SAIC -- "Washington's $8 Billion Shadow" Vanity Fair Investigative Report

[Emit]

A must read for all DUers!

Secrets
Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007

~snip~

SAIC maintains its headquarters in San Diego, but its center of gravity is in Washington, D.C. With a workforce of 44,000, it is the size of a full-fledged government agency—in fact, it is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Its anonymous glass-and-steel Washington office—a gleaming corporate box like any other—lies in northern Virginia, not far from the headquarters of the C.I.A., whose byways it knows quite well. (More than half of SAIC's employees have security clearances.) 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. The company's annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC's goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street's attention—profitability—SAIC beats the S&P 500 average. Last year ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, posted a return on revenue of 11 percent. For SAIC the figure was 11.9 percent. If "contract backlog" is any measure—that is, contracts negotiated and pending—the future seems assured. The backlog stands at $13.6 billion. That's one and a half times more than the backlog at KBR Inc., a subsidiary of the far better known government contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Halliburton Company.

~snip~

In contrast, SAIC is a body shop in the brain business. It sells human beings who have a particular expertise—expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about "information dominance" and "information warfare." If the C.I.A. needs an outside expert to quietly check whether its employees are using their computers for personal business, it calls on SAIC. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service needs new record-keeping software, it calls on SAIC. Indeed, SAIC is willing to provide expertise about almost anything at all, if there happens to be a government contract out there to pay for it—as there almost always is. Whether SAIC actually possesses all the expertise that it sells is another story.

~snip~

SAIC's friends in Washington are everywhere, and play on all sides; the connections are tightly interlocked. To cite just one example: 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. ...

~snip~

On the evening of January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower came down from the White House living quarters to the Oval Office and delivered his last address to the American people as president. This was the famous speech in which he warned against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" in the hands of what he called "the military-industrial complex"—the sturdy hybrid formed by crossbreeding American corporate interests with those of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ... As Eisenhower spoke, a quietly ambitious man on the other side of the country, John Robert Beyster, was going about his business as head of the accelerator-physics department at the General Atomic corporation, in La Jolla, California, one of many secretive companies that sprouted early in the atomic era. ... Within a decade of Eisenhower's farewell speech, Beyster would create an enterprise epitomizing the military-industrial complex that caused Eisenhower such dismay. Now, four decades later, that company epitomizes something beyond Eisenhower's worst nightmare—the "military-industrial-counterterrorism complex."

~snip~

Beyster aggressively packed his company with former generals, admirals, diplomats, spies, and Cabinet officers of every kind to fill the company's board of directors and the upper echelons of its staff. ...

Much more at link:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

[Emit]

1. SAIC wrote voting system security software for Diebold

ChoicePoint’s Ties to E-Voting Vendors
ChoicePoint has ties to electronic voting
vendors, e.g. ChoicePoint has a joint data
mining alliance with SAIC (Scientific Applications
International Corporation), and
SAIC wrote voting system security software
for Diebold. It is untenable that a truly free
country would permit the obvious conflictsof-
interest inherent in the nexus between
these three entities (ChoicePoint, SAIC &
Diebold)—who together—control election
software security programs, e-voting
equipment and personal data files on each
citizen. Whether this alliance is strategic or
merely one of convenience, where are the
safeguards to assure our citizenry that abuse
cannot result?

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/CEPN_Centralized_Voter_Reg_1.pdf

[Emit]

2. It's a long read -- but very important info. n/t

[PhilipShore]

3. SAIC = CIA front group

[techtrainer]

16. CIA'S spelled backwards

[Gabi Hayes]

4. there have been lots of discussions about SAIC. remember David Kay,

Blix backstabber, WMD apologist, who finally "saw the light"



''What David Kay is leaving out of his bio these days is that until 2002, he was VP of SAIC, a company rolling in Bush defense contracts. Kay produced "retroactive" evidence of WMDs for Bush I. Now he's Bush and Tenet's pick to get the goods...tho' he was fired in 1992 from his UN job for unethical behavior.


Like Bremer, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the cast of hardened corporate characters, David Kay is an overfed relic from a past rightwing hawk regime. Under Reagan, he was a chief scientist for the Pentagon as well as serving as a section chief for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration of the UN) from 1983 until 1991. During this time, Hans Blix - Kay's boss - who was a man of integrity, was continually pressured by first Reagan, then Bush I. to come up with 'evidence' that oil-rich Iraq posed a sufficient nuclear threat for the US to invade (and thus to capture the oil).....''


http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg107176.html



that article is inaccurate in at least one aspect, btw. Kay has no academic scientific background, as was revealed during the runup to the war

[Emit]

5. I see that many sources reveal that Kay was VP of SAIC

Some saying from 1993 to 2002.

Is this what you are referring to as an inaccuracy in the article? Just making sure I am following your critique. Thanks for the info, btw.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. no...the part about his being a scientist is inaccurate. he has a business

background, including his doctorate

the past SAIC discussions that I remember involved his background with SAIC

[Emit]

7. Oh, I don't see in the article where they say he was a scientist, per se. n/t

[Emit]

9. Scratch my last response, Gabi

I now see what you were referring to -- that is, you were referring to the article you posted, not the VF article I posted in the OP.

Anyway, yes, SAIC has been discussed on DU before, with good detail. But, I think it still important to repost about these warmongers for others who may have missed the details, especially newcomers who missed previous threads. This VF article was a pretty good summary.

Also, the fact that SAIC entered into a contract with the military to research Iranian dissident groups last year (not noted in the article, btw, but posted separately) is an important issue to be aware of as well. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=233209&mesg_id=245366

Anyway, sorry about my confusing posts. Thanks for your responses. :hi:

edited to add link

[mainer]

8. This article scared the hell out of me

I read my latest issue of VANITY FAIR last night. Yeah, okay, I was most interested in the Hollywood photos, but then I came across this article about SAIC and was stunned.

The taxes of EVERY AMERICAN who earns $100,000 or less goes to this mysterious company? A company we've never heard about?

[malaise]

13. The politburo is

live and well. You should be scared.

[donkeyotay]

10. Another revolving door of corruption

Our representatives turn into lobbyists and the military brass turn into private contractors. We have less and less say about what our country is and what it does. We're pretty much just an ant farm now, being milked, but of course our actual output can't keep up with the expense. If this crooked operation gave a rat's ass about the troops, they'd cancel a few of these contracts and take care of our nationalized military, the one they like to wave the flag over.

[Coexist]

11. kick - fascinating article

I can't believe this isn't on the Greatest

[donkeyotay]

12. another kick nt

[Blackhatjack]

14. This is the twin stepchild of campaign finance reform --getting $ out of Mil Industrial Def Compex

As long as they are getting $ billions in public funds, they will be virtually invincible to any meaningful investigation and reform.

And those empowered to investigate them will 'tainted' by the campaign contributions the military industrial complex has at its disposal.

The problems are irretrievably linked....

[Jcrowley]

15. Good story

SAIC was instrumental in Bushcrime political victory in 2000.