officially freaked out now

[starroute]

59. Then here's a little more on Woolsey, just for reference

I want to emphasize again that I'm not saying any of these people are directly tied in with Woolsey -- just that he's the poster child for how the system of interlocking military, intelligence, and profit-oriented interests works.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0511-07.htm

Published on Sunday, May 11, 2003 by the Observer/UK
Bush Ally Set to Profit from the War on Terror

James Woolsey, former CIA boss and influential adviser to President George Bush, is a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the 'war on terror', The Observer can reveal.

Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a key member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is a director of the Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital. The company was set up three months after the terrorist attacks on New York and sees the events and aftermath of September 11 as a business opportunity which 'offer[s] substantial promise for homeland security investment'. . . .

The involvement of one of the most prominent hawks in Washington with a company standing to cash in on the fear of potential terror attacks will raise eyebrows in some quarters.

In 2001 US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sent Woolsey to Europe, where he argued the case for links existing between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. He was one of the main proponents of the theory that the anthrax letter attacks in America were supported by Iraq's former dictator.


http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/14/nation/na-advocates14

Advocates of War Now Profit From Iraq's Reconstruction
July 14, 2004

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country's strategic interests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, including Iraq. Meanwhile, he works for two private companies that do business in Iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services.

Woolsey said in an interview that he was not directly involved with the companies' Iraq-related ventures. But as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, he was a featured speaker in May 2003 at a conference co-sponsored by the company at which about 80 corporate executives and others paid up to $1,100 to hear about the economic outlook and business opportunities in Iraq.

Before the war, Woolsey was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization set up in 2002 at the request of the White House to help build public backing for war in Iraq. He also wrote about a need for regime change and sat on the CIA advisory board and the Defense Policy Board, whose unpaid members have provided advice on Iraq and other matters to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Woolsey is part of a small group that shows with unusual clarity the interlocking nature of the way the insider system can work. Moving in the same social circles, often sitting together on government panels and working with like-minded think tanks and advocacy groups, they wrote letters to the White House urging military action in Iraq, formed organizations that pressed for invasion and pushed legislation that authorized aid to exile groups.