Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/11 Terrorists, Part 27: "No Such Agency" Reboots for Terror

By Alex Constantine
(with gratitude to Stanley Hilton and Team8
for establishing some of the leads followed
in this section.)

General Strangelove and the Pirates

Michael Hayden - "Hitler" Hayden to NSA staffers - was an Air Force careerist before crossing to the civilian side in 1999 to run the NSA. It began in 1970 with a two-year stint as an analyst and briefer at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Two years later he was promoted to chief of the Current Intelligence Division at Andersen AFB in Guam. He took further training in intelligence under the tutelage of the DIA, 1979-80, and a series of intelligence posts around the world before appointment to the position of director of the NSA in Fort Meade, Maryland. That was in March 1999.

A good restructuring of the agency was at the top of the incoming director's list of priorities. Among Hayden's very first acts as director was putting the wrecking ball to the old system of management at the NSA. It its place rose a corporate structure. He initiated a "Hundred Days of Change." Then then-Lieutenant General Hayden mustered a corporate-style board of directors with himself in the position of savvy CEO.

The NSA was managed by a core of eight members, the famed "Breakfast Club," including Hayden, his deputy director and chief of staff, the heads of NSA's two operating divisions, the general counsel, chief financial officer, and the acquisition executive.1

"We are bringing in more leadership from the outside," Hayden boasted. External managers, he reasoned, were critical to overhauling an agency that had long "resisted change." Hayden trimmed down the NSA's Senior Executive Service staff by firing 100 or so, and hiring 28 senior corporate executives in their place. Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in El Segundo, CA, and Logicon, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, assumed management of the Agency's nonmission-critical computer nets.2 Any assignment that did not involve the breaking or devising of codes was farmed out to private contractors.

One of the new programs introduced by Hayden was "Trailblazer," the agency's "premiere effort," Washington Technology reported warmly, "to update its communications surveillance and eavesdropping infrastructure to better handle global technologies."

But there was a public Trailblazer, and a covert program by the same name that predates - but incorporated - Hayden's Trailblazer program at NSA. The code-name also referred to the Strategic Defense Initiative, according to the 9/11 researchers at Team8.


The Cold War was history. This new enemy was evasive, devious, exquisitely trained in emerging technologies - he used cell phones. "Every time a Soviet plane took off, NSA knew about it. It was pretty easy to track," author James Bamford said. "Now they have to track people who use cell phones, pay phones and calling cards." Yes, the new breed of terrorist was a cunning creature.

In 2001 and 2002, Hayden handed two contracts worth a combined $197 million to Conquest Inc. of Annapolis Junction, Md., for systems engineering on Trailblazer.

After 9/11, a team led by SAIC in San Diego won a $280 million contract for a 'technology demonstration platform' under the project. Others on the team include Boeing Co., Booz Allen Hamilton (in 2001, the firm adopted a catchy new slogan for its business: "global strategy and technology consulting"), Northrop Grumman, CSC, and former SAIC subsidiary Telcordia Technologies.3

SAIC would soon bask in profits derived from the American Reichstag. The notorious high-security, high-tech firm was also undergoing a major shake-up at the time. Stephen Pizzo reported in October 2003 that the SAIC's board was reconstituted. The Cold Warriors were banished, "former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Ex-CIA Director Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former CIA Director John Deutch. They have been replaced by people with more timely contacts, such as SAIC director Gen. Wayne Downing (US Army retired). Before the war Downing served as a lobbyist for the US-backed Iraqi National Congress and its head, Ahmad Chalabi." Downing, together with Bechtel director George Shultz, Khashoggi's brother-in-arms at the Shrine of the Holy Fraternal Order of Iran-Contra Felons, served on the board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Well before G.W. Bush sent troops to unseat Saddam Hussein and substitute his primitive, barbarous torture chambers with clean, efficient American torture chambers, SAIC was already there, paving the way for democracy and war crime.

The mountain of lucrative NSA contracts begins with William Owens. Owens is a former president, chief operating officer and vice chair of SAIC. He was also a key member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. Pizzo: "To say the Defense Policy Board's membership tips to the right would not be an overstatement. Among its members; Ken Adelman ... Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Dan Quayle and Bechtel senior vice president, retired Army General Jack Sheehan... Some of SAIC's work comes through sub-contracts with defense firm, Vinnell Corp., a subsidiary of TRW. One of those contracts involved advising the Saudi Royal family on security matters. Vinnell is a leader in training foreign military forces to U.S. standards." The company advertises for military veterans "able to train the Saudis in battalion operations, the Bradley fighting vehicle, anti-tank weapons and physical security to guard against terrorist attacks. Noteworthy: In March the General Services Administration awarded SAIC the contract to upgrade the GSA with telecommunications systems. SAIC Telcordia Technologies subsidiary was awarded the three-year contract (with five one-year options to renew). David Kay, another SAIC executive with connections to Iraq, was a former UN weapons inspector hired by CIA to lead the effort to track down Hussein's dreaded "WMDs" arsenal. He was also Stephen "FBI Person of Interest" Hatfill's boss.

"Going under the name 'The Eagle Alliance,' the contract was managed by Computer Sciences Corp. and San Diego-based Science Applications International (SAIC)," Pizzo writes.5

The Eagle Alliance (an organization of 1,000 companies with Homeland Security contracts) web site states that this mess is "a joint venture of Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman Corporation solely dedicated to supporting the intelligence community."6 The president of AE the day of the air strikes was Edward Boykin. Forbes reports that from 1996-98, Boykin was president of a CSC division that provided information technology outsourcing to J.P. Morgan.7 In March 2003, CSC acquired DynCorp - one of the most corrupt companies on earth - for $950 million.8 Van B. Honeycutt, CEO of Computer Sciences, announced the acquisition, and the combined companies' objectives - “to strengthen our leadership position in the US federal marketplace, augment our capabilities to support the requirements of the new Homeland Security Department and respond to the federal government’s initiative to increase its reliance on service providers.”9 After 9/11, Mr. Van Honeycutt went on chair the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee under the Department of Homeland Security.


Reconfiguring the Puzzle Palace

The government was apparently listening to Honeycutt. In the mid-1990s, some 20 companies conducted roughly 85 percent of the agency's contract work. The figure rose to 140 by 2001; currently, the NSA contracts with 2,690 businesses.10 Over 1,000 of them are in Maryland.11

Among Hayden's first recruits to the NSA revamping project was shifty-eyed Harry D. Gatanas, a retired Army general with 30 plus years in the military and intelligence community. He is a former commanding general at the US Army White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.12 White Sands, the cliched "best kept secret in the Army," was founded in 1945 to test experimental rockets. A week after the Army took over White Sands, the first atomic bomb was set off within its perimeters. Today, it is the largest military installation in the country. Hayden's choice for procurement officer was not exactly a bureaucratic paper shuffler - Gatanas was a missile testing specialist.

It was all very incestuous, of course. Booz Allen Hamilton, the lead contractor for Trailblazer, employed a number of Agency veterans at the time, including VP Mike McConnell, who retired as director of the NSA "Puzzle Palace" in 1996. Ralph Shrader, CEO of BAH, joined the firm in 1978 after leaving senior positions at Western Union and RCA, both of which joined gleefully in the NSA's Operation Shamrock. SI International, a computer software engineering company with NSA contracts, hired Gatanas to manage its multi-million-dollar contracts with the intelligence sector and the DoD. SAIC is run by executives with bona fides in military intelligence, including COO Duane Andrews, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence.13

An important puzzle piece fell into place eight months after the events of 9/11 when former NRO Director Keith R. Hall joined Booz Allen Hamilton. Hall, according to the firm's web site, wasd put in charge of designing "a strategic intelligence initiative to integrate activities across the firm's intelligence community clients." Hall's stature "in the national intelligence community is second to none, and we are very pleased he chose to join Booz Allen," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ralph W. Shrader. "In a time when our national security infrastructure is facing such important and difficult challenges, Keith's depth of experience and proven leadership will make a significant contribution to the support we provide for our clients."

Before joining Booz Allen, Hall devoted 32 years to an intelligence career that culminated with his assignment as the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Space).14

The corporate-military back door still turns for Trailblazer contractors. In 2003, Asia Times reported that SAIC held domain over the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council (IRDC): "The 150 mostly-expatriate Iraqis employed in the program" would serve as the
"Iraqi face" of the "occupation authority": "Senior members of the IRDC, many of who have been closely associated with the INC, hold posts at each of Iraq's 23 ministries with a mandate to rebuild them." Christopher R. Henry, SAIC's VP for strategic assessment and development, joined Rumsfeld's DoD as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy just as the IRDC formed." He worked with Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith.

Another of the Hayden's key Trailblazers, the Vinnell Corporation, was placed in charge of national guard training in the Saudi empire.15

The NSA's hundred-day, corporate makeover campaign was code-named Project Groundbreaker. Harry D. Gatanas told a computer newsletter in 2002 that funding for Groundbreaker was drawn from funds partially “derived by transferring 1,100 personnel billets" ("billet": military term for an assignment) from the NSA to El Segundo's Computer Sciences Corp.16 (CSC is still up to its polished-boardroom-sagging-corporate-chins in fascist intrigues. In May 2006, Frederick, Maryland's DVC, a division of CSC, split a $41 million contract with Baxter Pharmaceuticals to conduct clinical trials of an avian flu vaccine - for a disease that shows no sign at all of evolving into the lethal contagion predicted by the CDC and the mass media.)17

The ground was broken and the trail blazed for the horror show of September 11, 2001.

[TO BE CONTINUED]


NOTES

1) George Cahlink, "Breaking the Code," Government Executive, September 1, 2001,
http://www.govexec.com/features/0901/0901s6.htm

2) Ibid.

3) Alice Lipowicz, "Trailblazer loses its way," Washington Technology, Vol. 20 No. 18, September 12, 2005.
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/20_18/federal/26960-1.html

4) Stephen Pizzo, "Divvying up the Iraq Pie," Alternet, October 7, 2003.
http://alternet.org/story/16901/

5) Ibid.

6) Eagle Alliance site: http://www.csc.com/mms/eaglealliance/en/

7) See: http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromMktGuideIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedMktGuideId=267758

8) For more on DynCorp's trail of artrocites and federal contracts, see: http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=17

9) Greg Guma, "The Quiet Rise of National Security, Inc.," Toward Freedom web site.
http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/449/69/

10) George Cahlink, "Security agency doubled procurement spending in four years,"June 1, 2004. GovExec.com.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0604/060104g1.htm

11) Ellen McCarth, "NSA Is Making No Secret of Its Technology Intent," Washington Post, June 24, 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1085-2004Jun23.html

12) SI International web page: http://ir.si-intl.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131784&p=IROL-govBio&t=Regular&id=141355&

13) Tim Shorrock, "Watching What You Say," The Nation, March 20, 2006.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060320/shorrock/3

14) "Former NRO Director Joins Booz Allen As Vice President," Booz Allen Hamilton site, May 14, 2002.
http://www.boozallen.com/home/industries/industries_article/657916?lpid=659370

15) Katrin Dauenhauer and Jim Lobe, "Massive military contractor's media mess," Asia Times, August 16, 2003.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH16Ak02.html

16) Dawn S. Onley, "How to Fund It," Government Computer News, February 18, 2002.
http://www.gcn.com/print/21_4/17982-1.html

17) Bruce Japsen, "Baxter awaits Indonesia vaccine deal," Chicago Tribune, May 25, 2006.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0605250175may25,1,7276495.story?coll=chi-business-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true