Shaha Riza, After the World Bank

Joe Cannon has some interesting speculation on another reason why Wolfowitz might have given his girlfriend Shaha Riza a huge raise to leave the World Bank and go work with Cheney's daughter at "The Foundation for the Future", in which he tells us that The Foundation (translates to al Qaeda in Arabic, he says) hasn't really done anything with its multi-millions of dollars in the two years it's been in operation. The Foundation has plans, however, to open a branch office in Beirut.

At that point, Joe takes a look at two rich and powerful Lebanese families, connected to drugs (I told you - that's always in the picture) and....the Bush family. Surprise!

One of the Lebanese wrote a book in which he called George W. the Messiah. You figure it out. Another, Joe says, has been linked to the Skyway drug plane.

An FBI agent, Darlene Novinger, made a drug case against one of the Lebanese families which she claimed was "deep-sixed by the Bush family." It seems, from a little Googling, that she went public with some information she had about young George and Jeb and a cocaine deal in 1987, after which, her husband was murdered. Her father died after she appeared on a radio show in 1993, and Darlene herself died of cancer early in 2003.

Bonus link: Jeb Bush, Florida flight school, and 9/11

The Arrogance of Paul Wolfowitz

Since the old combsucker left DoD for the World Bank, he hasn't been in such public view, and therefore, many of us have tended to put him out of our minds. Now that he's back in the media viewfinder, we get to take a fresh look at his egregious behavior as it was back then and continues (and why should we imagine it would be otherwise?). Sidney Blumenthal reminds us of his litany of offenses (the least of which may be "grandiosity, cronyism, self-dealing and lying ") in a Salon article.

Blumenthal reminds us that SAIC (the company getting megabuck contracts from the US government) was ordered by Wolfowitz underling Doug Feith to give a contract to Wolfowitz girlfriend Shaha Riza, and points out that Riza, a British citizen, was given access to areas that require a security clearance in the US government, without having been given that clearance, and without even the special qualifications necessary to receive one (which, I suppose is why she didn't have one) - an unprecedented move. (Clever WB staffers have donned Riza: Wolfowitz' "neoconcubine".)

It turns out that the old combsucker not only got Riza her new job at State with her fantastic salary, but part of the deal was that in her job reviews, her performance would automatically be "outstanding". The position she was given was with Liz Cheney (yes, the daughter of Himself), and Karen Hughes (Texan, W's communications czarina while he was governor and counselor during his presidency).

Wolfowitz insulated himself at the World Bank from the career staff. There, as at the Pentagon, Wolfowitz pushed aside the professionals and replaced them with a small band of politically reliable assistants. Wolfowitz rewarded them, too, on his own authority, with enormous tax-free salaries.

Standard operating procedure for the New Lords of World Order, sometimes referred to as Bushies.

Consider Kevin Kellems, his public affairs officer at the Pentagon, who had guided conservative media from that perch and is known as "keeper of the comb," for having been the person to hand Wolfowitz the infamous comb he licked before slicking down his hair in the Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 9/11." Kellems was given a salary of $240,000, at least equal to what World Bank vice presidents with years of service earn.

Nice work, if you can get it.

In Re the Combsucker's Woes

Abu Spinoza (an alias) reminds us that Wolfowitz' war crimes responsibilities are being overlooked in light of his World Bank crimes. Of course, the Combsucker isn't the only one whose war crimes are being overlooked.

But this isn't a post about Iraq war crimes, so...

Early reports held that several African finance ministers were coming to Wolfowitz' defense with high praise for him. Apparently, there are some who don't quite see it that way.

"Don't try to make Africa his saving grace," Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Executive Director of Nairobi-based Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, told 50 Years is Enough. "The impact of the World Bank's policy impositions of the last 20 years still devastates us every day."

[...]

Nita Evele, a Washington-based activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, said, "Corruption and the World Bank, corruption and Paul Wolfowitz: these are not new, and are not limited to his girlfriend. Congolese in the U.S. protested outside the Bank on Saturday – a protest that called for Wolfowitz's resignation. But our initial and overriding purpose was to call attention to the way the World Bank, under Wolfowitz's direction, has facilitated the turning over of our country's vast mineral resources to multinational corporations for a song.

  AllAfrica.com article

Indeed, that, I believe fulfills the unstated mission of the World Bank.

SAIC, a cauldron of slimy dealing itself (see previous posts), is distancing itself from Wolfowitz, saying that the Defense Department's policy division "directed" SAIC to hire the Combsucker's girlfriend Shaha Riza as a consultant. (Rats in a cage syndrome?)

As to whether WB General Counsel Ana Palacio (whose immediate response to the accusation against Wolfowitz regarding Ms. Riza's outrageous fortune since the Combsucker took over as president was to call for the head of the leaker) can perform an unbiased investigation, several WB staffers think not. I'd say they're probably right, considering that Ms. Palacio is also a Wolfowitz appointee. At any rate, there's a lengthy intranet discussion amongst WB staffers (here in aspx format) with several comments about Palacio and Riza's friendship. One comment from April 10 states:

Ms. Ana Palacio and Ms. Shaha Riza are personal friends, call each other on the cell phone, have dinner regularly, and see each other socially. Should Ms. Palacio be in charge of the investigation? My take is no. I urge the Board to consider the above information, for the credibility of this Institution.

Apparently, the rotten stench of the investigation goes even deeper than Ms. Palacio.

[R]eports are circulating that Williams & Connolly LLP, the law firm World Bank General Counsel Ana Palacio hired to investigate the leak of Board documents to Fox News earlier this year, has close ties to Paul Wolfowitz. "On April 12 staff learned that Robert Barnett, a lawyer at Williams & Connolly LLP, is Paul Wolfowitz's personal lawyer," the blog wolfowitzmustresign has posted.

  Bank Information Center post

And finally, amongst the WB staffer comments on the Bank's intranet site, there's this gem:

if the [bank's] president stopped shooting himself in the foot that often...he would not have that many holes in his socks.

AP photo

Paul Wolfowitz playing the Wolfowitz Blues
on a Wolfowitz Harmonica
- aka a comb

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What's With SAIC? - Part III

Following up on an earlier post about Wolfowitz and Riza, I'm doing what I can to try to piece together some interesting "coincidences". The Wolfowitz/Riza scandal has a connection to the Attorney Purge scandal, with the crossing juncture being voter registration. And the rarely mentioned company SAIC is not getting the attention it deserves.

Let me first go back and fill in some background from a post I made back in January of '05 (on another blog service) called FBI just can't catch a break.

A new FBI computer program designed [by SAIC] to help agents share information to ward off terrorist attacks may have to be scrapped [...]

  Yahoo article

The project was originally scheduled to be finished by the end of 2003. It seems that the Justice Dept had tried using the same computer program and scrapped it, too. Why would the FBI take on a program (Virtual Case File software), costing upwards of $600 million to put in place, that the DoJ already decided was no good?

And then there's the failed contract with the NSA...

SAIC won the initial $280 million, 26-month contract to design and create this [computer] system, called Trailblazer. Four years and more than a billion dollars later, the effort has been abandoned. [...] Happily for SAIC, it will get the chance for a comeback in the second half. The company has been awarded the contract for a revised Trailblazer program called ExecuteLocus. The contract is worth $361 million.

  Vanity Fair article March 2007

Amazing, isn't it?

But, that's not all. The Defense Department also had some problems with a SAIC software contract.

March 25th, 2004

Defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. has agreed to pay $484,500 to settle allegations it violated the False Claims Act when designing a computer system program for the U.S. Department of Defense.

  Corp Watch article

The allegations included misrepresentation of project progress and overpayment for services.

SAIC also fell down on its contracts in Iraq to create an Iraqi Media Network (modeled on the BBC). That particular contract was a $15 million giveaway with no competitive bidding, nor even an acquisition plan. It was awarded in March of 2003, and by September, the cost had risen to $82.3 million. Ooops.

At the time I wrote that '05 post, I had wondered "how this company keeps getting contracts."

Quick review: Wolfowitz was Deputy Defense Secretary in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and until his appointment to the World Bank presidency in 2005, during which time he was intimate with Ms. Riza, who was consulting for SAIC while working for the World Bank (and without the requisite permission from the Bank to do so).

Who are the people at SAIC who are reaming the U.S. taxpayers, aided and abetted by the U.S. government?

Christopher "Ryan" Henry left a senior position at SAIC in February 2003 to become principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy.

[...]

Executive vice president for Federal Business and director Duane P. Andrews served as assistant secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, when he joined SAIC.

  Public Integrity article

Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of defense, whose confirmation hearings lasted all of a day, is a former member of SAIC's board of directors.

  Vanity Fair article

The Associated Press describes Science Applications International Inc. (SAIC) as "the most influential company most people have never heard of." The Asia Times calls it "the most mysterious and feared of the big 10 defense giants."

[...]

The company's ranks overflow with former or retired government person, many from the military and intelligence agencies. Much of SAIC's work is highly classified.

[...]

[William] Owens also served as president, chief operating officer and vice chair of SAIC. And, Owens is a member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's internal think-tank, the Defense Policy Board.

[...]

At any given point in time, SAIC's board of directors represents a Who's Who of former military and intelligence officials.

  Veterans for Peace 10/03 article

SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the first place, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. Then, as war became inevitable, SAIC secured contracts for a broad range of operations in soon-to-be-occupied Iraq. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission that was set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong.

  Vanity Fair article

SAIC has a long line of fraud and deception charges (which are enumerated in the Vanity Fair article), but still gets the big government contracts.

Now, let's shift gears just slightly. SAIC is also involved in the electronic voting business.

"The American vote count is controlled by three major corporate players, Diebold, ESS, and Sequoia. There's a fourth, SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies, all four of them, are hard-wired into the Bush power structure and they have been given God knows how many millions of dollars by the Bush regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines that were just used in the 2004 election.

  Ratical article

These ostensibly competitive businesses interconnect with one another and with major corporate sponsors, especially the famed Carlyle Group, of the Bush administration. Their people are his people, so to speak. And vice versa.

  Reason to Freedom article

Bush appointed Wolfowitz to the World Bank presidency in 2005, at which time, he felt it necessary to move his girlfriend out of the World Bank offices and over to the State Department, while still keeping her on the Bank payroll (with a fat raise, $47,300 - 35.5% - to $180,000, followed by a second rase of 7.5% to a total salary of $193,590 ). (Wolfowitz lied that the Bank board had approved the raise.) During the lead up to the Iraq War, and continuing, Riza at the World Bank was acting as a consultant to SAIC.

It may be coincidental, but there is also connection between the Wolfowitz/Riza story and the Attorney Purge story, and that is the issue of voter repression and control over the machinery of voting in America. While the Bushies in the DoJ were reshaping voter fraud issues to make it harder for Democratic votes to be cast and counted, the Bushies at the Defense Department were coming and going through the revolving door at SAIC, one of the top four companies in the control of the voting machines, with Mr. Wolfowitz and Ms. Riza in the middle of it.

Oh, and one more thing...

In January of 2005,

burglars managed to break into SAIC's headquarters, pry open 13 private offices, and walk out with one desktop-computer hard drive and four laptops. By SAIC's account, the computers contained personal data on thousands of present and past employees, presumably including the company's many former C.I.A. operatives, N.S.A. executives, and Pentagon officials. To date, the burglary remains unsolved.

[...]

[T]the building "is patrolled by DOD certified security" and that "the interior lights are on motion sensors and would have been activated by the suspects."

  Vanity Fair article

[ed: the Vanity Fair article has an in-depth look at SAIC's history. And there's another comprehensive account at Scoop.]

And don't expect SAIC to be suffering any time soon, not even with a change in administrations.

As one former SAIC manager observed in a recent blog posting: "My observation is that the impact of national elections on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases. SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership in Washington."

  Vanity Fair article

Although it's possible their interest in the voting machine business might indicate they figure their chances are more favorable with a Republican administration.

And the revolving door never stops spinning. One of the biggest contracts ever for SAIC is in the works right now. It's for a Pentagon program called Future Combat Systems, which is described as "a complex plan to turn the U.S. Army into a lighter, more lethal, more mobile force" and also as "the most difficult integration program ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Defense." The contract runs into the billions of dollars. The man who helped craft this program at the Pentagon was Lieutenant General Daniel R. Zanini. Zanini recently retired from the army, and he now has a new job. Can you guess where it might be?

P.S. A bit off topic, but speaking to the question of whether Wolfowitz should be permitted to remain president of the World Bank, and indeed whether the U.S. should be the appointer of Bank presidents, the old combsucker denied a loan to Uzbekistan after that country kicked the U.S. military off the Uzbek base used for operations in Afghanistan. Apparently, the gross human rights abuses of the Uzbek government weren't problematic enough, but the refusal to let us keep the base was (although Wolfowitz claimed the reason for denying the loan was indeed human rights violations - interestingly timed).

Since taking office, Wolfowitz has spearheaded a campaign to fight corruption, cronyism and promote good governance in Bank projects and loans in developing nations.

  Common Dreams article

It would seem he's just the man to do it. At least he's intimately familiar with the problem.

Tomorrow, I'll try to get to a post on the rest of the story about Paul Wolfowitz' egregious behavior at the World Bank. Come back then.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

A Can of Worms

You won't be surprised to find out that Wolfowitz' girlfriend was doing work for SAIC, and apparently against World Bank rules. Check it out at World Bank President blog.

And while we're at it. Let's not forget what we know about SAIC:

Meanwhile, SAIC is referred to a “shadowy defense contractor.” They have gotten into the vote count game both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney, and Carlyle Group honcho Frank Carlucci and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates [ed: now Defense Secretary and Iran-Contra figure]. SAIC’s history of fraud charges and security “lapses” haven’t prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors, and will doubtless encounter few obstacles in its entrance into the vote counting business.

  Nov 2004 Online Journal article

SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion.

  Current Era article

AP photo

A dated Village Voice article has some more info on the girlfriend and her "promotion".