Essential Quotes

I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow

Science Applications International Corporation, a "stealth company" with 9,000 government contracts

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

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.

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.

Get the article here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BAR20070224&articleId=4914