More "strange feelings" about Airbus...
A big fish in the sky?
380 = 11

Between Dubai and NY only

How about this one being part of grand transportation scheme to cart hundreds of
people off to places far away never to return - they don't have to travel such
distances to achieve it but who knows?
Or maybe it's to transport world's elite while we remain grounded and starving.

EADS is Airbus parent company
European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co - NV
On Bd of Directors sit people ( whole list with explicit details ) with associations
like Hollinger, Halliburton, etc.
At this stage in NWO agenda I doubt super air flights are being designed to promote
mass vacation & travel since we're all supposed to be penniless and destitute anyway -
huddled in tent cities eating GMO foods and
getting sick and dying.


FLIGHT SCHEDULE
A380 flights will be operational from 8th August 2008 on Emirates flight EK 201 from Dubai to New York JFK International Airport (Sunday/Wednesday/Friday) and on Emirates flight EK 202 from New York JFK International Airport to Dubai (Sunday/Wednesday/Friday), with inaugural flights between New York JFK International Airport and Dubai on 1st and 3rd August 2008

EADS N.V. - EADS North America completes its board of directors

EADS North America completes its board of directors

• Influential EADS North America Board represents continued commitment to meeting U.S. customer requirements

Washington, D.C., September 17, 2003

EADS North America, the U.S. holding company for EADS – the second largest aerospace company in the world – Wednesday announced that its Board of Directors has reached its full complement. The Board is complete with the addition of Rear Admiral Gerald F. Woolever, USCG (Ret.), who was elected this week.

The Board consists of 13 individuals knowledgeable about EADS and the U.S. market, and is led by Chairman of the Board Ralph Crosby and Vice Chairman Manfred von Nordheim. Seven of the Board members also serve full-time roles for EADS or EADS business units, while six hold posts outside of EADS.

The Board of Directors is structured to correspond to all of the sectors in which EADS is active, including defense, homeland security, telecommunications, services, and space. The Board's expertise is broad-based, and matches market requirements with capability and background.

Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, the CEOs of EADS stated: "EADS is committed to providing the most advanced, high-quality products and systems for the U.S. market, and also for assembling the most prominent and respected teams in the industry. We are proud to have such a distinguished group on the EADS North America Board, and view the Board's creation as another step in our long-term commitment to the U.S. market and becoming a valued U.S. corporate citizen."

"When we consolidated EADS's U.S. activities under the EADS North America holding company earlier this year, we made a commitment to assemble an experienced and knowledgeable group of individuals to represent and continually build momentum for EADS in North America," said EADS North America Chairman and CEO Ralph Crosby. "Through a thorough process, we now have delivered on that promise. I am pleased to welcome this group of influential and experienced professionals to the EADS North America Board."

Crosby continued, "EADS North America's strategy is to be a key player in the U.S. aerospace and defense industry over the long term, and this board is an important building block in our strategy. It provides EADS North America with a concentrated, collective experience, including executive know-how, government experience and knowledge of the Defense Department, transatlantic business and political expertise, and an intense strategic knowledge base."

At the last Board of Directors' meeting in May 2003, EADS North America elected General James P. McCarthy, USAF (Ret.) and Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, USN (Ret.) to the Board. Rear Admiral Gerald Woolever, USCG (Ret.), was elected at today's meeting, officially completing the Board.

The completed EADS Board of Directors is comprised of:

• Ralph D. Crosby, Jr. serves as Chairman and CEO of EADS North America and a member of the EADS Executive Committee. Crosby assumed leadership of EADS' North American activities and took his seat on the Executive Committee of EADS on 1 September 2002. Previously, Crosby was President of the Integrated Systems Sector of Northrop Grumman Corporation, a position he held since establishing the Sector in 1998. Prior to his industry career, Crosby served as an officer in the U.S. Army with duty in Germany, Vietnam and the United States. Crosby earned a Bachelor of Science at the United States Military Academy, a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, and a Master's Degree in International Affairs from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
• Manfred von Nordheim serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of EADS North America and Senior Advisor to Ralph D. Crosby, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EADS North America. He previously served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EADS, Inc., the U.S. corporate offices of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). Before the creation of EADS, von Nordheim was President of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace of North America, Inc. Von Nordheim holds a graduate degree from the Freie Universität Berlin, a Master of Arts in political science from Kent State University, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Fabrice Brégier was appointed President and CEO of Eurocopter in April 2003. He joins Eurocopter after having led since January 1998 MBDA, the premier European missile and missile systems manufacturer. Bregier joined the Ladardere Group's Matra defense in 1993, working on the GIE Apache program, as well as the GIE Eurodrone project. Prior to this, he served as a technical advisor to the French Minister of Foreign Trade and worked extensively with the French Department of Industry.
• Ambassador Richard Burt serves as Chairman of Diligence LLC, a commercial information and security services firm based in Washington, DC, London and Miami. He also is an International Director of the Washington-based government affairs firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers and serves as an advisor to the Carlyle Group, a private equity investment firm. In addition, Mr. Burt serves as Chairman of the Board of Weirton Steel, the largest tin-plate manufacturer in the U.S., and on the Board of Hollinger International. He is a Director of the Brinson Advisors family of funds and of the Deutsche Bank-Alex Brown fund family. Prior to the formation of Diligence LLC, Mr. Burt was a partner with McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm. Mr. Burt served as the U.S. Chief Negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) with the Former Soviet Union, U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1985-1989), Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs (1983-1985) and Director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs (1981-1983). Mr. Burt received his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Master's in International Relations from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
• Dr. Thomas Enders is Executive Vice President, Member of the Executive Committee, and Head of the Defense and Security Systems Division of EADS. Prior to the formation of EADS in July 2000, Dr. Enders served as Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Technology at DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG (DASA), one of the three EADS founding companies. Dr. Enders served in the German military with the 1st Airborne Division, reaching the rank of Major in the Reserves. From 1978-83, he studied economics, politics and history at the University of Bonn and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While pursuing academic studies, he also worked as an assistant in the German Bundestag and as a research associate at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in St. Augustin. In 1987, he was awarded his doctorate in politics.
• Jean-Louis Gergorin is member of the EADS Executive Committee and head of EADS Strategic Coordination. Prior to this position, Gergorin was Group Managing Director and Deputy to the CEO of Lagardère SCA. He joined the Lagardère group in 1984 as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy for Matra. From 1993 to 1998, Gergorin was Executive Director of Matra Hachette, Deputy to the Chairman for Strategic Coordination and a member of the executive and strategic committee of the Lagardère Group. Today, Gergorin is advisor to the French Foreign Policy planning staff and lectures at l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Institute for Political Science) in Paris. He is a member of the executive committee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Gergorin studied in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA). He has been a research fellow at the Rand Corporation and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also carried out studies in senior management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and is an alumnus of the executive program of the Stanford Business School. Jean-louis Gergorin is a "Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur" and an Aviation Week Aerospace Laureate (1989.)
• Robert Liberatore is Senior Vice President of External Affairs and Public Policy for DaimlerChrysler Corporation. Prior to the merger of DaimlerBenz and Chrysler, he was Vice President of Washington Affairs for the Chrysler Corporation. Liberatore reports to DaimlerChrysler Chairman Jürgen E. Schremp, and in his current position, co-chairs the corporation's public policy committee and is responsible for directing the company's federal and international government relations, with a focus on the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Mr. Liberatore holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
• Admiral T. Joseph Lopez (USN, Retired) is Senior Vice President and Global Director of U.S. and Foreign Government Operations for Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of the Halliburton Company. Admiral Lopez's naval career included tours as Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Naval Forces Europe/Commander –in-Chief Allied Forces, Southern Europe from 1996-1998, and all U.S. and Allied Bosnia Peacekeeping forces in 1996. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Cum Laude) in International Relations and a Master of Science in Management and an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Humanities from West Virginia Institute of Technology.
• Allan McArtor is Chairman of Airbus North America Holdings, Inc., parent company of Airbus North America Sales, Inc. and Airbus North America Customer Services, Inc. Named Chairman in June 2001, Mr. McArtor oversees the activities of Airbus in the U.S. and Canada in several key areas, including governmental affairs. Prior to joining Airbus, Mr. McArtor was founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Legend Airlines, a regional airline based at Dallas Love Field, Texas. From 1979 – 1994, Mr. McArtor served on the senior management team of Federal Express Corporation – except for two years (1987-1989) when President Ronald Reagan appointed him to serve as the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Mr. McArtor is a 1964 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy with a Bachelors Degree in Engineering. In addition, he holds a Masters Degree in Engineering from Arizona State University.
• General James P. McCarthy (USAF, Retired) is the ARDI Professor of National Security at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Additionally, he is the Director of the Institute for Information Technology Applications (IITA) at the Academy. General McCarthy has a distinguished 35–year military career, which includes combat, administrative and management assignments in the United States and abroad. He was Deputy Commander in Chief of the U.S. European Command; Deputy Chief of Staff for Programs and Resources at U.S. Air Force headquarters; and commander of the 8th Air Force. General McCarthy chairs Operation Enduring Freedom Lessons Learned and previously chaired Task Forces on Lessons Learned for Kosovo (1999) and Bosnia (1995-96). He also chaired the study on the transformation of the military for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He is currently a member of the Defense Science Board and formerly served on the Defense Policy Board and on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
• Hans-Peter Ring is a member of the EADS Board of Directors, EADS Executive Committee and serves as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company. Prior to this position, Ring was Senior Vice President of Controlling for the EADS Group. Ring began his career at MBB, an EADS predecessor, in 1977 and was named Manager of Budgeting, Accounting and Public Audits before assuming his role of Head of Controlling for Missiles and Defense in 1987. Three years later, he assumed the role of Head of Controlling in the Aircraft and Defense Systems Divisions of Deutsche Aerospace AG (DASA). From 1992-1995, Ring was CFO and Member of the Board at Dornier Lufthart GmbH, the regional aircraft business with DASA.
• Dr. William Schneider, Jr, is President of International Planning Services, Inc., a Washington-based international trade and finance advisory firm, and is an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute. He was formerly Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology (1982-1986). He served as Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (1981-82) prior to being nominated as Under Secretary by the president. In addition, Dr. Schneider serves as an advisor to the U.S. government in several capacities.
• Rear Admiral Gerald Woolever (U.S. Coast Guard-Retired) is Senior Vice President of Field Operations for Innovative Logistics Techniques, Inc. (INNOLOG). He has more than 35 years experience in operations and program management with industry, and with the U.S. Coast Guard, including major acquisitions oversight, logistics systems development, human resources, and government relations. Prior to joining INNOLOG, Admiral Woolever served as the Program Manager of Boeing's Integrated Deepwater Systems. Admiral Woolever earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of South Florida, and Master of Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester, and graduated first in his class with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

About EADS North America

EADS North America is the holding company for the North American activities of EADS, one of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies. As a leader in all sectors of defense and homeland security, EADS North America and its parent company, EADS, contribute more than $6 billion to the U.S. economy annually, and support 120,000 American jobs. With operating units and investments in 10 states and the District of Columbia, EADS North America offers a broad array of advanced solutions to its customers in the commercial, homeland security, aerospace and defense agencies.

EADS North America subsidiaries are: America Eurocopter Corporation, Grand Prairie, Tx.; Astrium North America, Houston, Tx.; Barfield, Inc., Miami, Fl.; EADS Aeroframe Services, Lake Charles, La.; EADS CASA Aircraft USA, Chantilly, Va.; EADS Socata Aircraft, Pembroke Pines, Fl.; EADS Supply & Services, Rockville, Md.; EADS TELECOM North America, Addison, Tx.; Fairchild Controls Corporation, Frederick, Maryland.

WAR CRIMES DOSSIER: Corps who are abusing on US/Canadian and other Citizens: Part 1

 Company Profiles 

 Boeing 

 Blackwater USA 

 Lockheed Martin 

 Northrop Grumman 

 General Dynamics 

 Raytheon 

 United Technologies 

 Halliburton 

General Electric 

Science Applications International Corporation 

 CSC/ DynCorp

Chemicals
From toxic waste to the unpronounceables on your food labels, chemicals are all around and within us. Here you will find CorpWatch coverage of the range of issues involving chemicals, including pesiticides, the widespread use of petrochemicals, health and environmental impacts, and the role of chemicals in bioengineered agriculture.


Construction
Building (or rebuilding) things is a lucrative business to be in, especially in an era when lots of things are being blown up. Construction is a mega-industry with players raking in money for huge projects, from Bechtel's Big Dig to Kellogg Brown & Root's military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are the small, mob-connected firms building at ground zero in New York, and even the bin Laden family, who largely built modern Saudia Arabia and Dubai. The companies who build dams, roads, schools, hospitals and military installations are a major economic and political force.

Energy
Those who own, extract, process, and sell the fossil fuels on which modern culture is (often regrettably) based make up perhaps the single most powerful industry in the world. While energy policy in the United States is made behind closed doors with oil barons, wars are fought in the Middle East over oil & gas, and geopolitics in South America is revolutionized on the power of vast oil reserves.


Food and Agriculture
The industrial food chain is complex - and highly profitable for those who control it. In India, ancient traditional grains have been patented by multinationals, while drought- and pest-resistant strains of food crops are engineered in laboratories and planted in massive monocultures worldwide. Harsh pesticides and herbicides have become the rule instead of the exception. GMO soybeans are crowding out the Amazon rainforests; meanwhile, massively subsidized, nutritionally-challenged corn finds its way into almost every aspect of the American diet, especially fast food. The corporations (Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, McDonald's, etc) behind what we eat exert power in their best interest, rather than in ours. What's good for their bottom line is not necessarily good for our waistlines, our coastlines, our treelines ...


Financial Services, Insurance and Banking 
Banks, investment firms, insurance companies are integral to the operation of every industry we cover. They are the nervous and circulatory systems of the corporate world. In a world where everything - even a human life - can be assigned a monetary value; where limitless money and great risk intersect, lies opportunity for greed, corruption, and fraud. 


Manufacturing
Perhaps the most outsourced industry in the world, manufacturing covers everything from textiles to automobiles to construction to electronics and everything in between. Since international trade is largely centered on the exchange of manufactured goods, issues of globalization swirl around these corporations. Here you'll find coverage of labor and sweatshops, the environment, trade agreements, and the overarching impacts of "offshoring" the manufacture of the goods the developed world consumes.


Media & Entertainment
A very few corporations control most of the messages we receive each day, from billboards to newspapers, to radio, film and television. CorpWatch covers not only the effect of media consolidation, but also the wizards behind the curtains in advertising, public relations, and the mainstream news media.


Natural Resources
It is a mark of modern civilization that we now buy and sell what nature provides for free. Trees, water, minerals, open land - these are profit opportunities for those who can turn them into timber, dams, bottled water, diamond rings, or condominium complexes. For issues directly relating to oil, gas, and coal, see also Energy.


Pharmaceuticals
The cost of prescription drugs has never been higher, and pharmaceutical companies have never spent more persuading consumers that they need drugs they've never heard of for illnesses they didn't know they had. Drug companies are also spending millions defending patents and persuading the FDA to approve new drugs ever faster. Meanwhile, developing countries go without desperately needed drugs because pharmaceutical companies fear that lowering prices for the neediest is a slippery slope. Big Pharma says high prices fund research and innovation.


Retail & Mega-Stores
Big-box stores like Wal-Mart, Asda and Home Depot have squeezed out small businesses all around the world, driving down wages and quality of life where they do business, all in the name of low prices. They are the largest, slowest-moving easy targets, smaller (and yet still massive) retail chains like Starbucks, Forever 21, Abercrombie & Fitch, the Gap and others have also drawn fire for sweatshop abuses, labor violations, and other questionable corporate behavior.


Technology & Telecommunications
Technology has seeped into nearly every aspect of modern life, from the food we eat to the ways we communicate. Consequently, telecommunications and technology corporations have gained huge power over the past two decades. Cable companies bicker with telephone monopolies over the internet; customer support for ubiquitous laptop computers is offshored from Silicon Valley to Bangalore; obsolete electronics pile up in developing world landfills, exposing children to toxic metals; and multinationals tinker with the technology of nature to make a tomato that doesn't spoil on a grocery shelf. Ubiquity, especially when it melds into the background of daily life, is perhaps the most powerful tool of corporate power.


Tobacco
The executives of Big Tobacco have stopped insisting that tobacco is not addictive, but have not stopped making a killing from the deadly addictive quality of their product. The steady demand, particularly in the developing world where regulation doesn't reach, breeds a booming business in smuggling, as well as aggressive marketing schemes targeting the poor, minorities, and children. International treaties and successful lawsuits have helped to slow the malignant spread of tobacco in the United States and other developed nations, but the industry remains one of the largest and most influential in national and international politics. 


Tourism & Real Estate
Tourism fuels some of the biggest development worldwide. Cruise ship operators are under fire for dumping waste in the oceans and exhaust into the skies; ski resorts an golf courses scar the land and pollute waterways. Tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry that frequently puts luxury ahead of the environment, respect for indigenous cultures, and sensitivity to land use issues. Real estate, some of it fueled by tourism, but also by the expansion of business, runs up against many of the other issues we cover - water use, land use, and the use of political influence to muscle into desirable locations, often with tax-breaks as a bonus. With real-estate the latest boom (or perhaps more appropriately "bubble") industry, issues associated with development - such as suburban sprawl - have become more immediate. 


 Transportation
Planes, trains, and automobiles ... almost every industry we cover requires a means of getting its goods from point A to point B. It could be your wintertime Granny Smith apple, shipped from Chile; or your iPod, made of parts flown in from China and assembled in California until it is trucked to your city, or flown back to your country. The gasoline in your car (which perhaps came from Detroit, Japan, Korea, or Germany) may be from Venezuela or Iraq. Almost everything you buy is better traveled than you could ever hope to be. And that translates into major profit for the corporations that own the means of transport.


War & Disaster Profiteering
CorpWatch looks at the intertwined relationship between private industry, the US Armed Forces and federal policy makers. We look at the domestic and foreign impacts of this dangerous complex.

Domestic Spying, Inc.Industries

by Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch 
November 27th, 2007

A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement. 

The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation ( SAIC ). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance.

More on this link .. 

Top 100 military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq

The US Navy has shown an interest in this Glen Davis story .. Hmmmm.

Some VERY interesting names appear in this article from Vancouver's The Republic.

Can anyone spell

F-r-a-n-k G-i-u-s-t-r-a W-i-l-l-i-a-m C-l-i-n-t-o-n G-e-o-r-g-e HW B-u-s-h

Again I ask when do we get REAL North American coverage of deep investigative stories.

How much does Patrick Fitzgerald REALLY know?

All this is NOT Unrelated to the BAE scandal either, that I know.

HMMm mmmm ..

The late Glen Davis was no ordinary philanthropist

The murdered environmentalist inherited his wealth through connections that run from Conrad Black to Prince Philip

by Kevin Potvin

Glen W Davis, the reclusive environmental philanthropist found mysteriously shot to death in a Toronto parking garage May 18, was no ordinary businessman.

His wealth was inherited from his father, Nelson M Davis, who died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 72, when he was one of the richest men in Canada, and every bit the recluse his son turned out to be.

Nelson Davis was chair and president of NM Davis Corporation, his own secretive energy and mining investment company. More interestingly, Nelson Davis was also chair of Argus Corporation.

The Conrad connection

Argus was also originally a Canadian mining company founded in 1945 before it fell into the hands of one Conrad Black, who purchased a controlling interest in the company from the widow of the late Bud MacDonald, president of Argus till he died, in 1978. Black parlayed his gain into a purchase of Hollinger Mines, founded in 1909 and at one time the largest gold mining company in the Western Hemisphere. Black placed Hollinger under the control of his Nelson Davis-run Argus Corp, and placed Argus under his wholly owned parent company, Ravelston (named, bizarrely enough, after a minor character in a 1936 George Orwell novel who publishes a radical left-wing newspaper called The Antichrist in the basement of a derelict building).

Glen Davis’ father is not only described as Conrad Black’s early mentor, but he also sat at the nexus between the 34-year-old Black’s growing web of private companies and the public companies he was rapidly becoming invested in. Nelson Davis was not only Black’s senior by 42 years, he was by far the wealthier of the two men.

With Nelson Davis in charge of Hollinger through his chairman-ship of Argus, Black enticed to the board of Hollinger such right-wing luminaries as Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle. Perle also was hired by Black as president of Hollinger Digital, a subsidiary of Hollinger Inc. Black has been closely associated with many other men besides these who were also intimately involved in the criminal presidency of Richard Nixon, about whom Black has recently released a sympathetic biography. He also rose to a seat on the steering committee of the notorious Bilderberg Group.

Dad’s business

Glen Davis picked up where his father left off in 1979, after he died of a poolside heart attack in Arizona. He maintained much the same business interests as his father, as well as the connections. In the early 1980s, he struck up a relationship with Monte Hummel, then the president of World Wildlife Fund Canada, and now honoured as president-emeritus. Glen Davis went on to donate millions of dollars to plenty of causes in the years since, but none so much as what he donated to Hummel’s WWF.

The head office of the worldwide Prince Philip-launched WWF organization is strategically located in the secret banking enclave of Switzerland. WWF reported revenues in 2005 of US$121 million. Sitting on the current board of the Canadian branch of WWF are R B Matthews, president of Manitou Investments, which is deeply invested in mining concerns; Patricia Koval, a partner in powerful global law firm Torys LLP (alongside former Ontario Conservative Premier William Davis, no known relation to Glen); Bryce Hunter, chair of Huntro Investments, also involved in mining; and other top executives from AGF Management, Catalyst Paper Corp, J P Morgan, Morgan Stanley Canada, and Deloitte & Touche, as well as top executives from other leading banking and resource extraction companies. In a 2000 speech to members of the Davis Family Trust, Hummel offered that his first love, in the field of conservation, is the Canadian Barrens—the vast area between Hudson’s Bay and the MacKenzie River rich in minerals, including gold—containing perhaps the largest reserves of gold in the world according to analysts, though much of it remains inaccessible for now.

After meeting Hummel, Glen Davis, recent inheritor of what has been described as one of the largest personal fortunes in Canada (built up by his father through close association with Conrad Black, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Perle, through companies originally involved in resource extraction), also acquired a love for conservation and in particular for the Barrens area of Canada—the rich, largely untapped sea of resources first introduced to him by Hummel. He thereafter became a significant donor to Hummel’s WWF Canada fund, on whose board of directors sit the top executives of some of Canada’s—and the world’s—biggest resource extraction and banking companies, and began taking trips alone into the Barrens and becoming something of a world expert, with Hummel, on the region.

A secretive man

Davis was shot in the basement garage of the building housing WWF Canada, immediately after a meeting in WWF offices. The man who called Davis’ father his mentor, Conrad Black, is currently on trial in Chicago on embezzlement charges arising from the intricate financial relationship between Hollinger, Argus, and Ravelston that Black set up with Glen Davis’ father as his guide and mentor 30 years ago.

Police say they have no leads in the murder of Glen Davis, and no motive. He has been honoured by leading environmental organiza-tions for his largesse, but was said to be a very secretive man.

Get ready! Here comes the domestic surveillance big time!

Domestic Spying, Inc.

by Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch
November 27th, 2007

A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time.

Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an
unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement.

The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance.

The NAO was created under a plan tentatively approved in May 2007 by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell. Specifically, the NAO will oversee how classified information collected by the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and other key agencies is used within the U.S. during natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other events affecting national security. The most critical intelligence will be supplied by the NSA and the NGA, which are often referred to by U.S. officials as the "eyes" and "ears" of the intelligence community.

The NSA, through a global network of listening posts, surveillance planes, and satellites, captures signals from phone calls, e-mail and Internet traffic, and translates and analyzes them for U.S. military and national intelligence officials.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which was formally inaugurated in 2003, provides overhead imagery and mapping tools that allow intelligence and military analysts to monitor events from the skies and space. The NSA and the NGA have a close relationship with the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and maintains the U.S.
fleet of spy satellites and operates the ground stations where the NSA's signals and the NGA's imagery are processed and analyzed. By law, their collection efforts are supposed to be confined to foreign countries and battlefields.

The National Applications Office was conceived in 2005 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which Congress created in 2004 to oversee the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. The ODNI, concerned that the legal framework for U.S. intelligence operations had not been updated for the global "war on terror," turned to Booz Allen
Hamilton of McLean, Virginia -- one of the largest contractors in the spy business. The company was tasked with studying how intelligence from spy satellites and photoreconnaissance planes could be better used domestically to track potential threats to security within the U.S.. The Booz Allen study was completed in May of that year, and has since become the basis for the NAO oversight plan. In May 2007, McConnell, the former executive vice president of Booz Allen, signed off on the creation of the NAO as the principal body to oversee the merging of foreign and domestic intelligence collection operations.

The NAO is "an idea whose time has arrived," Charles Allen, a top U.S. intelligence official, told the Wall Street Journal in August 2007 after it broke the news of the creation of the NAO. Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, will head the new program. The announcement came just
days after President George W. Bush signed a new law approved by Congress to expand the ability of the NSA to eavesdrop, without warrants, on telephone calls, e-mail and faxes passing through telecommunications hubs in the U.S . when the government suspects agents of a foreign power may be involved.

"These [intelligence] systems are already used to help us respond to
crises," Allen later told the Washington Post. "We anticipate that we can
also use them to protect Americans by preventing the entry of dangerous
people and goods into the country, and by helping us examine critical
infrastructure for vulnerabilities."

Donald Kerr, a former NRO director who is now the number two at ODNI, recently explained to reporters that the intelligence community was no longer discussing whether or not to spy on U.S. citizens:

"Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety,'' Kerr said. ''I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.''

What Will The NAO Do?

The plan for the NAO builds on a domestic security infrastructure that has been in place for at least seven years. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NSA was granted new powers to monitor domestic communications without obtaining warrants from a secret foreign intelligence court established by Congress in 1978 (that warrant-less program ended in
January 2007 but was allowed to continue, with some changes, under legislation passed by Congress in August 2007).

Moreover, intelligence and reconnaissance agencies that were historically confined to spying on foreign countries have been used extensively on the home front since 2001. In the hours after the September 11th, 2001 attacks in New York, for example, the Bush administration called on the NGA to capture imagery from lower Manhattan and the Pentagon to help in the rescue and recovery efforts. In 2002, when two deranged snipers terrified the citizens of Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs with a string of fatal shootings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked the NGA to provide detailed images of freeway interchanges and other locations to help spot the pair.

The NGA was also used extensively during Hurricane Katrina < http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14023> , when the agency provided overhead imagery -- some of it supplied by U-2 photoreconnaissance aircraft -- to federal and state rescue operations. The data, which included mapping of flooded areas in Louisiana and Mississippi, allowed residents of the stricken areas to see the extent of damage to their homes and helped first-responders locate contaminated areas as well as schools, churches and hospitals that might be used in the rescue. More recently, during the October 2007 California wildfires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asked the NGA to analyze overhead imagery of the fire zones and
determine the areas of maximum intensity and damage. In every situation that the NGA is used domestically, it must receive a formal request from a lead domestic agency, according to agency spokesperson David Burpee. That agency is usually FEMA, which is a unit of DHS.

At first blush, the idea of a U.S. intelligence agency serving the public by providing imagery to aid in disaster recovery sounds like a positive development, especially when compared to the Bush administration's misuse of the NSA and the Pentagon's Counter-Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) to spy on American citizens. But the notion of using spy satellites and aircraft
for domestic purposes becomes problematic from a civil liberties standpoint when the full capabilities of agencies like the NGA and the NSA are considered.

Imagine, for example, that U.S. intelligence officials have determined, through NSA telephone intercepts, that a group of worshippers at a mosque in Oakland, California, has communicated with an Islamic charity in Saudi Arabia. This is the same group that the FBI and the U.S. Department of the Treasury believe is linked to an organization unfriendly to the United
States.

Imagine further that the FBI, as a lead agency, asks and receives permission to monitor that mosque and the people inside using high-resolution imagery obtained from the NGA. Using other technologies, such as overhead traffic cameras in place in many cities, that mosque could be placed under surveillance for months, and -- through cell phone intercepts and overhead
imagery -- its suspected worshipers carefully tracked in real-time as they moved almost anywhere in the country.

The NAO, under the plan approved by ODNI's McConnell, would determine the rules that will guide the DHS and other lead federal agencies when they want to use imagery and signals intelligence in situations like this, as well as during natural disasters. If the organization is established as planned, U.S. domestic agencies will have a vast array of technology at their disposal. In addition to the powerful mapping and signals tools provided by the NGA and the NSA, domestic agencies will also have access to measures and signatures intelligence (MASINT) managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the principal spying agency used by the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(MASINT is a highly classified form of intelligence that uses infrared sensors and other technologies to "sniff" the atmosphere for certain chemicals and electro-magnetic activity and "see" beneath bridges and forest canopies. Using its tools, analysts can detect signs that a nuclear power plant is producing plutonium, determine from truck exhaust what types of
vehicles are in a convoy, and detect people and weapons hidden from the view of satellites or photoreconnaissance aircraft.)

Created By Contractors

The study group that established policies for the NAO was jointly funded by the ODNI and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), one of only two domestic U.S. agencies that is currently allowed, under rules set in the 1970s, to use classified intelligence from spy satellites. (The other is NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.) The group was chaired by
Keith Hall, a Booz Allen vice president who manages his firm's extensive contracts with the NGA and previously served as the director of the NRO.

Other members of the group included seven other former intelligence officers working for Booz Allen, as well as retired Army Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, the former director of the DIA and vice president of homeland security for L-3 Communications, a key NSA contractor; and Thomas W. Conroy, the vice president of national security programs for Northrop Grumman, which has extensive contracts with the NSA and the NGA and throughout the
intelligence community.

From the start, the study group was heavily weighted toward companies with a stake in both foreign and domestic intelligence. Not surprisingly, its contractor-advisers called for a major expansion in the domestic use of the spy satellites that they sell to the government. Since the end of the Cold War and particularly since the September 11, 2001 attacks, they said, the

"threats to the nation have changed and there is a growing interest in making available the special capabilities of the intelligence community to all parts of the government, to include homeland security and law enforcement entities and on a higher priority basis."

Contractors are not new to the U.S. spy world. Since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the modern intelligence system in 1947, the private sector has been tapped to design and build the technology that facilitates electronic surveillance. Lockheed, for example, built the U-2, the famous surveillance plane that flew scores of spy missions over the Soviet Union and Cuba. During the 1960s, Lockheed was a prime contractor for the Corona system of spy satellites that greatly expanded the CIA's abilities to photograph secret military installations from space. IBM, Cray Computers and other companies built the super-computers that allowed the NSA to sift through data from millions of telephone calls, and analyze them for intelligence that was passed on to national leaders.

Spending on contracts has increased exponentially in recent years along with intelligence budgets, and the NSA, the NGA and other agencies have turned to the private sector for the latest computer and communications technologies and for intelligence analysts. For example, today about half of staff at the NSA and NGA are private contractors. At the DIA, 35 percent of the workers are contractors. But the most privatized agency of all is the NRO, where a
whopping 90 percent of the workforce receive paychecks from corporations.

All told the U.S. intelligence agencies spend some 70 percent of their estimated $60 billion annual budget on contracts with private companies, according to documents this reporter obtained < http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/01/intel_contractors/> in June
2007 from the ODNI.

The plans to increase domestic spying are estimated to be worth billions of dollars in new business for the intelligence contractors. The market potential was on display in October at GEOINT 2007, the annual conference sponsored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a non-profit organization funded by the largest contractors for the NGA.

During the conference, which took place in October at the spacious Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in downtown San Antonio, many companies were displaying spying and surveillance tools that had been used in Afghanistan and Iraq and were now being re-branded for potential domestic use.

BAE Systems Inc.

On the first day of the conference, three employees of BAE Systems Inc. who had just returned from a three-week tour of Iraq and Afghanistan with the NGA demonstrated a new software package called SOCET GXP. (BAE Systems Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of the UK-based BAE, the third-largest military contractor in the world.)

GXP uses Google Earth software as a basis for creating three-dimensional maps that U.S. commanders and soldiers use to conduct intelligence and reconnaissance missions. Eric Bruce, one of the BAE employees back from the Middle East, said his team trained U.S. forces to use the GXP software "to study routes for known terrorist sites" as well as to locate opium fields.
"Terrorists use opium to fund their war," he said. Bruce also said his team received help from Iraqi citizens in locating targets. "Many of the locals can't read maps, so they tell the analysts, 'there is a mosque next to a hill,'" he explained.

Bruce said BAE's new package is designed for defense forces and intelligence agencies, but can also be used for homeland security and by highway departments and airports. Earlier versions of the software were sold to the U.S. Army's Topographic Engineering Center, where it has been used to collect data on more than 12,000 square kilometers of Iraq, primarily in urban centers and over supply routes.

Another new BAE tool displayed in San Antonio was a program called GOSHAWK, which stands for "Geospatial Operations for a Secure Homeland - Awareness, Workflow, Knowledge." It was pitched by BAE as a tool to help law enforcement and state and local emergency agencies prepare for, and respond to, "natural disasters and terrorist and criminal incidents." Under the GOSHAWK program, BAE supplies "agencies and corporations" with data providers and information technology specialists "capable of turning geospatial information into the knowledge needed for quick decisions." A typical operation might involve acquiring data from satellites, aircraft and sensors in ground vehicles, and integrating those data to support an emergency or security operations center. One of the program's special attributes, the company says, is its ability to "differentiate levels of classification," meaning that it can deduce when data are classified and meant only for use by analysts with security clearances.

These two products were just a sampling of what BAE, a major player in the U.S. intelligence market, had to offer. BAE's services to U.S. intelligence -- including the CIA and the National Counter-Terrorism Center -- are provided through a special unit called the Global Analysis Business Unit. It is located in McLean, Virginia, a stone's throw from the CIA. The unit is headed by John Gannon, a 25-year veteran of the CIA who reached the agency's highest analytical ranks as deputy director of intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Today, as a private sector contractor for the intelligence community, Gannon manages a staff of more than 800 analysts with security clearances.

A brochure for the Global Analysis unit distributed at GEOINT 2007 explains BAE's role and, in the process, underscores the degree of outsourcing in U.S. intelligence.

"The demand for experienced, skilled, and cleared analysts - and for the best systems to manage them - has never been greater across the Intelligence and Defense Communities, in the field and among federal, state, and local agencies responsible for national and homeland security,"

BAE says. The mission of the Global Analysis unit, it says,

"is to provide policymakers, warfighters, and law enforcement officials with analysts to help them understand the complex intelligence threats they face, and work force management programs to improve the skills and expertise of analysts."

At the bottom of the brochure is a series of photographs illustrating BAE's broad reach: a group of analysts monitoring a bank of computers; three employees studying a map of Europe, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; the outlines of two related social networks that have been mapped out to show how their members are linked; a bearded man, apparently from the Middle
East and presumably a terrorist; the fiery image of a car bomb after it exploded in Iraq; and four white radar domes (known as radomes) of the type used by the NSA to monitor global communications from dozens of bases and facilities around the world.

The brochure may look and sound like typical corporate public relations. But amid BAE's spy talk were two phrases strategically placed by the company to alert intelligence officials that BAE has an active presence inside the U.S.. The tip-off words were "federal, state and local agencies," "law enforcement officials" and "homeland security." By including them, BAE was broadcasting that it is not simply a contractor for agencies involved in foreign intelligence, but has an active presence as a supplier to domestic security agencies, a category that includes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI as well as local and state police forces stretching from Maine to Hawaii.

ManTech, Boeing, Harris and L-3

ManTech International, an important NSA contractor based in Fairfax, Virginia, has perfected the art of creating multi-agency software programs for both foreign and domestic intelligence. After the September 11th, 2001 attacks, it developed a classified program for the Defense Intelligence Agency called the Joint Regional Information Exchange System. DIA used it to combine classified and unclassified intelligence on terrorist threats on a single desktop. ManTech then tweaked that software for the Department of Homeland Security and sold it to DHS for its Homeland Security Information Network. According to literature ManTech distributed at GEOINT, that software will "significantly strengthen the exchange of real-time threat information used to combat terrorism." ManTech, the brochure added, "also provides extensive, advanced information technology support to the National Security Agency" and other agencies.

In a nearby booth, Chicago, Illinois-based Boeing, the world's second largest defense contractor, was displaying its "information sharing environment" software, which is designed to meet the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's new requirements on agencies to stop buying "stovepiped" systems that can't talk to each other. The ODNI wants to focus on products that will allow the NGA and other agencies to easily share their classified imagery with the CIA and other sectors of the community.

"To ensure freedom in the world, the United States continues to address the challenges introduced by terrorism,"

a Boeing handout said. Its new software, the company said, will allow information to be

"shared efficiently and uninterrupted across intelligence agencies, first responders, military and world allies."

Boeing has a reason for publishing boastful material like this: In 2005, it lost a major contract with the NRO to build a new generation of imaging satellites after ringing up billions of dollars in cost-overruns. The New York Times recently called the Boeing project "the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects."

Boeing's geospatial intelligence offerings are provided through its Space and Intelligence Systems unit, which also holds contracts with the NSA. It allows agencies and military units to map global shorelines and create detailed maps of cities and battlefields, complete with digital elevation data that allow users to construct three-dimensional maps. (In an intriguing aside, one Boeing intelligence brochure lists among its "specialized organizations" Jeppesen Government and Military Services. According to a 2006 account by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, Jeppesen provided logistical and navigational assistance, including flight plans and clearance to fly over other countries, to the CIA for its "extraordinary rendition" program.)

Although less known as an intelligence contractor than BAE and Boeing, the Harris Corporation has become a major force in providing contracted electronic, satellite and information technology services to the intelligence community, including the NSA and the NRO. In 2007, according to its most recent annual report, the $4.2 billion company, based in Melbourne, Florida, won several new classified contracts. NSA awarded one of them for software to be used by NSA analysts in the agency's "Rapidly Deployable Integrated Command and Control System," which is used by the NSA to transmit "actionable intelligence" to soldiers and commanders in the field. Harris also supplies geospatial and imagery products to the NGA. At GEOINT, Harris displayed a new product that allows agencies to analyze live video and audio data imported from UAVs. It was developed, said Fred Poole, a Harris market development manager, "with input from intelligence analysts who were looking for a video and audio analysis tool that would allow them to perform 'intelligence fusion'" -- combining information from several agencies into a single picture of an ongoing operation.

For many of the contractors at GEOINT, the highlight of the symposium was an"interoperability demonstration" that allowed vendors to show how their products would work in a domestic crisis.

One scenario involved Cuba as a rogue nation supplying spent nuclear fuel to terrorists bent on creating havoc in the U.S.. Implausible as it was, the plot, which involved maritime transportation and ports, allowed the companies to display software that was likely already in use by the Department of Homeland Security and Naval Intelligence. The "plot" involved the discovery by U.S. intelligence of a Cuban ship carrying spent nuclear fuel heading for the U.S. Gulf Coast; an analysis of the social networks of Cuban officials involved with the illicit cargo; and the tracking and interception of the cargo as it departed from Cuba and moved across the Caribbean to Corpus Christi, Texas, a major port on the Gulf Coast. The agencies involved included the NGA, the NSA, Naval Intelligence and the Marines, and some of the key contractors working for those agencies. It illustrated how sophisticated the U.S. domestic surveillance system has become in the six years since the 9/11 attacks.

L-3 Communications, which is based in New York city, was a natural for the exercise: As mentioned earlier, retired Army Lt. General Patrick M. Hughes, its vice president of homeland security, was a member of the Booz Allen Hamilton study group that advised the Bush administration to expand the domestic use of military spy satellites. At GEOINT, L-3 displayed a new program called "multi-INT visualization environment" that combines imagery and signals intelligence data that can be laid over photographs and maps.

One example shown during the interoperability demonstration showed how such data would be incorporated into a map of Florida and the waters surrounding Cuba. With L-3 a major player at the NSA, this demonstration software is likely seeing much use as the NSA and the NGA expand their information-sharing relationship.

Over the past two years, for example, the NGA has deployed dozens of employees and contractors to Iraq to support the "surge" of U.S. troops. The NGA teams provide imagery and full-motion video -- much of it beamed to the ground from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) -- that help U.S. commanders and soldiers track and destroy insurgents fighting the U.S . occupation. And since 2004, under a memorandum of understanding with the NSA, the NGA has begun to incorporate signals intelligence into its imagery products. The blending technique allows U.S. military units to track and find targets by picking up signals from their cell phones, follow the suspects in real-time using overhead video, and direct fighter planes and artillery units to the exact location of the targets -- and blow them to smithereens.

That's exactly how U.S. Special Forces tracked and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the NGA's director, Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, said in 2006. Later, Murrett told reporters during GEOINT 2007, the NSA and the NGA have cooperated in similar fashion in several other fronts of the "war on terror," including in the Horn of Africa, where the U.S. military has attacked Al Qaeda units in Somalia, and in the Philippines, where U.S. forces are helping the government put down the Muslim insurgent group Abu Sayyaf. "When the NGA and the NSA work together, one plus one equals five," said Murrett.

Civil Liberty Worries

For U.S. citizens, however, the combination of NGA imagery and NSA signals intelligence in a domestic situation could threaten important constitutional safeguards against unwarranted searches and seizures. Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, a nonprofit advocacy organization, has likened the NAO plan to "Big Brother in the Sky." The Bush administration, she told the Washington Post, is

"laying the bricks one at a time for a police state."

Some Congress members, too, are concerned.

"The enormity of the NAO's capabilities and the intended use of the imagery received through these satellites for domestic homeland security purposes, and the unintended consequences that may arise, have heightened concerns among the general public, including reputable civil rights and civil liberties organizations,"

Bennie G. Thompson, a Democratic member of Congress from Mississippi and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a September letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. Thompson and other lawmakers reacted with anger after reports of the NAO and the domestic spying plan were first revealed by the Wall Street Journal in August.

"There was no briefing, no hearing, and no phone call from anyone on your staff to
any member of this committee of why, how, or when satellite imagery would be shared with police and sheriffs' officers nationwide,"

Thompson complained to Chertoff.

At a hastily organized hearing in September, Thompson and others demanded that the opening of the NAO be delayed until further studies were conducted on its legal basis and questions about civil liberties were answered. They also demanded biweekly updates from Chertoff on the activities and progress of the new organization. Others pointed out the potential danger of allowing U.S. military satellites to be used domestically.

"It will terrify you if you really understand the capabilities of satellites,"

warned Jane Harman, a Democratic member of Congress from California, who represents a coastal area of Los Angeles where many of the nation's satellites are built. As Harman well knows, military spy satellites are far more flexible, offer greater resolution, and have considerably more power to observe human activity than commercial satellites.

"Even if this program is well-designed and executed, someone somewhere else could hijack it,"

Harman said during the hearing.

The NAO was supposed to open for business on October 1, 2007. But the Congressional complaints have led the ODNI and DHS to delay their plans. The NAO "has no intention to begin operations until we address your questions," Charles Allen of DHS explained in a letter to Thompson. In an address at the GEOINT conference in San Antonio, Allen said that the ODNI is working with DHS and the Departments of Justice and Interior to draft the charter for the
new organization, which he said will face "layers of review" once it is established.

Yet, given the Bush administration's record of using U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on U.S. citizens, it is difficult to take such promises at face value. Moreover, the extensive corporate role in foreign and domestic intelligence means that the private sector has a great deal to gain in the
new plan for intelligence-sharing. Because most private contracts with intelligence agencies are classified, however, the public will have little knowledge of this role. Before Congress signs off on the NAO, it should create a better oversight system that would allow the House of Representatives and the Senate to monitor the new organization and to examine how BAE, Boeing, Harris and its fellow corporations stand to profit from this unprecedented expansion of America's domestic intelligence system.

Tim Shorrock <http://www.timshorrock.com> has been writing about U.S.
foreign policy and national security for nearly 30 years. His book, Spies
for Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence, will be published in
May 2008 by Simon & Schuster. He can be reached at timshorrock@gmail.com.

Headaches with transglobalism; Case Study BAE

Bribery law reform could tackle wrongdoing in high places

Clare Dyer, legal editor
Thursday November 29, 2007
The Guardian

Proposals published today for changes to the "out-of-date" and "uncertain" law of bribery could make it easier to prosecute in cases such as the corruption investigation into BAE Systems.

The change, in a Law Commission consultation paper commissioned by the Home Office, would remove the so-called Nuremberg defence - "I was only following orders" - by enlarging the offence of bribery to include corruption at the highest level of an organisation.

At present, in the private sector, the offence of bribery is confined to situations where an agent or employee betrays his principal. If the principal approves the bribe, the offence is not committed.

Although the Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE Systems was said to have been dropped on public interest grounds - in response to Saudi threats to withdraw cooperation in the war on terror - Lord Goldsmith, then the attorney general, said he had received a QC's advice that the case could not be successfully prosecuted in any event.

He said in the Financial Times last January:

"The principal obstacle [was that] BAE were asserting that the payments they were making had been authorised at the highest level."

To the question, "

The highest level of the Saudi royal family?"

he replied:

"Yes, the Saudis."

He added: "

Normally to produce a corruption case you will call somebody senior from the company to say, 'Good heavens, I never knew the marketing director was taking used £50 notes, or getting a free subscription to the golf club, or having his roof done', or whatever it may be. That's the first person you call. How were the SFO going to deal with that in this case? Were they going to be able to call someone from Saudi to say this wasn't authorised? "

The Law Commission produced a controversial report calling for reform of the law of corruption in 1998, but its recommendations never reached the statute book. Its latest proposals have a narrower remit, concentrating only on bribery, and follow criticisms of UK law by the OECD, whose conventions on bribery and corruption the UK has signed up to.

The Law Commission proposes broadening the offence of bribery to get rid of the need for an agent to betray a principal. The offence would be committed by someone who offers an advantage to another as a reward for breaching a trust, or breaching a duty to act impartially or in the best interests of another person.

The person soliciting or taking the advantage would also be guilty, and agreeing to use one's influence to persuade someone else to breach a duty would also be an offence of bribery.

At present, bribery outside the UK can be prosecuted here only if it was committed by a British national.

The Law Commission says this should be extended to cover foreign nationals resident in the UK. Its paper also calls for a separate offence of bribing a foreign public official.

Comment: Yeah, right. Not in my lifetime. OR .. Don't holdjer breath, baby.

Will BAE Scandal of Century Bring Down Dick Cheney?

by Jeffrey Steinberg

With the U.S. Department of Justice now confirmed to be investigating money laundering and bribery by the British aerospace giant BAE Systems, Congress and the American people must make certain that the investigation does not turn into one more Bush-Cheney-Gonzales coverup. The issue on the table is far bigger than the alleged $2 billion in bribes that BAE Systems paid out to former Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, through the now-defunct Washington, D.C.-based Riggs Bank. As EIR revealed in an exclusive report last week ("Scandal of the Century Rocks British Crown and the City"), at least $80 billion in unaccounted-for loot has been generated by the Al-Yamamah oil-for-jet fighters barter deal, since it was signed in September 1985.

While British news organizations, led by the Guardian and BBC, have published revealing details of BAE bribery and slush funds, involving Prince Bandar, former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and the late Dutch Royal Consort, Prince Bernhard, none of the British media has touched upon the full magnitude of the scandal—the approximately $160 billion in secret oil revenues, generated by the BAE-Saudi Al-Yamamah deal, over the past 22 years (see Table 1 for the year-by-year cash value of the Saudi oil shipments to BAE, through British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, and the British government's Defence Export Sales Organization).

British author William Simpson, who wrote the 2006 authorized biography of Prince Bandar, The Prince—The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, on the other hand, provided authoritative details "right from the prince's mouth" that should be of great interest to American Justice Department and Congressional investigators. What Simpson hinted at is perhaps the biggest covert Anglo-American slush fund in history—one that the author acknowledged had been used to fund clandestine wars, including the Mujahideen's war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, and covert military actions in Africa.

Citing his interviews with Tony Edwards, the one-time head of the British government's Defence Export Sales Organization (DESO), which administered the Al-Yamamah project, Simpson wrote:

"Edwards admitted that for the Saudis the use of oil meant that the contract was effectively an off-balance-sheet transaction: it did not go through the Saudi Treasury. Edwards also confirmed that one of the main attractions for the Saudis in this unique arrangement was British flexibility. 'The British were much more flexible than the Americans,' he said. '

The Americans went through the Foreign Military sales system, which has congressional law behind it. If the customers get out of line and they fail to pay the money, then they are cut off. In this country, it was quite flexible; sometimes the oil flow and the associated monies that were received by selling it were ahead, at other times it fell behind.' "

Simpson continued,

"The phenomenal amount of money generated from the sale of oil comes through DESO, before being paid to British Aerospace. Edwards admitted that the government does charge a little commission for administering the contract, money that attracted the attention of the Treasury as it built up a considerable surplus."

What neither Edwards nor Simpson chose to point out was the fact that the oil revenues generated from the 600,000 barrels per day that the Saudis paid into the Al-Yamamah fund from 1985 through to the present, amounted to an estimated $160 billion—four times the actual cost of the entire military package delivered by BAE to Saudi Arabia. Nobody in London is talking about where the rest of the money landed—and what it was used for.

Who Runs DESO, and Why?

DESO was established as a British government entity in the mid-1960s, and has been the private domain of Britain's main defense manufacturers and allied financial institutions ever since. Throughout its history, the director of DESO has always been a director of a major British arms manufacturer, responsible for hawking as much business as possible for the Anglo firms.

But beyond the increase in the British portion of the global arms business, DESO also aimed to secure British control over the entirety of the Western arms business, through off-balance-sheet arrangements that would be impossible to pull off under American law. Simpson revealed that, under Al-Yamamah, American and other foreign firms were also allowed to cash in on the deal:

"The Al-Yamamah deal Mrs. Thatcher negotiated placed British Aerospace as the prime contractor for the provision of any other military equipment purchased for Saudi Arabia. 'By supporting not just the British aircraft but the American aircraft too,' said Edwards, 'Al-Yamamah was an integral part of supporting the Saudi Air Force in total.' He stressed that DESO and British Aerospace have thus ended up supporting all Saudi aircraft—the Peace Shield program—all funded through Al-Yamamah. Edwards concluded, 'In other words, the value of this stream of income and what it is used for has drifted a little bit over the years into things other than it was originally destined for.'

"In effect," Simpson admitted, "Al-Yamamah would become a backdoor method of covertly buying U.S. arms for the kingdom; military hardware purchases that would not be visible to Congress. It specifically had been structured to provide an unparalleled degree of flexibility whereby the Saudis could purchase military equipment under the imprimatur of DESO and British Aerospace."

Simpson, who wrote The Prince as virtually a ghost autobiography of the enigmatic Saudi diplomat Prince Bandar, acknowledged that the sheer magnitude of the oil-for-jets deal raised serious questions of corruption.

"The ingenious diversity of Al-Yamamah,"

he wrote,

"together with the British government's discretion and liberal approach to a unique finance deal, largely founded on the undisputed collateral of the huge Saudi oil reserves, could explain the financial black holes assumed by a suspicious media to be evidence of commissions."

But, Simpson explained,

"Although Al-Yamamah constitutes a highly unconventional way of doing business, its lucrative spin-offs are the by-products of a wholly political objective: a Saudi political objective and a British political objective. Al-Yamamah is, first and foremost, a political contract. Negotiated at the height of the Cold War, its unique structure has enabled the Saudis to purchase weapons from around the globe to fund the fight against Communism. Al-Yamamah money can be found in the clandestine purchase of Russian ordnance used in the expulsion of Qadaffi's troops from Chad. It can also be traced to arms bought from Egypt and other countries, and sent to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupying forces."

"Arguably," Simpson admitted,

"its consummate flexibility is needed because of inevitable opposition to Saudi arms purchases in Congress.... The oil barter arrangement circumvented such bureaucracy."

Simpson quoted sources close to Bandar, who explained:

"What Al-Yamamah did, because it is oil for services, is to say: Okay. Al-Yamamah picks up the tab; Saudi Arabia will sign with the French or whoever, and Britain pays them on their behalf. So suddenly the Saudis now have an operational weapons system complete with its support that doesn't reflect on Al-Yamamah as a project. Therefore, if Saudi Arabia wants some services from the Americans, or some weapons system that they have to buy now, otherwise Congress will object to it later, and they can't get it from their current defense budget, then they simply tell Al-Yamamah, 'You divert that money.' "

Between the more than $80 billion in untraced funds generated through Al-Yamamah, according to EIR's conservative estimate, corroborated by U.S. intelligence sources, and the use of the project as a cover for covert activities around the globe and unauthorized weapons purchases, both the Justice Department and the U.S. Congress have a much bigger series of crimes to probe than the $2 billion in fees allegedly conduited through the Saudi accounts at Riggs Bank. The issue is the British corruption and subversion of American law on a grand scale.

Prince Bandar's ghost writer, William Simpson, has revealed that Al-Yamamah provided off-balance-sheet covert funding for the decade-long Mujahideen covert war to drive the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence sources have independently confirmed that at least some of those funds went to the recruitment and training of foreign Muslim fighters, who were sent to Afghanistan. Some of those fighters, following the Afghan War (1979-90) would later surface in such faraway places as Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, as Islamist insurgents, including members of al-Qaeda.

Simpson also revealed that Al-Yamamah funds went to the purchase of Soviet-made weapons, that were provided to Chad, to drive Libyan forces out of that country. John Bedenkamp, a onetime top aide to Rhodesia's apartheid-era President Ian Smith, and a major arms broker throughout Africa, is currently under investigation by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for his role in BAE arms dealings in South Africa. U.S. intelligence sources have identified Bedenkamp as a conduit for Soviet arms to African insurgents, raising questions about his earlier involvement with the Al-Yamamah project in these weapons deals fueling wars in Africa.

Cheney on the Hot Seat

Washington sources have reported to EIR that the Al-Yamamah revelations have sent shock waves through the City of London. According to one senior U.S. intelligence source, who spoke to EIR on condition of anonymity

, "The Al-Yamamah story opens a window into the inner world of Anglo-Dutch financial power. While Al-Yamamah is not the only such off-budget arrangement, it is one of the largest, and it provides a clear picture of a mode of operation—totally outside the control of any government agency, especially the U.S. government. Ultimately, this is a London scandal, not a Riyadh scandal."

One consequence of those shock waves is that Vice President Dick Cheney, according to Washington insiders, is in deep trouble with his London friends. Cheney, the sources report, was the guarantor that the story of the $80-100 billion fund would never see the light of day. And, while the American and British establishment press have attempted to bury the scandal, either through blacking it out altogether, or focusing attention on tertiary features, like the relatively small flow of cash to Prince Bandar, the EIR revelations have saturated the U.S. Congress and have been picked up around the world.

The next chapter is now being written in the scandal of the century, and that could mean the political doom of Dick Cheney. Ironically, it could come at the hands of his own political boosters in the City of London, rather than from Congressional Democrats, who remain divided on the issue of Cheney's impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. Ultimately, the real powers behind the throne in London have very low tolerance for failure.

ARMS DEALING: Case Study, Part 3

Gripen evidence lacks clout: state attorney

By: Bradley Gardner, 26. 02. 2007

New leads provided by the British police will likely lead to the reopening of the investigation of the allegedly corrupt attempts of the U.K.'s British Aerospace Systems (BAE) to sell jet fighters to the Czech Republic, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office said Feb. 23.

However, the office maintained its stance that despite the heated publicity generated by a Swedish public television exposé on the affair, no new compelling evidence has been presented. Critics responded by saying they were unsure just how “concrete” the evidence needs to be before any action can be taken. Despite the documentary's corroboration of evidence that BAE used agents in an attempt at bribing Czech politicians into voting for the purchase of 24 Gripen fighters, Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office attorney Ivona Horská said the program had not provided the kind of specific evidence that could lead to an automatic reopening of the probe. “Whether or not this is enough evidence to produce a conviction is up to the police to decide; we just know that everything we are reporting is true and that it is only the tip of the iceberg,” Fredrik Laurin, one of the reporters who worked on the news report, told CBW.

Swedish chief prosecutor Christer van der Kwast said he was conducting preliminary investigations into the role of BAE Gripen consortium partner and Swedish company SAAB in the case, but added that he is not certain at this point that SAAB had taken part.

The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been investigating BAE's approach to selling its wares in six countries since 2004, but SFO spokesman David Jones would not detail any of the evidence that could be passed on to Czech police.

Accusations of corruption in connection with the fighter jet tender have been circulating since May 2001, when all the bidders in the tender except SAAB/BAE suddenly dropped out at the same time, citing “a lack of clarity in the time of the tender.”

At the time, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Tome Walters Jr., who is director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency at the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, stated more bluntly that “

we cannot ignore the numerous reports suggesting that a clear favorite has already emerged even prior to the submission of all the proposals.”

Suggestions of bribery

In May 2002, with Czech Parliament discussing the tender, Michael Žantovský, then chairman of the now-defunct Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA), said someone had called him offering him money in return for his backing in a vote on the Gripen proposal. The police were able to ascertain that a bribery attempt did occur, but could not identify who was responsible for it. Senators Přemysl Sobotka (Civic Democrat/ODS) and Jitka Seitlová (Independent), both claimed to have received similar offers.

In 2003, Anthony Wayne, then an assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department who is currently the American ambassador to Argentina, told the U.K. Ministry of Defense's (MoD) permanent secretary Kevin Tebbit that

BAE was guilty of “corrupt practices.”

British daily The Guardian claimed his words were based on evidence from the CIA and the US Department of Commerce, although the U.K. MoD said at the time that the allegation “had never been substantiated by any evidence whatsoever.”

The British MoD's official position has since changed to “we cannot comment on matters currently under investigation.” Wayne told CBW he could not comment on the issue at this time, but he encouraged further investigation.

The Swedish TV report was anchored by the claims of an anonymous source who said that Steve Mead, the head of BAE in the Czech Republic, talked openly about bribing Czech officials.

It also disclosed numerous documents related to transfers of money to intermediaries named as Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, arms seller Richard Háva of Omnipol and Czech-Canadian Otto Jelínek, a former Deloitte consultant who was also the Czech government coordinator for the Czech Republic’s image abroad. The exposé threw light on contracts specifying that Pouilly would receive 4 percent of 1 billion British pounds (Kč 42.2 billion/€ 1.5 billion) if the project succeeded, while Háva would receive 2 percent of one and a half billion British pounds. The report did not have specific numbers concerning Jelínek, although Jelínek told the Swedish reporters that he would have received a commission if the Gripen sale proceeded.

Johan Lehander, managing director of Gripen International Saab, dismissed the contracts as nothing extraordinary.

“The agreements we close when we export the Gripen are about very large sums, and accordingly ... I suppose it was estimated at that time, that it was worth it to have these advisers for these sums,”

he said.

John Neilson, director of media relations for BAE, gave CBW the same response he has given all other media enquiries: “BAE Systems continues to cooperate fully with the SFO inquiry. The continued reporting of allegations against us represents an attack on the reputation of our company and individuals. Our company continues to reject the allegations being made.”

At the time of the alleged corruption, Gripen fighters were produced in a joint venture between SAAB and BAE. Nowadays, the production is entirely carried out by SAAB, but BAE assists with marketing the fighters.

Britain launches corruption probe into Czech defence contract
2.3.2007 - Kerry Skyring

The Czech Republic may be facing one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country's history. Britain's Serious Fraud Office is running an investigation into whether Czech politicians accepted bribes from one of the British military's main arms suppliers, BAE Systems.

In 2002, the government headed by Social Democrat Milos Zeman decided to replace the army's ageing fleet of MiG-21s with twenty-four Gripen fighter jets from the British-Swedish consortium BAE Systems/SAAB. The cabinet approved the 60 billion crown (2.8 billion US dollars) purchasing contract in April but failed to get the green light from the Senate and in the end the Czech Republic leased rather than bought the planes.

But a closer look into the accounts of BAE Systems has the British Serious Fraud Office suspecting that the company spent large amounts of money on bribes in an effort to get Czech politicians to support the deal. The case is now under investigation by anti-corruption police departments in the Czech Republic, Britain, and Sweden but also by investigative journalists.

Jan Kavan.

The scandal developed further, when Swedish TV broadcast secretly made recordings of former Czech foreign minister Jan Kavan. In them, he confirms that Czech politicians took bribes and implies that a Czech police investigation could be influenced.

Reporter: "Would it be possible to have an effect on the police investigation?"

Mr Kavan:

"I would think that it's not out of the question but I would discuss that directly and not necessarily on the phone."

Reporter: "But it could be possible?"

Mr Kavan:

"I think so, yes."

Fredrik Laurin is one of the three Swedish reporters who made the documentary:

Fredrik Laurin, photo: www.fgj.se

"What we did was we set up this business intelligence company that pretended to work for BAE, although we never said that but we made it look like we worked for BAE and then we approached, if not everyone then most of the members of those governments who were involved in major decisions on the Gripen deal because those governments and a few other people in the Czech business and political life were indicated to us either as having received bribes or as being possible receivers of bribes. So we basically had a whole palette of people that we let the ESID company [the fictitious company] approach and Kavan as being a former foreign minister was obviously someone who should be approached."

When confronted by the Swedish journalists and told that everything he had said was caught on tape, Jan Kavan had the following to say:

Mr Kavan:

"When, in fact, I acquired the suspicion, not that they were journalists but that this is about corruption that they are involved in something that I consider illegal, I went to the Czech police and informed them about this and gave the names and the name of this organisation and described in detail my suspicion that they actually want us to circumvent or slow down the police investigation over corruption."

Reporter: "Well, Mr Kavan, the camera does not lie and you were heard on tape saying that money changed hands, that this would send chills down the spines of many important people, that a number of people were bribed, and that the BEA's manager in Prague was handling the kickbacks. Now you are saying something else. Are you taking a responsible position here? Are you upright about this?"

Mr Kavan:

"I am absolutely honest and forward. I am saying that I was sharing with them what I described as rumours and speculation about certain kickbacks that might have taken place. I am not denying that those speculations were heard and that I passed them on to these two gentlemen. But I'm saying that I personally cannot prove it, I have no evidence that any such corruption has taken place."

David Ondracka of the corruption watchdog Transparency International in Prague has been following the case. Should the investigations confirm the suspicions, the country will have to brace itself for serious consequences, he says:

"The reputation of the country would be harmed seriously. The Czech Republic would be seen as a country that is unable to enter into defence contracts in a clean way and that is why it would need to draw some consequences from this. Those people would definitely have to leave their posts and there would potentially be criminal proceedings. In my view this is one of the major corruption cases in the country's history and that is why it is very important for the investigation to proceed smoothly and come to a successful end. In my view it is important for the country."