War & Disaster Profiteering

Phillip H. Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, confirmed yesterday that his private jet has been chartered to the CIA and said he was aware that it had been flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 terrorism suspects are held, as well as other overseas destinations. Read More

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the OPEC cartel through massive increases in production above OPEC quotas. Read More

Reconstruction in Iraq has been riddled with corruption while regions stricken by the Asian tsunami disaster are also highly vulnerable to the fraud, according to Transparency International, a global watchdog. Read More

The 10-count indictment alleges that Jeff Alex Mazon, a former procurement officer for Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc., and Ali Hijazi, a businessman in Kuwait, developed a scheme to defraud the government out of millions of dollars by inflating bids on the tanker contract. Read More

An Illinois grand jury has accused a former Halliburton Co. worker and a Saudi colleague of scheming to overcharge the Pentagon for supplying fuel tankers for military operations in Kuwait. Read More

Big money is involved in the private military business. Equitable Services, a security industry analyst. In 1997, Equitable Services, a security industry analyst, predicted that the international security market will mushroom from $56 billion in 1990 to $220 in 2010. This was long before the boost given to the sector by the September 11 attacks. Read More

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, one of the congressmen who released the audit, said in a statement on Tuesday that Bush administration officials heavily edited a copy of the audit at Halliburton's request before it was sent to U.N.-mandated auditors overseeing the Development Fund for Iraq. Read More

Critics of American agribusiness warn that this confluence of privatization policies, patent protections and U.S. exports is a volatile mix that could further destabilize war-ravaged Iraqi farmers. Read More

Halliburton may have overcharged the U.S. government by more than $100 million under a no-bid oil deal in Iraq, said a military audit. Read More

Working on a $283-million arms deal, U.S. contractor Dale Stoffel, repeatedly warned that a Lebanese middleman involved in the deal might be routing kickbacks to Iraqi Defense Ministry officials. Eight days later, Stoffel was shot dead in an ambush near Baghdad. Read More