Reply #21: Grand old profiteering

[seemslikeadream]

Yet even Allbaugh is small-time compared to the latest defector to the private sector, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, who announced two weeks ago that he will be leaving for a partnership at Booz Allen Hamilton, the technology and management strategy giant that is one of the nation's biggest defense contractors. Although Zakheim is not nearly as familiar as Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, or Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, he too has been identified as one of the ultrahawkish "Vulcans" who shaped Bush foreign and military policy from its earliest days. Zakheim has bustled through the revolving doors before, serving as a deputy undersecretary of defense during the Reagan administration, where he worked for Perle before leaving government to join a missile-defense contractor.

At the mammoth Booz Allen firm, Zakheim will join R. James Woolsey, the former director of central intelligence and Perle associate on the Bush Defense Policy Board. These were the defense intellectuals who favored invading Iraq long before Sept. 11 -- and long before any U.N. resolutions on the topic were introduced.
So far Booz Allen has yet to win any major Iraq contracts of its own, although it has shared Pentagon boodle for several years with Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that is by far the biggest contractor out there. (At a recent hearing on Halliburton's scandal-scarred performance in Iraq, Zakheim did his best to defend the vice president's old company. "They're not doing a great job," he shrugged, "but they're not doing a terrible job.")

Booz Allen swiftly jumped on the Baghdad bandwagon last May, when it co-sponsored (with the Republican-connected insurance giant American International Group) a postwar conference on "The Challenges for Business in Rebuilding Iraq" that featured speeches by Woolsey and Undersecretary of Defense Zakheim. (The price of admission for industry executives ranged from $528 to $1,100 a head.) Included was the chance for executives to participate in a "not-for-attribution session that will permit a dynamic, frank exchange of views on the opportunities and challenges businesses will face in post-conflict Iraq."

More recently, Booz Allen was listed as a partner in a controversial $327 million contract to outfit the new Iraqi army. The prime contractor in this murky deal was Nour America Inc., which on closer inspection turned out to be controlled by a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi, the dubious former exile promoted by Perle, Woolsey and their ideological associates as the best possible leader for Iraq after Saddam. Chalabi is a leading member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and enjoys enormous influence inside the Defense Department, which issued the Nour contract. Unfortunately Nour had scant qualifications, if any, for the lucrative contract. After protests from more qualified contractors who had lost out, the contract was withdrawn for rebidding. Meanwhile, Booz Allen denied any role in the Nour affair, aside from a post-bid $50,000 consulting contract.


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http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:iUASMhjvMuIJ:www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/03/30/profiteers/+Booz+Allen+Hamilton+Zakheim&hl=en


GovCon Executive Speaker Series Featuring Former DCI James Woolsey

The GovCon Council is pleased to present this event in partnership with the International Exchange Business Council (IBEC), an emerging initiative of the Fairfax County Chamber.

R. James Woolsey has said that strategic security is the greatest challenge the business world faces today. In his role as a Vice President and officer in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Global Assurance practice, Mr. Woolsey helps corporations and government agencies integrate security into their strategic business planning in an effort to protect the vital networks upon which we all depend.

Those networks - electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications infrastructures, financial systems, food production and delivery systems and hundreds of others - are constructed to be responsive to the public and easily accessed and maintained. However, in a post-September 11 world, these characteristics translate to vulnerability.
http://www.gcn.com/events/16483.html

COMPANIES ON THE GROUND:
THE CHALLENGES FOR BUSINESS IN REBUILDING IRAQ
1 May 2003 - Washington DC
SPEAKERS

Kenneth H Bacon, President, Refugees International (confirmed)
Ashton Carter, Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs, Harvard University (confirmed)
Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, CSIS (confirmed)
Pat Cronin, Assistant Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development (confirmed)
Ambassador James Dobbins, Director, International Security and Defense Policy, RAND Corporation (confirmed)
Jane Harman, U.S. Representative (D-CA), Ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (confirmed)
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, German Ambassador to the United States (confirmed)
Zoran Kusovac, Jane's Intelligence Review Correspondent (confirmed)
Alan Larson, Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, State Department (confirmed)
Martin Levine, Senior Managing Director, Shorebank Advisory Services (confirmed)
General William Nash (ret.), Director, Center for Preventive Action, Council on Foreign Relations (confirmed)
Thomas Pickering, Senior Vice President of International Relations, The Boeing Company, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (confirmed)
David Rothkopf, Chairman & CEO, Intellibridge Corporation (confirmed)

Rubar Sandi, President of the U.S.-Iraq Business Council (confirmed)
James Steinberg, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, Brookings Institution, former Deputy National Security Advisor (confirmed)
John Taylor, Undersecretary for International Affairs, Department of the Treasury (confirmed)
James Woolsey, Former Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., CSIS Trustee (confirmed)
Daniel B Yergin, Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (confirmed)
Dov S. Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (confirmed)

http://www.janes.com/defence/conference/rebuilding_iraq/speaker_info.shtml