War & Disaster Profiteering

By using contract employees for intelligence work, government agencies lose control over those doing this sensitive work and an element of profit is inserted into what is being done. Also, as investigations have revealed, politics and corruption may be introduced into the process. Read More

Voice for Humanity recently sold tens of thousands of pink and silver audio players to the United States government to teach Afghan villagers about democracy. Critics say that the project was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Others say it is a perfect example of the covert "information war" conducted in the "war on terrorism." Read More

A total of 61 British companies are identified as benefiting from at least £1.1bn of contracts and investment in the new Iraq. But that figure is just the tip of the iceberg. Read More

US security contractors and regular US soldiers who are evangelical Christians," writes John Geddes, the ex-SAS soldier "see themselves in a crusade against the Muslim hordes. In my view, they're not much different to the Iraqi militiamen and foreign fighters who see themselves at the heart of a jihad against the Christian crusaders." Read More

In the first corporate whistle-blower case to emerge from Iraq, a federal jury in Virginia yesterday found a contractor, Custer Battles L.L.C., guilty of defrauding the United States by filing grossly inflated invoices for work in the chaotic year after the Iraqi invasion. Read More

A review of KBR's bills to the Navy by the Department of Defense's inspector general for work last year restoring damage by Hurricane Ivan suggest Halliburton subsidiary KBR may be charging the Navy too much in labor. Read More

Armed men in police uniform seized dozens of Iraqi private security guards from their firm's compound on Wednesday, police said, but officials contradicted each other over whether they were arrested or kidnapped. Read More

Cofounder Scott Custer says the company, which is facing war-profiteering charges, performed well under dangerous and "extremely difficult" conditions in Iraq. Read More

ALEXANDRIA, Va. --Rhode Island-based defense contractors Custer Battles were "war profiteers" and "war whores" who filed phony claims for some of the millions of dollars they made in Iraq, an attorney for two whistleblowers told a federal jury during final arguments in a civil lawsuit Tuesday. "It's not like stealing from a bank, because people's lives are at stake," said attorney Alan Grayson. "They let you down. They let down America. You should do something about that." Read More

The revelation that a Dubai-based firm provides security consulting for myriad U.S. operations at home and abroad shows the increasing tendency of the U.S. government to privatize security efforts. Read More