The Fourth Branch of Government (contractors & conflicts of interest)

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The Fourth Branch of Government

From Corporate Watch site:

Posted by Pratap Chatterjee on February 12th, 2007

Technology consultants Booz Allen Hamilton may not be on the top of everyone's lists for conflicts of interest, but Congressman Henry Waxman revealed some rather interesting information about this McLean, Virginia, company at last week's hearing on contracting abuse.

Waxman told the hearing that Booz Allen had $97 million in contracts with the Department of Homeland Security in 2005. One job that Booz Allen staff were hired to do was to help plan, award and manage the federal government's SBI-Net program, a high technology security fence between the U.S. and Mexico (Joe Richey wrote us an article on this program - see Border for Sale)

Of the 98 personnel assigned to the SBI-Net project office as of December 2006, 60 work for contractors like Booz Allen. The company that these personnel are overseeing for SBI-Net is Boeing.

What Waxman finds worrying is the fact that Booz Allen has had an ongoing relationship with Boeing since 1993 to assist Boeing in maintaining its market share in the airplane industry, and other extensive relationships with the aircraft manufacturer since 1970.

The question is an important one: how can you be an impartial supervisor over someone who also pays your bills?

Booz Allen is no stranger to the inner workings of government, though. They happen to be one of the largest contractors to the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Tim Shorrock has done some digging into this subject, which you can read in his Mother Jones article: The Spy Who Billed Me . ... cont'd


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14353