John McCain & International Republican Institute: NYT Glosses over $18M Blackwater Bill
Mike McIntire in today's New York Times focuses on John McCain's role as chairman of the non-profit International Republican Institute and the increasing number of lobbyists and government contractors donating to the IRI and serving on its board.
But McIntire never touches on the enormous increase in IRI government funding since Bush took office. Nor did he question the whopping $18 million the IRI paid to Blackwater in 2005 and possibly 2006.
2002:
Government funding: $19, 223, 793
Direct public support: $906,622
Contractual services: $2,656,170
Security: $0
2003:
Government funding: $25,884, 084
Direct public support: $735,175
Contractual services: $3,959,147
Security: $0
2004:
Government funding: $36, 480, 536
Direct public support: $872,266
Contractual services: $6,270,383
Security: $0
2005:
Government funding: $74,579,911
Direct public support: $1,208,578
Contractual services: $34,431,970
Security: $0
2006:
Government funding: $77,756.755
Direct public support: $1,348,127
Contractual services: $9,130,594
Security: $20,148,398
2005 Highest Paid Contractors:
Blackwater: $18,437,346
Diligence Middle East: $1,743,913
Al Fawares Group: $1,603,610
Al Shamiyah Wahran Street: $1,603,610
Marsh Copsey & Associates: $1,242,235
Kelly & Associates: $601,760
But in 2006, Blackwater drops off the list despite the fact that the IRI paid $20 mill for security services that year.
2006 Highest Paid Contractors:
American Express: $4,994,485
1225 Eye Street Associates LLC: $1,638,348
Al Bahar, MAJW: $761,313
CIGNA International: $575,313
Carefirst BCBS: $504,537
More to come.
Oh, it's much worse than you know. This is a post I made last week about McCain and the IRI:
It's worth noting that none other than Faux News talking head Laura Ingraham was on the list of Senior Staff until the day after I reported the story here and on KOS.
July 28, 2008 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, DUK. I meant to comment when I read your post last week but somehow lost track of it.
Was Igraham on the staff of the IRI or Free Cuba?
I am going to post more about the IRI in a comment below later or tomorrow.
BTW, Diligence Middle East is a security firm owned by Joe Allbaugh through New Bridge Strategies and a Kuwaiti firm.
July 29, 2008 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
ok...now we see what they did there.
With this an the correlation of The TPM front page citation of the NYT's article on Blackwater today,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html?hp
it's apparent that McCain has much more knowledge of the shadow governments that he opposes. He's actually a team player. Or water boy.
July 28, 2008 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
The sheer magnitude of war spending pretty much compounds the vast carelessness of it all. Especially when you look at the ways that domestic imperatives have been lacking funding and affecting the lives of Americans. Last year, we spent $133 Billion on the Iraq war. If our elected officials had been investing in our economy here at home, we could have paid for: health care for 3,920,9905 people for one year, Head Start for 18,251,681 students for one year; and we could have powered 137,823,834 homes with renewable electricity for one year.
To bring this information home to all Americans, Progressive Future has built an online tool called the Invest in US Calculator. The calculator takes a person's 2007 income before taxes and tells you how much of that person's tax money went to fund the war (average: $235), and how many seconds of war that bought (average: .04 seconds). Then it tells you, with that money, how many days of health coverage that could pay for (average: 25), how many days of Head Start education (average: 12), how many days of heating a home with renewable energy (average: 78), and how many days of veterans' higher education benefits (average: 5) that money could have paid for. Then we are asking users to sign our Invest In US petition, which we plan on taking to Congress, the Platform Committees, and the media to push for new priorities for tax spending: http://progressivefuture.org/invest-in-us-calculator?id4=BLTP
July 28, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I omitted data from the 2006 990 filed by the IRI. The 2006 data above is the five highest paid contractors for other services.
Here are the 2006 five highest paid contractors for professional services:
Blackwater - $17,343,220
Global Strategies Group - $1,449,016
Marsh Copsey - $143,405
Steptoe & Johnson - $119,398
The Eudy Company - $80,291
In 2005, the IRI paid $1.7 million to Diligence Middle East LLC which is partly owned by Joe Allbaugh's New Bridge Strategies and a Kuwaiti company, Al Mal Investment Co, which owns Diligence LLC.
More to come.
July 29, 2008 8:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
goodness Mrs. P.
one could drive the Straight Talk Express through the hole in the NYT story.
on a loosely related note - McCain chaired an org called The Reform Institute - looks like it was modeled after IRI.
inital impression is that it was a soft money house opened in anticipation of McCain-Feingold tightening up soft money
a so called Reform entity opened by a lobbyist; Rick Davis and initially ran out of his lobbying offices
despite his vamping about as a reformer dead set against 527's, the donors list was chock full of 527 founders and supporters (eg Perenchio) 11 of whom are now National Fin. Co Chairs of McCampaign.
lots of former and current campaign staffers were on board
McCain suddenly resigned his as Chair a few years back when the righties got word the Institute had taken money from Soros - and of course zero scrutiny from the media
an interesting story just begging for a second look
July 29, 2008 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink