The CIA obtained a confidential email to Congress

[Octafish]

46. Da Goods

Dianne Feinstein

War profiteer and war criminal

by Gerry Bello
July 5, 2013

EXCERPT...

Feinstein's political fortunes rest not on representing the human rights values of her base in San Francisco, but on the considerable fortune of her husband, investment banker Richard Blum. This fortune, although technically separated from hers by various trusts, has been greatly enhanced by the war on terror. Blum's war profiteering is anchored by his Blum Capital group, which owns major defense contractor URS. Blum also has ownership interest in a defunct cargo airline with defense department contracts, Astar Cargo, and a major construction firm with major contracts for the military as well as civilian reconstruction contracts with Iraq.


URS's position as a major defense contractor was secured by its purchase of EG&G from the Carlyle Group in 2002 and re-branding the company URS Federal Services. The Free Press has a list of all the DoD contracts that URS is party to as a prime or subcontractor. The list, which was downloaded from publicly accessible government computers is so incomprehensibly huge our IT department custom built a computer to crunch the data. For instance, URS is party to 12147 contracts that we could find with the Special Operations Command alone.


URS Federal Services provides communications maintenance support to the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, the key military unit that operates Predator drones worldwide. Thus Feinstien's position as chairwoman of the Senate select intelligence committee provides the veneer of congressional legality for the secret illegal assassination program. Meanwhile, the expansion of drone warfare against civilian targets also secretly enriches her and her husband and ensures the flow of blood money needed to keep her in office.


Feinstein has publicly derided whistleblower Edward Snowden as a traitor, but has remained mostly silent on the issue of whistleblower Bradley Manning. Manning is alleged to have downloaded footage of war crimes from CENTCOM computers and given it to Wikileaks. This footage, which shows American attack helicopters killing Reuters journalists, formed the basis of the film Collateral Murder. Manning is also alleged to have downloaded and leaked thousands of diplomatic cables that continue to shed public light on the seedy secret side of important world events. URS is the prime contractor for network defense and security for CENTCOM. When documents are leaked and Dianne Feinstien shrilly cries treason, one could be unsure if she the treason she refers to is treason to her bank account or to her country. Perhaps she did not single Manning out for fear of drawning attention to her husband's profiteering.


The decade of URS ownership by Richard Blum has proved lucrative in subcontracting as well. A brief overview over products and services provided to the DoD by URS includes "MISC DESKS", satellite communication equipment and "CHICKEN, PCS, BRD, FZN." Dozens of companies subcontract to URS on various projects, perhaps hoping to get a green light from a company that has a powerful senator guarding their interests in Congress. Prime Contractors on these projects range from Boeing to Booz Allen Hamilton. Several of these contracts list Palantir as the prime contractor, suggesting that URS may be directly involved in PRISM.

CONTINUED...

http://freepress.org/departments/display/13/2013/5057