War & Disaster Profiteering

For several years, with very little media coverage, a body called the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has been holding hearings and issuing reports on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and China. Read More

Halliburton has quietly put down deep roots in Australia. Its operations include hundreds of secret Defence projects, the Adelaide-to-Darwin railway and managing the Australian Grand Prix. Read More

The omnipresence of the giant defense contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, the shipments of concrete, the transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclaves­complete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores­ are just the most obvious signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul. Read More

Privacy advocates say a committee set up recently to advise the Homeland Security Department on privacy issues amounts to little more than a fox guarding a chicken coop. Read More

Halliburton Co., under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, would receive an extra $1.5 billion as part of the Bush administration's additional war spending proposal for fiscal 2005, a senior U.S. Army budget official said. Read More

Congress in July approved a Bush administration request for $25 billion extra in fiscal 2005 and is now weighing a request for $75 billion more. Of that $100 billion, $6 billion could go to Halliburton, the world's second-biggest oilfield services company, according to the Army charts. Read More

A report by a U.S. security consulting, Strategic Forecasting Inc., hired by the State and Defense departments to study the presence of weapons in Latin America called the mercenary force an expanding gang with intimate knowledge of Mexican drug-trafficking methods and routes. Read More

The Sao Paulo Attorney General´s Office established as illegal the behavior of German subject Frank Guenter Salewski and the Body Guard Company, which were hiring army and reserve forces to work in Iraq, according to reports made public. Read More

Although under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, Halliburton has been given bonuses for some of its work supporting the U.S. military in Kuwait and Afghanistan. The Army said KBR's performance has been rated as "excellent" to "very good" for more than a dozen "task orders" in Kuwait and Afghanistan supporting troops. Read More

The Defense Department is investigating a pool of former senior military and civilian Defense managers now working for government contractors for possible criminal violations of federal conflict-of-interest rules, according to law enforcement officials. Read More