SAIC and the Justice Department

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Matt Carmody   17 January 2005

You just can't make this stuff up.

The company that recently took $170 million taxpayer dollars to upgrade the FBI's computer systems and then didn't deliver as promised was a weird choice for the contract in the first place.

SAIC has extensive government contracts, yet the company's history with the very agency it was to provide computer services to should have set off some alarms. Here is what Lynn Landes wrote about SAIC at Dissidentvoice.com on August 19, 2003:

"The federal government, its main customer, often doesn't want the public to know what the company [SAIC] is doing and, as one of the nation's largest employee-owned corporations, it escapes investor scrutiny," writes AP correspondent Elliot Spagat, in a July 26, 2003 article.

J. Robert Beyster founded SAIC on February 3, 1969, "with a couple of consulting contracts, one from Los Alamos and one from Brookhaven National Labs," according to the SAIC website. Today, SAIC has racked up more than $5.9 billion in annual revenues.

Bev Harris and her investigative team have dug up some interesting facts about SAIC. It seems that SAIC has had its share of legal troubles.

In a 1995 article in the Web Review, editor Stephen Pizzo paints a disturbing picture of SAIC. "In 1990 SAIC was indicted by the Justice Department on 10 felony counts for fraud in its management of a Superfund toxic cleanup site. (SAIC pleaded guilty.)

In 1993 the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an F15 fighter contract.

In May 1995, the same month SAIC purchased NSI (Network Solutions Inc.), the company settled a suit that charged it had lied about security system tests it conducted for a Treasury Department currency plant in Fort Worth, TX.

"Is it just me or does this relationship stink from the beginning? It's kind of like the Good Housekeeping column, "Can this marriage be saved?" only more tawdry.

For further proof of the overall weirdness of the choice of this company to do the needed work for DoJ consider this: SAIC is the company that is supposed to vet Diebold's election machines country-wide. We all know how well that went on 2 November and we will have ample time to remember it during the next four years.

Perhaps most telling in the choice of this company for the contract with DoJ is the pedigree it carries. It's probably no coincidence that the company is privately owned and, therefore, not required to disclose its particulars to the SEC. With a group like the following collecting company paychecks I would shy away from the glare of disclosure too.

Here, again, from the Landes article:

Recently, SAIC got the contract to assist other corporations, including Northrop Grumman, in training of the Iraqi Army.

The specter of corporations, littered with ex-CIA types, that both control the voting systems and train the armies of countries around the world, is an emerging and frightening reality.

"Currently on SAIC's board is ex-CIA director Bobby Ray Inman, director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the CIA, and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the OC (*Orange County) Weekly, "Inman worked at the highest levels of American intelligence during an era (President Ronald Reagan) when it displayed a stunning lack of it. Inman's achievements include: failing to predict the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union; prolonging violent, useless civil wars in Central America; and giving arms to terrorists in exchange for hostages (Iran Contra)."

"During the Bush administration, Inman, Perry and Deutch - while directors of Science Applications (SAIC), were also members of the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), an advisory group reporting to the President and the director of Central Intelligence, which deals with production, review and coordination of foreign intelligence," reports the Crypt. Both Inman and Deutch were former Directors of the CIA. William J. Perry was also a former Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration.

SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients. DARPA is the controversial Department of Defense (DOD) subsidiary, which until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA was prepared to trade "futures" in terrorist attacks. DARPA has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has civil libertarians in an uproar.

And, silly me, I actually thought that there was a chance of unseating the emperor on 2 November.

Matt Carmody
Washingtonville, NY