‘Contractors’ Archives
National Security Contracts into Three-Ring Circus
by David Phinney June 21, 2013 -- A contractor vetted a contractor to work for a contractor that is contracted to the U.S. National Security Agency – all for the security of U.S. taxpayers that the contractors are being paid to sometimes apparently surveil. This dizzying U.S. contractor cluster f#%k is becoming familiar routine [...]
Investigating the State Department’s Internal Investigations
by David Phinney Here we go again. Possible cover ups of alleged wrong doing by the U.S. State Department in Iraq and beyond are making the news. This is becoming a repeated phenomenon at the department’s Foggy Bottom Washington, D.C., headquarters dating back to the height of the occupation of Iraq. Past allegations of cover ups and [...]
Hiring National Security Contractors Is Dangerous Business
When high-level government officials are reduced to blaming a single, low-level contractor employee for upending U.S. intelligence operations, then those high-level officials have a big problem. The troublemaker, Edward Snowden, was just one of over a million intelligence private employees with government security clearances. A high school [...]
Edward Snowden Opens Can of Worms
Today, Edward Snowden claimed he is responsible for leaking the goods on the architecture of the U.S. PRISM program, an international surveillance program that monitors Internet traffic en masse. The bold, ballsy admission opens a frothy can of wormy issues – from international relations between China and the U.S. to the nature of U.S. [...]
Marking Up The Reconstruction
The Civilian Police Training: A top-priority Bush administration project for training Iraqi police by DynCorp is now mired in controversy for unexplained cost overruns, questionable work orders and much more. Congress, the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and [...]
Escape from Iraq: Filipino Migrant Worker Recounts Nightmare Flight
He Didn't Want to Go: Ramil Autencio thought he was traveling to Kuwait for a job in a luxury hotel. The employer, a major Kuwait contractor working for the US government, instead pressured him to work on US military camps in Iraq. The father of two recounts his escape with more than 40 others during interview in Manila. He says he never wanted [...]
Forced Labor in Iraq and State Department Mutiny
by David Phinney Nov. 1, 2007 -- Interesting that State Department employees are up in arms about the prospect of being forced to work in Iraq at the new $740-million embassy, aka, "Fort Apache on Steroids": At the same time, the the State Department's own inspector general and trafficking in persons division (along with US news editors) [...]
The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad
by David Phinney Nov. 1, 2007 -- William Langewiesche takes a Johnny-come-lately look in Vanity Fair with something of a jaundiced view. Of course, the project is not on budget or on time. It was originally scheduled to be finished by June 2007 and cost $592-million. The project is now being estimated to cost $740 million and remains under [...]
New Military Support Contract ‘Improperly Awarded’
by David Phinney Nov. 1, 2007 -- A new 10-year, $150 billion arrangement for providing logistical support U.S. troops around the world should be reconsidered, according to a lead government agency charged with reviewing federal contract awards. The contracts assigned the work to KBR, Fluor and DynCorp, but the General Accountability Office is [...]
Investigators Become Lapdogs?
Surveying the federal government's Inspector General system, an independent practice of checks and balances within the federal government, Rolling Stone suggests that President bush has turned watchdogs into lapdogs: The administration is more interested in turning the watchdogs into lap dogs. Just as he politicized every other facet of government [...]