War & Disaster Profiteering

Across the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, thousands upon thousands of blue tarps are being nailed to wind-damaged roofs, a visible sign of government assistance. Construction crews working with TJC Defense, out of Alabama, install a blue tarp on a home in Kenner, Louisiana. Ian McVea, Fort Worth Star-Telegram The blue sheeting - a godsend to residents whose homes are threatened by rain - is rapidly becoming the largest roofing project in the nation's history. It isn't coming cheap. Read More

A military contractor returning from Iraq was charged yesterday with distributing identity badges that control access to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone to people not allowed to receive them, including an Iraqi woman he was dating. Read More

As Katrina's flood waters recede, government contractors are flowing into the Gulf Coast and reaping billions of dollars in pre-bid, limited bid, and sometimes no-bid contracts. Many of these contractors and the men who award them are the same players who bungled the reconstruction of Iraq. Deja vu all over again. Read More

In April, Najaf's main maternity hospital received rare good news: an $8 million refurbishment program financed by the United States would begin immediately. But five months and millions of dollars later, the hospital administrators say they have little but frustration to show for it. Read More

CACI International Inc., the Arlington-based defense contractor that attracted controversy when an employee was accused of participating in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, is getting out of the interrogation business. Read More

European defense companies deposited millions of dollars into bank accounts for front companies of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, a source close to a Chilean court probe into the accounts told Reuters. Read More

Blackwater USA, the North Carolina-based security firm best known for supplementing U.S. troops in Iraq, is now attracting international attention patrolling the flooded streets of New Orleans. Read More

The task order is a cost reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity construction capabilities contract for post-Katrina recovery efforts in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for "unwatering activities" in Plaquemines, East and West basins, New Orleans. Read More

There are estimated to be more than 20,000 armed expatriates working for private security companies in Iraq, more than all the non-US troops combined and contrary their numbers do not appear to have fallen appreciably. The Baghdad bubble, as it has been dubbed, has yet to burst. Read More

While the industry was growing rapidly in the southeast Europe, there are problems with private security companies being affiliated with political parties as well as criminal, paramilitary and ethnic groups reports the Britain-based Saferworld think-tank. Read More