A Dream for a Better World

A secret 2006 Pentagon analysis report, suppressed by US defense chiefs, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. Climate change ’should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern’, say the authors.  The Bush administration tried to suppress the report for 4 months trying to bury the threat of climate change. 

According to a government report, the United States this year will have spent at least $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war. The report, by the Congressional Budget Office says that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies.  The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops.

Auditors at a Pentagon oversight agency were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on major defense contractors to make them look more favorable instead of exposing wrongdoing and charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office. The Defense Contract Audit Agency, which oversees contractors for the Defense Department, improperly influenced the audit scope, conclusions and opinions of reviews of contractor performance, the GAO said, creating a serious independence issue. The report does not name the projects or the contractors involved, but staff members on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who were briefed on the findings cited seven contractors, some of whom are among the biggest in the defense industry: Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Fluor, Parker Hannifin, Sparta, SRS Technologies and a subsidiary of L3 Communications.

The Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct them to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. Although the Pentagon regularly finances science and engineering research, systematic support for the social sciences and humanities has been rare.  Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has compared the initiative — named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom (and warriors) — to the government’s effort to pump up its intellectual capital during the cold war.  Minerva will award $50 million over five years. Another set of grants administered by the National Science Foundation is expected to be announced by the end of this month.

Charles M. Smith, the Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq, said that he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.  Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company.  But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.  

Ousted chief prosecutor Col. Morris D. Davis is claiming that the Pentagon’s push to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged collaborators in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is tainted, in his view, by political intrusions, illegal influence applied by more-senior officers, and reliance on evidence obtained through coercion or torture.  Davis ran afoul of superiors when he advised his prosecutors against relying on evidence obtained through waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that have been deemed coercive or tantamount to torture. Davis resigned after political appointees at the Pentagon rejected his advice against building prosecutions on coerced and potentially unreliable confessions.

Four years – and seven investigations – after her son’s death in Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident, Mary Tillman remains frustrated that the people responsible for covering up the circumstances of his demise have not been held accountable.  Tillman’s son, Pat Tillman, was the professional football player turned soldier who left a $3.6 million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals on the table to enlist in the military and fight al Qaeda in June 2002. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Two weeks later, just before his nationally televised memorial service, the Pentagon awarded him the Silver Star.  He died, the military said, while charging up a hill toward the enemy.  But that wasn’t the real story. Tillman was killed by his own men.  The military knew that within hours but waited five weeks before revealing it.  Years later, Mary Tillman is still looking for answers.

Procurement documents released by the U.S. Air Force give a rare glimpse into Pentagon plans for developing an offensive cyber-war capacity that can infiltrate, steal data from and, if necessary, take down enemy information-technology networks. The Broad Area Announcement, posted by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate, outlines a two-year, $11 million effort to develop capabilities to access any remotely located open or closed computer information systems, lurk on them undetected, extract information, and be able to affect computer information systems the way they see fit.  Also, to use any and all techniques necessary to enable user to access any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware.

In a 4/2008 NY Times piece, they revealed how the Bush administration orchestrated a public relations scheme to counter negative reports and mounting criticism over Guantanamo Bay, which was being branded as a torture center in the national media in 2005. The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly to the charges. They put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men were presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as objective military analysts. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. These analysts have also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of them have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.