Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin

[donsu]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12757


Dozens of people converged this summer in the high desert town of El Paso, Texas, en route to spending six months in Iraqi prisons. They were going not as prisoners, but as their interrogators, walking a legalistic tightrope stretched across the Geneva Conventions. Just for signing up, they got a $2,000 check from a company that is rapidly becoming one of the key employers in the world of intelligence: Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest military company, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

Before deployment to Iraq, they assemble in Building 503 on Pleasanton Road to mingle with the soldiers and government civilian workers at the welcome briefing that takes place every Sunday. There they get a government-issued duffel bag, filled with basic items for working in the war in the Middle East: cargo pants, tactical shirts, Kevlar helmets and Land Warrior chemical masks. After a week of orientation and medical processing, they fly to Tampa, Florida, and onto their final work destinations -- Iraq's infamous prisons including Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, a prison at Baghdad International Airport, and Camp Whitehorse, near Nasariyah.

Known in the intelligence community as "97 Echoes" (97E is the official classification number for the interrogator course taught at military colleges including Fort Huachuca, Arizona), these contractors will work side-by-side with military interrogators conducting question-and-answer sessions using 17 officially sanctioned techniques, ranging from "love of comrades" to "fear up harsh." Their subjects will be the tens of thousands of men thrown into United States-run military jails on suspicion of links to terrorism.

-snip-


At the same time, Lockheed Martin, then a completely different company, was also interested in entering this lucrative new business of intelligence contracting. It bought up Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a small company with a General Services Administration (GSA) technology contract issued in Kansas City, Missouri. In November 2002, Lockheed used GSA to employ private interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The contract was then transferred to a Department of Interior office in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
-snip-
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and you thought they just built airplanes, when all along they are members of the bushgang.

[hedda_foil]

1. Oh holy CRAP!

[wakeme2008]

2. To other companies in the Military Industrial world

They have ALWAYS been called "The Evil Empire"...

[yella_dawg]

3. I used to work for "Lock Mart"

The name was used jokingly as a reference to the company's diversificaton in servicing the war needs of governments.


Assume LockMart does it all. You can't be too wrong.

[Angry Girl]

4. Lockheed on the board of directors for Washington Post

Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America

The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:

* New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi

* Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's

* Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels

* The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo

* News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments

* GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble

* Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo

* Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America

* Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi

* AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton

Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair and objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense contract over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will conduct critical investigative reporting on Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq?

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm

[Daphne08]

7. Thanks. So much for the Fourth Estate protecting the

American citizen's right to know.

[cornermouse]

5. Does this mean that torture is now part of the stock market?

Words are inadequate. :cry:

[Generarth]

6. this really doesn't surprise me

and I've locked horns with employees of this company before, when they were on a sell mission. Bobby Eberle works for these creaps and he saw the plane that flew into the pentagon. They've got hands in lots of pies.

[me b zola]

8. So now we know where they came from

At GITMO there were interrogators caught impersonating FBI that were in fact employees of DHS and others were DOD.

This practice is done for one reason only, to avoid responsibility & accountability. This entire criminal cabal needs to be thrown in a dark prison and be subjected to the same treatment that they have approved for the people that they have imprisoned.

[RazzleDazzle]

9. So, out of the country = avoid the laws that cover that and

non-military personnel = keeping them out of trouble (beyond the law) via that avenue. I mean, just how many legal prohibitions are there against a corporation offering (and implementing) torture as one of its product offerings? None that I can think of.

Such principle and integrity in our boardrooms and executive suites.