Voting Machine Fiasco

SAIC, Bohemoth Military Contractor, Wants to Be inside Every Voting Machine; Three Way Scam on Diebold Review?

Lynn Landes
OpEdNews.Com
Ecotalk.org

The voting machine wars are heating up and the implications of vote fraud in America are even more ominous.

Editor's Note: My God, this is so sinister and so bizarre that if you haven't read this yet, you just won't believe the magnitude of what you are reading! I posted this earlier, but decided that this is SO important that I should re-post it, along with some of the details, because I think everyone should read the full article.

This is not only sinister, but it is so complicated and confusing that it's hard to absorb. I will try to break it down as I understand it. This is a rough summary of some of the high points:

Diebold Election Systems software is suspected of being seriously flawed and therefore easily rigged.

Several cities and states have put a hold on the use of electronic voting machines until there is further investigation.

The Governor of one state, Maryland, requested investigation of Diebold's software by a company named SAIC, or Science Applications International Corp.
This sounded like a noble gesture, considering the Governor of Maryland is republican, until you read that SAIC is "a behemoth military defense contractor with a shadowy, if not tarnished, reputation".

The federal government is SAIC's main customer, and the government often doesn't want the public to know what SAIC is doing and, "as one of the nation's largest employee-owned corporations, it escapes investor scrutiny." Today, SAIC has racked up more than $5.9 billion in annual revenues.

It seems that SAIC has had its share of legal troubles:

1990 - indicted by the Justice Department on 10 felony counts for fraud in its management of a Superfund toxic cleanup site. (SAIC pleaded guilty.)

1993 - the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an F15 fighter contract.

1995 - The same month SAIC purchased NSI (Network Solutions Inc.), the company settled a suit that charged it had lied about security system tests it conducted for a Treasury Department currency plant in Fort Worth, TX.

1992 - one of SAIC's government projects blew up in the firm's face when it was charged with fabricating environmental testing from toxic waste dumps. SAIC eventually conceded to false claims and paid $1.3 million in penalties, a small sum compared to the estimated $1.5 billion the firm was expected to earn in 1994.

The Los Angeles Times cites government officials declaring Science Applications (SAIC) guilty of the "largest environmental fraud . . . we've had here" and an example of "corporate greed."

2000 - a joint venture between SAIC and Bechtel (Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC) was awarded the contract from the Department of Energy (DOE) to manage and operate the Yucca Mountain program and support extensive DOE studies of Yucca Mountain's geology, hydrology, and climate.

2002 - AP reported, "Some workers at the Yucca Mountain Project said there were flaws in the process scientists used to determine whether the site was suitable for disposing the nation's nuclear waste. At least two workers claim they were either fired or transferred after raising concerns about the project's safety."

SAIC is perhaps most notorious among Internet aficionados for buying the company, Network Solutions Inc (NSI), which received the no-bid no-compete monopoly contract to privatize the government agency which registered domain names.

SAIC's control over internet domain names set off alarm bells.

"The shadow ruling-class within the Pentagon," describes SAIC to a tee, according to the the highly regarded Crypt Newsletter. SAIC has strong business ties to the military and intelligence communities.

Recently, SAIC got the contract to assist other corporations, including Northrop Grumman, in training of the Iraqi Army.

The specter of corporations, littered with ex-CIA types, that both control the voting systems and train the armies of countries around the world, is an emerging and frightening reality.

"Currently on SAIC's board is ex-CIA director Bobby Ray Inman, director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the CIA, and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the OC (*Orange County) Weekly, "Inman worked at the highest levels of American intelligence during an era (President Ronald Reagan) when it displayed a stunning lack of it. Inman's achievements include: failing to predict the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union; prolonging violent, useless civil wars in Central America; and giving arms to terrorists in exchange for hostages (Iran Contra)."

"During the Bush administration, Inman, Perry and Deutch - while directors of Science Applications (SAIC), were also members of the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), an advisory group reporting to the President and the director of Central Intelligence, which deals with production, review and coordination of foreign intelligence," reports the Crypt. Both Inman and Deutch were former Directors of the CIA. William J. Perry was also a former Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration.

SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients. DARPA is the controversial Department of Defense (DOD) subsidiary, which until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA was prepared to trade "futures" in terrorist attacks. DARPA has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has civil libertarians in an uproar.

A woman named Bev Harris broke the Diebold story.

Some computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University studied the Diebold software and determined it to be full of holes and totally insecure, confirming Bev Harris's findings.
The main guy from Johns Hopkins University, after having his findings reported far and wide, turns out to have been affiliated with another voting system firm called VoteHere. This surprised everyone, apparently including him, because he claimed he sort of forgot all about it and promptly resigned and returned all stock options. Naturally, this put his credibility into question, seeing as how he was on the tech board of one voting system company while discrediting another voting system company. Nevertheless, the Johns Hopkins report has attracted far greater attention to electronic voting machine security, and has generated nationwide concern that continues to grow.

VoteHere is being sued by its former engineer, Dan Spillane, for wrongfully firing him in retaliation to his repeated warnings of potential defects in voting software applications and in the certification process.

Former SAIC executives also have ties to VoteHere. Why is that important? VoteHere is a growing company, which aspires to provide cryptography and computer software security for the electronic election industry.

Former President, Chief Operating Officer, and Vice Chairman of SAIC is Admiral Bill Owens, who is now Chairman of the Board for VoteHere. Owens also served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was a senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Carlucci's company is Carlyle Group, while Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer is Halliburton.

Another former SAIC board member, also on the board of VoteHere, is ex-CIA director Robert Gates, a veteran of the Iran/Contra scandal.

VoteHere is already benefiting from the Diebold debacle, as it will be partnering with Sequoia Voting Systems, "to provide a new level of electronic ballot verification to customers of the AVC Edge touch screen voting system," according to the VoteHere website.

SAIC, which is supposed to vet Diebold's elections software, is itself in the elections business.

So, what should Maryland's Governor Ehrlich do? Cancel the contracts with Diebold and SAIC, throw out all of the voting machines, and order a new batch of paper ballots. And most importantly, let the people count the votes.

(The full article has much more detail than my condensed version here, so please be sure to click and read the original!)

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