MZM: A Private One-Stop Shop for Domestic Spying

[leveymg]

Corrupt MZM Defense Contractor Doing Its Own Oversight?
by leveymg
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/23/8418/64300
Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 06:04:18 AM PDT

It's the entrepreneurial offspring of the criminalization of protest and of political opposition, itself. We now see private contractors bribing Congressmen, operating spy agencies, and staffing the commissions charged with investigating their own abuses.

This process has been accelerated in recent years by the mania within gov't for outsourcing counter-terrorism, particularly information technology services related to electronic surveillance. Private DoD and Homeland Security contractors have a vested interest in locating and amplifying "threats" so that they fit within loose categories of "terrorism" that justify follow-on contracts. This creates a vested interest in the outright manufacture of terrorist incidents.

Take, for instance, Wade Mitchell's MZM, a corrupt defense contracting firm tied in with the Cunningham bribery scandal, which received millions to develop surveillance technologies for the Pentagon's new domestic spy agencies. TPM Muckraker reports the following disturbing developments:

leveymg's diary :: ::

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Did MZM, Other Companies Staff Bush Intel Panel?
By Justin Rood - March 22, 2006, 9:26 AM
At War and Piece, Laura Rozen finds more indicators that MZM's contracts with the White House were for three professional staffers on the Robb-Silberman WMD commission. http://www.warandpiece.com/

First, the MZM contracts list their "place of performance" as Arlington, VA -- where the commission's offices were -- not Washington, D.C., where the White House is known to be. Second, Rozen found similar arrangements between the White House and other intelligence contractors, including Booz-Allen Hamilton and SAIC. Laura and I have both confirmed various staffers worked for SAIC.

Those companies have increased their intelligence business in recent years, thanks to U.S. spy agencies struggling to spend even greater budgets on new hires and new technology. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/


Further down in Rood's Blog we see that Mitchell Wade's MZM has received some $16 million in contracts to conduct domestic spying, as well as a quarter-million from the White House for unspecified "intelligence" activities, along with funding related to an Iranian exile group.

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Mitchell Wade, former CEO of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to several conspiracy and bribery charges a few weeks ago in connection with the Cunningham scandal. But a little-noticed piece of his history goes into one of the most sensitive domestic spying operations we have heard of to date: the Pentagon's Virginia-based Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA).

Wade got over $16 million in contracts with CIFA by bribing Duke Cunningham, who forced earmarks in to Defense appropriations bills on his behalf. Furthermore, Wade's second-in-command was a consultant to the Pentagon on standing up the operation.

In its brief life -- it was created in 2002 -- CIFA has had trouble keeping its nose clean. Despite the ink that's been spilled on the center, little is actually known about what it does, and how MZM serviced it.

Here's what we know: After the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon used its massive budget and urgent sense of mission to push into areas of intelligence it had once left to others. Domestic intelligence was one of those areas. DoD created CIFA in 2002 to become a joint center for "force protection" intelligence work at DoD, mainly anti-terrorism.

What's "force protection?" Pentagonese for "carte blanche." In encompasses protection for bases, troops and equipment. And the water supply. The electrical grid. Highways. Contractors, their suppliers -- the list goes on. Which leaves CIFA with a mandate to gather information on, well, just about anything and anybody it wants.http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/


One wonders what safeguards, if any, might be built into a system where intelligence oversight is performed by the business partners of private sector DHS and DoD security contractors? This problem goes far beyond the old "revolving door" of executive exchange between DoD and defense contractors. How much confidence are we supposed to have in the integrity and efficacy of such counter-terrorism entrepreneurs?

2006. Mark G. Levey