265-F5F6-4E14-BFBB-4C9039DE6CE1%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

Here's an article from the year before 9/11/01-this was published 9-11-00 and shows the involvement of The Carlyle Group in gov. IT databases.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0911/news-fdc-09-11-00.asp

Anyone interested in following that should search Logicon, Incorporated which has expertise in command, control and communications/C3, intelligence, weapons systems, training and "simulation".

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.

Two former Mobile police officers working in Iraq


New York Times reports that one, Kenneth Powell, screened prisoners for private company at Abu Ghraib prison
Thursday, May 27, 2004
By RON COLQUITT
Staff Reporter
Former Mobile police Lt. Kenneth Powell is one of the civilian contractors who has worked screening prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the facility that is the subject of an international prisoner abuse scandal, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Times report focused on the experience and security clearance status of civilian contractors working at the prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. It cites Powell's name as having been mentioned in military documents obtained by the Times.

Powell, the Times reported, "recently retired after 24 years with the Mobile, Ala., police force, where presumably he picked up the skills, and the security clearance, to screen Iraqi prisoners."

There is no mention that Powell had any knowledge of, or participation in, any of the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib, outraging many in the Arab and Western worlds.

more
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/10856494505 ...


What Might Sharon Know About CACI?

Right now, Americans are so mesmerized by those photos, which daily increase in number and luridness, that the facts of who did what and who knew what, and just what the “hey” and worse went on in those prisons, are just dribbling out, like water from a leaky faucet.

What might Sharon know? He might know whether the four “contract” interrogators identified as the foremost abusers — John Israel, Steven Stephanowicz, Torin Nelson, and Adel Nakha — were trained in their “craft” in Israel, or by Israelis.

Initial news reports indicate that two companies, Titan of San Diego, California, and California Analysis Center Incorporated (CACI, pronounced “khaki”) of Arlington, Virginia, employed these now-notorious “contractors.” But Titan and CACI themselves reportedly deny being their “direct” employers. And Titan and CACI refuse to identify who is.

What might Sharon know? Well, surely he knows that CACI was founded in the 1960s by Herbert Kerr and Harry Markowitz, a Chicago Jew, who worked together at The Rand Corporation in the 1950s. Markowitz, a mathematics genius with a Ph.d. from the University of Chicago, received the 1990 Nobel prize in economics (shared) for his theory of “portfolio choice,” which allows market investors to analyze risk as well as their expected return. But Markowtiz and Kerr’s work at Rand was in computer matrix codes with industrial and defense applications. This is the work that CACI still does now. With creative innovations, apparently.

What might Sharon know?

Sharon certainly knows that in February 2004, the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha Torah, a Zionist “worldwide foundation” specializing in “educational outreach,” according to CACI’s own press release, gave CACI its Albert Einstein award “for promoting peace in the Middle East.” CACI’s CEO, Jack London, was presented the award by Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in a glittering, elaborate ceremony at the Jerusalem City Hall. The ceremony was billed as part of the “First Annual Defense Aerospace Homeland Security Mission of Peace to Israel and Jordan.”

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7 §ion=0&article=44927&d=14&m=5&y=200...


The Chain of Command


http://slate.msn.com/id/2100683 /

Bush knew about it. Rumsfeld ordered it. His undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Steven Cambone , administered it. Cambone's deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, instructed Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been executing the program involving al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, to go do the same at Abu Ghraib.

Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800th Military Brigade, that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence.

Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, also seems to have had a hand in this sequence, as did William Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, learned about the improper interrogations--from the International Committee of the Red Cross, if not from anyone else--but said or did nothing about it for two months, until it was clear that photographs were coming out. Meanwhile, those involved in the interrogations included officers from military intelligence, the CIA, and private contractors, as well as the mysterious figures from the Pentagon's secret operation.








If I gave you everything that I owned and asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you?
Or take me for a ride, and strip me of everything including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys
And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
The low spark of high-heeled boys

traffic

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 21, 2004—On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet provided President Bush with a Top Secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix"—a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly prohibited political assassinations.

According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush's counselor, Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan Commission, merely found Sharon "indirectly" responsible for the slaughter and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.

The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the law was severely amended and the extraterritoriality provisions were curtailed.

Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla. Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130 transport plane. In full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of the Lebanese army and others, SLA troops under the command of Major Saad Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of the investigation of Sharon.

more
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052104Madsen/052104madsen.html






If I gave you everything that I owned and asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you?
Or take me for a ride, and strip me of everything including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys
And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
The low spark of high-heeled boys

Traffic

BY Michael Hardy
May 28, 2004 Printing? Use this version.


"CACI wins $45 million deal"
CACI International Inc. could be barred from future federal contracts, following revelations that Army officials hired prison interrogators for Iraq from CACI using a computer services contract that the Interior Department administered.

Now General Services Administration officials have requested additional information from company officials and could potentially debar the firm, CACI officials said.

According to company officials, the delivery orders in question came through GSA Schedule 70, a contract designated for information technology purchases, and were issued by Interior officials at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

J.P. "Jack" London, CACI's chief executive officer, said that the company is cooperating with the government to answer questions. London said in a written statement that if company officials used the GSA contract improperly, "we will take immediate action to rectify the situation."

CACI acquired the contract when it acquired the assets of Premier Technology Group Inc. in May 2003, according to CACI's statement.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a watchdog group, said that the attention to CACI is politically driven because the Iraqi prison abuse scandal is making headlines. Other contractors have far worse records and should be the focus of GSA's attention, said POGO's executive director, Danielle Brian.

~snip~
more: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0524/web-caci-05-28-04.asp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WASHINGTON - Army civilian interrogators under scrutiny in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal are working under a contract designed originally for information technology services and overseen by the Interior Department.


Now Interior's internal watchdog is investigating the arrangement. The department, which normally oversees national parks and American Indian matters, has blocked the Army from ordering new services under the contract.


The confusing arrangement adds another layer to the uncertainty over who was in control of Iraqi prisoners and what rules governed treatment of the detainees. Army contract officials are supposed to keep contract workers in line and recommend punishment, Interior spokesman Frank Quimby said Tuesday.


The Army told Interior last week, however, that it had had no problem with the way CACI International Inc. was handling the work, even though an internal Army report has accused at least one CACI interrogator of participating in abuses.

~snip~
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=693&e=7&u=/ap...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
and one from a fellow DU'er
MAY 31, 2004

DEFENSE

The Other U.S. Military
The private contractor biz is hot, vast, and largely unregulated. Is it out of control?

Almost since the first American tank rolled into Iraq last year, the role of private military contractors has been controversial. When Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. (HAC ), billed the government hundreds of millions of dollars to support the invasion, critics griped that it was receiving preferential treatment because of ties to the Bush Administration -- and was overcharging to boot. When the bodies of four security guards employed by Blackwater USA were mutilated in Fallujah in March while escorting food deliveries to U.S. troops, Marines laid siege to the city, igniting widespread violence. And when a classified U.S. military report came to light in late April alleging abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, private military contractors (PMCS) found themselves in the center of a firestorm.

<snip>

TAKING A PLEDGE. Contractor problems are not confined to the headline-making security and interrogation side of the business. The CPA's new inspector general, Stuart W. Bowen, is currently auditing five of the biggest contractors in Iraq -- Fluor (FLR ), Parsons, Washington Group International, Perini (PCR ), and KBR --to make sure they are following U.S. laws and codes of ethics, BusinessWeek has learned. "Our intent is to deter waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure compliance with federal law," Bowen said in a phone call from Baghdad.

<snip>

BIG, BUT HOW BIG? Although many PMCs agree that the industry would benefit from increased oversight, some say Uncle Sam's proposals may go too far. Blackwater USA, based in Moyock, N.C., which has been criticized for employing former Chilean commandos trained during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, takes issue with a Defense Dept. proposal to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice to contractors. But, says Blackwater spokesman Chris Bertelli, "we have no problem with industry standards for hiring practices."

The exact size of the PMC business is difficult to determine because there is no central register of contracts, and the Defense Dept. sometimes has other agencies do its purchasing. For example, the contract with CACI International Inc. (CAI ) at Abu Ghraib prison was administered by the Interior Dept., according to The Washington Post. Still, P.W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, estimates it is a $100 billion industry with several hundred companies operating in more than 100 countries.

<more...>



----------------------------------------------------------------------

and the fact that they're laying the blame at the door of low-level soldiers seems to indicate that Bushco is more concerned about the bottom line of the contractors than they are about human rights abuses. Check out all the wheeling and dealing the two civilian contractors have going on and the impact of the prison scandal on certain deals. Titan is in bed with none other than Lockheed Martin (on whose board sat Mrs. Cheney until the year 2000 iirc).

Did the military leak the prison pics to get the mercenaries out of Iraq? The Pentagon is covering for the mercs! It seems as though the US wants to export "peacekeeping forces" around the globe and this scandal doesn't bode well for certain portfolios if the investigations leak over into the private sector.



http://inqit.com/files/CACI_International.html


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20040505-9999-1b5titan.html

Abuses in Iraq may impact Titan buyout

By Bruce V. Bigelow
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 5, 2004

Anxiety about San Diego-based Titan Corp.'s sale to Lockheed Martin surfaced again yesterday among certain high-risk investors who worried that political fallout over Iraqi prisoner abuses could inject new uncertainties into the proposed deal.

An internal Pentagon report, which was available yesterday on the Internet, said at least one translator employed by Titan was involved in alleged abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Another translator involved was also identified in one part of the report as working for Titan but in other parts he was said to be working for CAIC International, an Arlington, Va. defense firm.

While largely a political issue, Wall Street analysts acknowledged that some high-risk investors are growing concerned that the public outcry over the abuses could somehow affect Lockheed's pending buyout of Titan.



Firms seek to sell U.N. on privatized peacekeeping
By Traci Hukill, National Journal


Last month, thinking that peace talks in Nairobi, Kenya, might finally yield an end to Sudan's 20-year civil war, Doug Brooks got on the telephone and started calling his contacts at private military companies. What would it cost, he wanted to know, to stage an effective peacekeeping operation in Sudan, a vast African country that is one-quarter the size of the United States?

The answer came back: for one year, taking advantage of the treeless terrain to use a combination of high-tech aerial surveillance equipment and a relatively low number (3,000) of U.N. blue-helmet troops, $30 million. Forty million dollars, if the firms handled the peacekeeping payroll.


This most likely represents significant savings. Although the United Nations has issued no cost estimate for a Sudan mission, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed spending $418 million on a 5,600-man mission to Burundi, a small Central African nation the size of Maryland.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/05/05/2003154221

Pentagon has not told companies of employees' abuses
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , WASHINGTON
Wednesday, May 05, 2004,Page 7


More than two months after a classified Army report found that two contract workers were implicated in the abuse of Iraqis at a prison outside Baghdad, the companies that employ them say that they have heard nothing from the Pentagon, and that they have not removed any employees from Iraq.

For one of the employees, the Army report recommended "termination of employment" and revocation of his security clearance. For the other, it urged an official reprimand and review of his security clearance.

But J.P. London, chief executive of CACI, one of the companies involved, said in an interview yesterday that "we have not received any information or direction from the client regarding our work in country -- no charges, no communications, no citations, no calls to appear at the Pentagon."