February 2006
Custer Battles Case Highlights
War Profiteering in Iraq
A 60 Minutes story aired on February 12th, 2006 which examined the activities of Custer Battles, a company accused under the False Claims Act of defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority of millions of dollars. 60 Minutes said that the Custer Battles case provides insight into the widespread war profiteering committed by US companies during the war in Iraq. NSNS worked closely with 60 Minutes on the Custer Battles piece by providing general research assistance.
January 2006
Challenger: Twenty Years Later, Lessons Never Learned
How a Government Ignored Lessons of History
By Joe Trento, January 26, 2006
Twenty years ago this week the Challenger space shuttle blew up off the coast of the Kennedy Space Center. Like a lot of things the government has done wrong since --9.11, the war in Iraq, the creation of the incompetent and ineffective Department of Homeland Security --Challenger could have been prevented. Sadly, so could have the destruction of her sister ship and crew Columbia in 2003. Not preventing two predictable disasters was a real indictment of NASA management and the political administrations, Reagan and Bush II, which was trying to convert the civilian space program into funds toward the military “black” space effort. A lazy media, defense-contractor-dominated congressional oversight and a feckless NASA management, caused the entire episode to be repeated as Columbia reentered with a hole in its wing. NASA management made no effort from the time they learned of the damage to mount a rescue effort.
Retribution at Homeland Security
For those Americans who fear that the government is out of control the
best example may be Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Department
of Homeland Security. ICE agents in San Diego have gone to war with a
former female DHS Customs and Border Protection Officer who filed complaints about serious procedural weaknesses in the
largest U.S. port of entry at San Ysidro. Calif.