Getting rich with ‘homeland security’

It didn’t take them very long. Much of the gang who jumped on the bandwagon of “homeland security” when the Bush administration was still plotting the invasion of Iraq are now taking home the green as executives and consultants for companies wanting to sell “anti-terror” expertise and devices to the government.

“At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security—including the department’s former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson—are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars’ worth of domestic security business,” wrote Eric Lipton in a detailed, two-part series called “Homeland Security Inc.” that ran in the New York Times starting June 18.

“More than two-thirds of the department’s most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door,” says the initial article.

And they are being generously rewarded by the companies that want their expertise and connections. Carol A. DiBattiste increased her salary six times over when, within a month, she left her job as deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration and moved to Choice-Point, a Department of Homeland Security contractor.

Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who signed Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death warrant, was Bush’s choice to be the first secretary of DHS. Last year, three months after resigning from that position, he joined the board of Savi Technology, “a maker of radio frequency identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary.” Savi is now being bought by Lockheed Martin, a huge military contractor. Ridge is expected to profit “handsomely” from selling stock options he acquired before the buyout, says the Times.

Hutchinson began work at Venable LLP, “a Washington law and lobbying firm that represents major domestic security contractors like Lockheed Martin,” one day after he left his job as under secretary for border and transportation security. He now has his fingers in companies that produce or sell data-mining software, fingerprint-identification technology and anti-radiation drugs.

The articles provide many more examples of former officials who have jumped from their “national security” jobs right into lucrative positions in the industries that lobbied them.

Why aren’t these former officials in jail? Federal law prohibits officials in the executive branch from negotiating for future jobs with companies they oversee. It also prohibits them from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after they leave office. But, says the article, “by exploiting loopholes in the law—including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world—it is often easy for former officials to do just that.”

The revolving door between Washington officials and corporate executives or lobbyists is nothing new. That’s how every capitalist government works. But the brazenness of those who wore the cloak of “national security” has few modern parallels, says the Times.

For those worried that government snoops may be looking at your bank account, tapping your phone or reading your e-mail, remember this: State repression is driven not just by fear of “terrorists” but by the most powerful motive of all under capitalism—corporate greed.