Typical Bushite, Stephen Cambone's New Employer Get's $30 Million Dollar Contract
The corruption and deviousness of Bushites knows no bounds. Consider Stephen Cambone. He was the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post created in 2003. Cambone was also known as Donald Rumsfeld's "chief henchman." Orders to soften up aka torture Abu Ghraib prisoners for intelligence questioning appear to have come from his office.
From Wikipedia, "On 10 November 2006, the German Federal Government announced that it had decided, within the legal framework of universal jurisdiction, to permit the war crimes prosecution of Stephen A. Cambone for his alleged role in condoning the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison during his tenure from 2001 to 2003 as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence." This was subsequently withdrawn since the alleged crimes did not take place on German soil.
So where is this pillar of morality and ethics, now?
According to an article in CorpWatch (which does its usual excellent investigative reporting of solid facts, read the whole thing) via Cursor, "A Pentagon office that claims to monitor terrorist threats to U.S. military bases in North America -- and was once reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists -- has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to a company that employs one of Donald Rumsfeld’s former aides. That aide, Stephen Cambone, helped create the very office that issued the contract.
"On January 7, QinetiQ (pronounced “kinetic”) North America (QNA), a major British-owned defense and intelligence contractor based in McLean, Virginia, announced that its Mission Solutions Group, formerly Analex Corporation, had just signed a five-year, $30 million contract to provide a range of unspecified “security services” to the Pentagon’s Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office, known as CIFA."
Sweet, isn't it? And just coincidence that the company was awarded the $30 million contract two months after Cambone was hired. Yeah, right.
"QinetiQ’s main reason for hiring Stephen Cambone was the fact that he had held the unprecedented job of commanding the full spectrum of defense intelligence agencies controlled by the Pentagon....
"He also oversaw CIFA, which he helped set up in 2003 and transformed into one of the U.S. government’s largest collectors of domestic intelligence. Despite occasional criticism from the U.S. Congress for spying on ordinary U.S. citizens, it has thrived at the Pentagon during the administrations of both Donald Rumsfeld as well as Robert Gates, the current secretary of defense."
Forget about the Constitution, folks.
"Cambone was the chief architect of Rumsfeld’s so-called “transformation” policies at the Pentagon, which fused data flowing from those agencies into the Pentagon’s high-tech war machine. The decisions he made greatly reduced the Pentagon’s acquisitions of large weapons systems like aircraft carriers and radically increased its purchases of space-age war technologies such as communications systems, sensors, robots, low-flying satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
"It is precisely these technologies that QinetiQ produces."
That incestuous government-military-defense industry revolving door keeps turning and turning.
"By joining QinetiQ, less than a year after he resigned from the Pentagon, Cambone has been hired to implement the very policies he helped pioneer at the Pentagon, not as a public servant but as a private businessman benefiting from taxpayer dollars. And with Cambone in the driver’s seat in northern Virginia, QinetiQ is set to build on its already thriving business to become one of the premier suppliers of technology to the “intelligence enterprise” that Cambone built."
In Cambone's case, rather than the driver's seat at this military-industrial complex job, perhaps a more fitting position might be in the dock at the Hague.
Hopefully, a Democratic president and new Democratic members of Congress will do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon and among defense contractors. Real oversight and accountability should be at the top of a long list. But, don't hold your breath.
From Wikipedia, "On 10 November 2006, the German Federal Government announced that it had decided, within the legal framework of universal jurisdiction, to permit the war crimes prosecution of Stephen A. Cambone for his alleged role in condoning the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison during his tenure from 2001 to 2003 as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence." This was subsequently withdrawn since the alleged crimes did not take place on German soil.
So where is this pillar of morality and ethics, now?
According to an article in CorpWatch (which does its usual excellent investigative reporting of solid facts, read the whole thing) via Cursor, "A Pentagon office that claims to monitor terrorist threats to U.S. military bases in North America -- and was once reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists -- has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to a company that employs one of Donald Rumsfeld’s former aides. That aide, Stephen Cambone, helped create the very office that issued the contract.
"On January 7, QinetiQ (pronounced “kinetic”) North America (QNA), a major British-owned defense and intelligence contractor based in McLean, Virginia, announced that its Mission Solutions Group, formerly Analex Corporation, had just signed a five-year, $30 million contract to provide a range of unspecified “security services” to the Pentagon’s Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office, known as CIFA."
Sweet, isn't it? And just coincidence that the company was awarded the $30 million contract two months after Cambone was hired. Yeah, right.
"QinetiQ’s main reason for hiring Stephen Cambone was the fact that he had held the unprecedented job of commanding the full spectrum of defense intelligence agencies controlled by the Pentagon....
"He also oversaw CIFA, which he helped set up in 2003 and transformed into one of the U.S. government’s largest collectors of domestic intelligence. Despite occasional criticism from the U.S. Congress for spying on ordinary U.S. citizens, it has thrived at the Pentagon during the administrations of both Donald Rumsfeld as well as Robert Gates, the current secretary of defense."
Forget about the Constitution, folks.
"Cambone was the chief architect of Rumsfeld’s so-called “transformation” policies at the Pentagon, which fused data flowing from those agencies into the Pentagon’s high-tech war machine. The decisions he made greatly reduced the Pentagon’s acquisitions of large weapons systems like aircraft carriers and radically increased its purchases of space-age war technologies such as communications systems, sensors, robots, low-flying satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
"It is precisely these technologies that QinetiQ produces."
That incestuous government-military-defense industry revolving door keeps turning and turning.
"By joining QinetiQ, less than a year after he resigned from the Pentagon, Cambone has been hired to implement the very policies he helped pioneer at the Pentagon, not as a public servant but as a private businessman benefiting from taxpayer dollars. And with Cambone in the driver’s seat in northern Virginia, QinetiQ is set to build on its already thriving business to become one of the premier suppliers of technology to the “intelligence enterprise” that Cambone built."
In Cambone's case, rather than the driver's seat at this military-industrial complex job, perhaps a more fitting position might be in the dock at the Hague.
Hopefully, a Democratic president and new Democratic members of Congress will do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon and among defense contractors. Real oversight and accountability should be at the top of a long list. But, don't hold your breath.
Comments