Before the 2000 election, Choice-Point unit Database Technologies, under a $4 million no-bid contract under the control of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was paid to identify felons who had illegally registered to vote. The ChoicePoint outfit altogether fingered 94,000 Florida residents. As it turned out, less than 3,000 had a verifiable criminal record; almost everyone on the list had the right to vote. The tens of thousands of “purged” citizens had something in common besides their innocence: The list was, in the majority, made up of African Americans and Hispanics, overwhelmingly Democratic voters. And that determined the race in which Harris named Bush the winner by 537 votes.
In These Times article
Now what else is ChoicePoint up to (besides extracting DNA from body parts found at Ground Zero 9/11/01 for victim identification, I mean)?
[A] “little birdie” faxed me what appeared to be confidential pages from ChoicePoint’s contract with Mr. John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. A no-bid $67-million deal offered profiles on any citizen in half a dozen nations. The choice of citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint’s menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Argentinians and Mexicans.
What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11 attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates—presidents Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva of Brazil, Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador—have had the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George Bush.
When Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it.
But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela, home of President Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Chávez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it’s jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chávez won office by a majority of the vote. Or maybe it’s the oil. Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq’s. In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chávez’s political party, was unaware that his nation’s citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief.
If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chávez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven’t used the lists that way. The PR man didn’t say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it. Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chávez’s recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. What was practiced in Florida, without ChoicePoint’s knowledge, could be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and so on. Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror…or a war on democracy?
What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11 attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates—presidents Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva of Brazil, Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador—have had the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George Bush.
When Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it.
But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela, home of President Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Chávez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it’s jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chávez won office by a majority of the vote. Or maybe it’s the oil. Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq’s. In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chávez’s political party, was unaware that his nation’s citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief.
If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chávez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven’t used the lists that way. The PR man didn’t say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it. Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chávez’s recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. What was practiced in Florida, without ChoicePoint’s knowledge, could be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and so on. Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror…or a war on democracy?
I think we know the answer to that.
But wait. There's more.
You may recall Wackenhut, the jails-R-us guys who got caught running the illicit spying operation on Alaska oil industry whistleblowers.
The man who headed Wackenhut’s operations in Alaska shifted to Venezuela in 1991 where, according to Spy magazine, he ran a “black” information (i.e., disinformation) campaign against the government. Currently, the company has a contract to protect the U.S. embassy, a delicate job after our State Department’s applauding a coup against the elected Chávez government.
...And here the darkness descends. Wackenhut says its rent-a-spies acted legally for a client they cannot name. Is it credible to believe that Wackenhut, doing sensitive security work for the U.S. ambassador, could conduct operations, legal or not, which could provoke a foreign power? Indeed, a plotter on [a secret tape recording] says, “All of you must be invisible with regard to everything that is related to the American embassy.”
What exactly is Wackenhut up to? And how does the Bush crew use or misuse ChoicePoint’s lists of Latin electorates?
The man who headed Wackenhut’s operations in Alaska shifted to Venezuela in 1991 where, according to Spy magazine, he ran a “black” information (i.e., disinformation) campaign against the government. Currently, the company has a contract to protect the U.S. embassy, a delicate job after our State Department’s applauding a coup against the elected Chávez government.
...And here the darkness descends. Wackenhut says its rent-a-spies acted legally for a client they cannot name. Is it credible to believe that Wackenhut, doing sensitive security work for the U.S. ambassador, could conduct operations, legal or not, which could provoke a foreign power? Indeed, a plotter on [a secret tape recording] says, “All of you must be invisible with regard to everything that is related to the American embassy.”
What exactly is Wackenhut up to? And how does the Bush crew use or misuse ChoicePoint’s lists of Latin electorates?
Indeed, Wackenhut and ChoicePoint may be the future of "shadow" government intelligence - why not? Everything else has been privatized. And the legitimate government agencies don't seem to be pleasing BushCo at this moment. How about just going around them and using private organizations with no accountability, much like we do the private military companies we are hiring in Iraq? (Of course, there are a few bugs that need to be worked out, but the digital camera ban ought to fix some of those.)
As Palast asks, "How do we challenge the new privateers in espionage who can go for Mr. Ashcroft or Mr. Bush where prudence or the law tells them not to?"
I think we slept too long on this trip, Rip.
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