Armed Madhouse

by Greg Palast

  Freedom of Information?

  Why does ChoicePoint get a no-bid contract from the Bush Administration? Here’s the answer we received in response to a “Freedom of Information” request. At least they’ve crossed out the “secret” stamp. (Source: EPIC)

  But I digress. Or maybe not. Because it’s all about the exchange of information—who knows what and who knows whom. Every war needs intelligence. It’s not the War on Terror these guys are fighting, it’s the Class War. Information is a weapon and our betters are arming themselves. The Bush Administration has reversed the flow common to democracy: Instead of information about the government going to We The People, it is now information about We The People going to government, or better, contractors beholden to board directors, not voters.

  This Class Info-War is global. And ChoicePoint is on the front lines. Working with an extraordinary group of disaffected intelligence experts from the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, we got our hands on a copy of a $67 million agreement between Homeland Security and ChoicePoint. The agreement was so confidential it was not even given a contract number. It was a no-bid deal, of course. But if it gets the Qaeda network, who’s going to moan about a little secrecy.

  But take a look at this document marked, on page 44, “FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION—SECRET.” It is about the FBI’s contract with ChoicePoint to obtain government records on every citizen in half a dozen countries. The September 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates and Pakistan. But the FBI has, oddly, chosen Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Honduras and Venezuela. Is there an exploding enchilada conspiracy sneaking over the border? Or is it something else that put these nation’s citizenry on the terror watch list? Notably, each nation had an anti-Bush president running for reelection or an anti-Bush candidate in the lead for the presidency. Hmm. When I was in Venezuela in 2004, I noted that Súmate, a group seeking the recall of Bush’s bête noire, President Hugo Chávez, had at each registration booth a laptop computer with the voter rolls. The anti-Chávez group could challenge improper (i.e. pro-Chávez) voters. Was this Florida-goes-Latin? No one could say where Súmate got the lists or if these were the ones lifted by ChoicePoint. We do know that Súmate received cash payments from the Bush Administration.

  Hunting for Hijackers…in Venezuela?

  Every September 11 hijacker came from the Arabian Peninsula or Pakistan. Yet, from a source with a copy not blacked out, we learned the hunt was limited to Venezuela, Mexico and other Latin nations with presidential elections favoring anti-Bush candidates.

  The interesting thing about ChoicePoint’s obtaining these citizen files from Venezuela, Mexico and Argentina is that according to press reports and officials I spoke with, in those countries this is a crime. ChoicePoint blames any misconduct on its operatives. Nevertheless, Mexico contractors were busted; arrests were avoided in Argentina when ChoicePoint promised to erase its copies of the list. But what about Bush’s copy?

  Creating a master file on you—from your DNA to your party registration (what do you think new voter IDs are really about?)—makes us safer, right? As ChoicePoint CEO Smith tells us, the September 11 hijackers checked in under their real names. Had his data system for the new Transportation Safety Administration been in place on that day, the bad guys, all on ChoicePoint lists, would have set off warning blinks when they checked in, like the alarm that nabbed Mrs. Zapolsky’s baby. There is, however, a minor flaw in his system: Osama and friends no longer book flights under their own names—even though this has cost them thousands of frequent flier miles.

  Marines in a Tube

  We know the cure for The Fear is “less liberty, more weaponry.” ChoicePoint will help dispose of our liberties cheap, but how can we defend ourselves?

  General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin have just what we need to stick in our nation’s holster: the Virginia-class submarine.

  The Virginia-class U-boat was originally designed to hunt Soviet subs. The problem with the 1996 design is that the Soviet Union went out of business seven years earlier. Never mind. That didn’t stop our triumvirate of corporate warriors. They’ve redesigned the Virginia-class for the War on Terror.

  Given that our enemies today are mostly guys carrying box cutters and stuffing TNT in their shoes, I was curious as to how these subo-saurs would be helpful in post-cold-war theaters of battle. Our BBC team called Northrop Grumman and asked. Their PR man explained that the firm is, “reconfiguring it for the new type of war—the new military situation.”

  We called during the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is landlocked.

  No matter. Iraq was on the horizon and, if you look at the map, there is an itty-bitty piece of beachfront near Basra. The weapons maker explained, you could use the ship “to land commandoes” on the beaches to seek out hiding places of terrorists. I remembered that the Israelis, who have a smaller budget than ours, land commandoes in canvas canoes. But I didn’t want to quibble with Lockheed over price. Still, one thing about the scheme to use the Virginia-class to land commandoes concerned me: It’s a big boat, about the size of an underwater aircraft carrier. Exactly how would one sneak up on the beach with this thing?

  The defense expert snorted at our lack of knowledge of the weaponry. For an extra $400 million per vessel, they had been “refitted.” The torpedoes have been retooled to fit nine sailors each so they can be shot onto the beach.

  I can’t make this up. In one design, four marines lie down sideways, five marines are launched in headfirst. “Specifically configured to put Navy Seals into torpedoes, [a] ‘lock-in/lock-out’ trunk,” we were told.

  I was curious about the submarine’s three-headed corporate team deal among what used to be fierce competitors for Navy work. They may be competitors, but, notes a Navy spokesman, they “do not ‘compete’ in the traditional sense.” Indeed they don’t. In fact, they don’t compete at all. Rather than bid against each other, which might reduce the cost, they settle on a single price. What used to be called a “price-fixing conspiracy” is now called a “consortium,” after the word “consort,” which referred to the king’s concubine. A kind of weaponry OPEC.

  Source: U.S. Dept. of Defense

  The consorting companies were willing to part with one of these sub-surface sailor injectors for a billion and a half dollars. Our President, knowing a bargain when he sees one, ordered thirty-six. Later, as U.S. troops in Iraq demanded such retrograde material as armor for their Humvees, the President cut back his sub order. The consortium obliged by agreeing to make fewer boats—for two and a half billion each.

  The result of all this consorting is that General Dynamics’ profit is, for the first time in its history, exceeding a billion dollars a year. Lockheed Martin is doing even better, expecting a record $1.7 billion in profit for 2006, beating out Northrop Grumman’s expected $1.5 billion. I know that with weaponry profits bouncing off the clouds, you’re concerned that the firms will have a huge tax bill. Not to worry. In 2004, just before the election, the Bush Administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to an effective 7% compared to the 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.

  Despite the consortium’s commitment to corporate socialism, Lockheed Martin has become top dog among corporate arms dealers. It became the number one recipient of funds from the U.S. Treasury among all U.S. companies on the wings of the F-22A, a fighter designed to defeat the Soviet Union’s MiG 29 UBM. The MiG 29 was never built. And the Soviet Union doesn’t exist—proof of the extraordinary effectiveness of the F-22A. We’ve got 83 of them. Bush has ordered 96 more at $130 million per airplane. That’s double the old price, but the new price comes with a new name, the F-22A Raptor. Is that cool or what?

  Who makes these Humvee-armor-vs.-Raptor-and-subs decisions now that Paul Wolfowitz is no longer our Deputy Defense Secretary? The answer: his replacement, Gordon England, former Executive Vice President of both General Dynamics and a Lockheed unit. Now that’s a consortium
.

  Lockheed’s not Halliburton. Vice President Cheney gets nothing from Lockheed’s success, unless his wife shares. Lockheed still pays the pension of their former board member, Lynne Cheney, Mr. Cheney’s wife. Another war industry consortium.

  But as long as a single terrorist is out there, or even if there isn’t, Lockheed’s work is not done. In 2005, after London subways were attacked by teenagers with exploding backpacks, Lockheed parlayed its expertise in counter-terrorism on the sea and in the air into a big contract to protect the New York City subways from attack.

  The firm could not explain to us how they are going to launch those Marines into the “A” train.

  Lockheed and General Dynamics cannot win the War on Terror on their own. They needed The Crusader.

  The Crusader is a “self-propelled howitzer,” a kind of tank. But it has a problem. First, of course, is that a weapon called “Crusader” to be used against yet another Muslim nation has a serious PR problem.

  The second problem with this self-propelled howitzer is that it can’t propel itself. It’s so beastly heavy and corpulent that it needs a bulldozer in front of it to clear a path and dig a resting place for it.

  The Crusader has fearsome high-tech plating that can fend off armor-piercing shells. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the bulldozer in front of it. Even our toy-dazzled military knew this would pose some difficulties for our all-volunteer army.

  So Congress canceled the $450 million contract for assembling them. Instead, they are paying the contractor $450 million not to assemble them. In budget speak, this is called, “winding down.”

  Now, some of us “wind down” by having a glass of wine and vegging out in front of the tube. We usually don’t get half a billion to lay down our tools. But the downward winding contractor in this case is “United Defense,” funded by the Carlyle Group, James Baker III, Senior Counsel. Does anyone believe Carlyle’s fees to both Bush Senior and Junior had nothing to do with the lucrative kiss good-bye to their overweight howitzer?

  And that’s how Lockheed, General Dynamics and James Baker III are winning the War on Terror.

  The Joke’s on Us

  Fear is the sales pitch for many products: the new zoning for the Indian casino ferry parking lot to war on the Euphrates to billion-dollar underwater sailor injectors. Better than toothpaste that makes your teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It’s political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube. Real security for life’s dangers—from a national health insurance program to ending oil sheiks’ funding of bomb-loving “charities”—would take a slice of the profits of the owning classes, the Lockheeds, the ChoicePoints and the tiny-town big shot who owns the ferry company. The War on Terror has become class war by other means.

  Oh, hey, you never got the punch line.

  So Osama walks into this bar, see, and George Bush says, “Whad’l’ya have, pardner?” and Osama says, “Well, George, what are you serving today?” and Bush says, “Fear,” and Osama says, “Fear for everybody!” and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, “Hey, who’s buying?” Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. “They are,” he says—and the two of them share a quiet laugh.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE FLOW

  Trillion Dollar Babies

  The secret plans for Operation Iraqi Liberation that turned a three-day military fling into Vietnam on the Tigris

  A five-and-a-half-part tale including Nose-Twist’s Hidden Hand, Kissinger’s man in the dream palace, the No-Brainer vs. The Witches’ Brew, the other Downing Street memos, the Houston Insurgency, Amy’s alligator boots, Mr. 5%, a call to Riyadh, Wolfowitz Dämmerung and “especially the oil.”

  There are kooks and cranks and conspiracy nuts out there who think George Bush, from the moment he took office, had some kind of secret plan to invade Iraq and grab control of its oil. They’re wrong.

  There were two plans. I’ve got them both. One is 323 pages long, the other 101 pages. How I got them, I can explain later.5

  PART 1

  PLAN A: IN AND OUT IN THREE DAYS

  Walnut Creek, February 2001

  In February 2001, just three weeks after Bush and Cheney took power, Plan A was launched at a confidential gathering in Walnut Creek, California. The official justification for invading Iraq, the September 11 attack, was still seven months in the future. But let’s not quibble about chronology.

  Iraq Plan A was short and sweet: in and out in three days. “It was an invasion disguised as a coup,” an insider—the planning group’s host—told me, one of four who, when our team’s knowledge of events was evident, conceded details of the program.

  The “disguised coup” was simplicity itself, kind of a Marine-supported Bay of Pigs. Once the tanks crashed through the palace gate in Baghdad, they would parachute in a Ba’athist general cashiered by Saddam, a war hero—some Iraqi Eisenhower who’d beaten the Iranians in 1988—which one didn’t matter. The idea was to hand the new strongman Saddam’s moustache and his military-political enforcement machine—the secret group was already contacting Saddam’s generals to switch allegiance. Then, according to their playbook, there would be snap elections, say within 90 days, to put a democratic halo on our chosen generalissimo.

  Who launched this “disguised invasion” scheme? This will come as unhappy news to fans of Colin Powell. After the war turned ugly, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, fed with strategic leaks, told us the Secretary of State secretly opposed the invasion. That was Powell’s self-serving fairy tale. Powell didn’t oppose the invasion, he opposed occupation.

  At the direction of Powell’s State Department, Pam Quanrud, then with the National Security Counsel and now with the U.S. embassy in Moscow, organized the Walnut Creek session at the home of State’s point man, Falah Aljibury. Aljibury was Ronald Reagan’s and Bush Sr.’s back-channel to Saddam when Saddam was our Butcher of Baghdad. (In 1988, Saddam gassed Iranians on the al-Fao Peninsula, a chemical attack Reagan’s intelligence apparatus made possible by providing satellite maps to Saddam.) After Saddam went renegade in 1990 and attempted to shoplift Kuwait’s oil, Iraqi-born Aljibury followed the Bush family in their twist from Saddam backers to Saddam bashers. American oilmen pay Aljibury well for his intelligence on Iraq’s industry. Hess Energy Trading, Bank of America and the oil-speculating arm of Goldman Sachs are all his clients.

  The Three-Day Plan made some real tracks at first. Aljibury and his team even interviewed Ba’athists for the part of puppet president. Think of it as a kind of beauty contest for wannabe dictators. This “primary” was conducted under Saddam’s nose with advice from top men in Iraq itself. One candidate that State and the CIA fancied was General Nizar Khazraji, Saddam’s exiled army chief, then under house arrest in Denmark for war crimes. (Two days before the U.S. invasion, he disappeared from Copenhagen. Like Elvis, Khazraji has been sighted in Qatar, Kuwait, dead in Najaf and alive again in Kurdistan.)

  Crucially, the quickie coup-cum-invasion had friends where it counted. “The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry,” Aljibury told me. “They’d hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like other revolutions that have occurred in the past and government was shut down for two or three days”—just like the last one that brought Saddam to power in 1979. The U.S. oil, chemical and banking guys liked that one too, at the time.

  The idea was that no matter which strongman the Bush team designated, they would “Bring him in right away and say that Iraq is being liberated—and everybody stay in office… everything as is.” And by “everything” he meant, first and foremost, the key thing, the oil ministry and state oil company. While the Walnut Creek committee was busy-busy with many topics, Aljibury said, “It quickly became an oil group.”

  Why would Aljibury agree to speak with me? Once he knew we’d gotten word of the plan, he wanted to defend it. More than anything, he wanted us to know that the oilmen’s plan would not
have left us with what we have today: a tribal, shattered, blown-to-hell Iraq.

  War Drums Across the Potomac

  Alas, the three-day wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am revolution was not to be.

  Aljibury and his NSC–State Department crew had expected neither the ferocity nor tactical brilliance of their enemy in Iraq: the Pentagon.

  Iraq today, busted and bloody, is the detritus-strewn battlefield of a war between two political armies arrayed across opposite banks of the Potomac. On one side, the occupation-phobic Arabist realists at Foggy Bottom; on the other, bivouacked at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and former Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abrams, Special Advisor to the President, all three signers of that manifesto for benevolent empire, “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC), the neo-conservative Weltanschauung.