Sen. Feinstein's highly unethical behavior

[Crookshanks]

Hey all you libs - you LOVE to point out the "scandals" involving Republicans - how come NO ONE in the MSM is reporting this story?

Feinstein quits committee under war-profiteer cloud
Report documents military contracts for firms owned by senator's husband

Posted: March 28, 2007
10:05 p.m. Eastern

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee after a report linked her votes to the financial well-being of her husband's companies, which received billions of dollars worth of military construction contracts she approved.

As reported in Metroactive, an online report from the Silicon Valley, Feinstein's resignation followed six years of subcommittee work during which time her alleged conflict of interest stemmed from her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Feinstein, chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee, regularly reviewed and accepted contracts from her husband's companies for not only construction work for military bases, but also addressing "quality of life" issues for the veterans of the United States military services.

"As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design," wrote Peter Byrne in the report. "She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp."

He suggested perhaps Feinstein resigned "because she could not take the heat generated by metro's expose of her ethics… Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?"

The writer also noted another reason could be that since that subcommittee is responsible for veterans' "quality of life" issues, perhaps she was trying to distance herself from the military's failure to provide decent medical care for wounded servicemembers.

"Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases – often without the benefit of competitive bidding – to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife's watch," he wrote.

The Metroactive report, based on research partly funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, noted that as of the end of 2006, federal documents showed three companies in which Blum's financial entities owned a total of $1 billion in stock got $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies (Boston Scientific Corp.), $12 million for medical supplies and equipment (Kinetic Concepts Inc.), and additional funding through lease contracts (CB Richard Ellis).

"You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein's family has pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of wounded American soldiers, she would show a smidgeon of shame and resign from the entire Senate, not just a subcommittee," Byrne wrote. "Conversely, you'd think she might stick around MILCON to try and fix the medical-care disaster she helped to engineer for the vets who were suckered into fighting her and Bush's panoply of unjust wars."

Byrne earlier had documented the connections between the dollars Feinstein voted on and the revenue for Blum's companies.

From 1997 through 2005 Blum, with Feinstein's knowledge, was a majority owner in both URS Corp. and Perini Corp., both of which were regularly among the companies awarded major military contracts proposed by the Department of Defense.

According to those reports, from 2001 to 2005, URS earned $792 million from military construction and environmental cleanup work approved by MILCON, while Perini collected $759 million for the same.

Feinstein's annual Public Financial Disclosure Reports record sizeable family income from investments in the Framingham, Mass.-based Perini and the San Francisco-located URS. But there was no acknowledgment of any conflict of interest, according to Metroactive, a "Northern California meta-site" that specializes in arts and entertainment information from area publications: Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper; Metro Santa Cruz; and the North Bay Bohemian.

Byrne also reported Michael R. Klein, an adviser to Feinstein and business partner with Blum, said that starting in 1997 he routinely told Feinstein about federal projects coming before her in which Perini had a stake, in order for her to avoid those votes and as such, a conflict of interest.

However, instead of withholding a vote, she did act on those pieces of legislation, Byrne reported. Ultimately, "the Congressional Record shows that as chairperson and ranking member of MILCON, Feinstein was often involved in supervising the legislative details of military construction projects that directly affected Blum's defense-contracting firms," Byrne's report said.

"Sen. Feinstein has had a serious conflict of interest, a serious insensitivity to ethical considerations," Wendell Rawls, of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, told Metroactive. "The very least she should have done is to recuse herself from having conversations, debates, voting or any other kind of legislative activity that involved either Perini Corp. or URS Corp. or any other business activity where her husband's financial were involved."

One example was that in 2005, MILCON approved a Pentagon plan to fund "overhead coverage force protection" for Iraq to reinforce the roofs of U.S. Army barracks. About three months later, Perini announced an award of a $185 million contract to provide "overhead coverage force protection to the Army in Iraq."

Byrne noted when Blum divested ownership of URS and Perini in 2005, the conflict of interest was resolved. "But Feinstein's ethical dilemma arose from the fact that, for five years, the interests of Perini and URS and CB Richard Ellis were inextricably entwined with her leadership of MILCON ... ."

The investigation examined thousands of pages of documents, including transcripts of hearings in Congress, filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and reports and government audits as well as corporate press releases.

The result? "The paper trails showing Sen. Feinstein's conflict of interest is irrefutable," according to Danielle Brian, of the Project on Government Oversight.

"Because of the amount of money involved," said Melanie Sloan, of the Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, "Feinstein's conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than [other] conflicts [involving U.S. Rep. John T. Doolittle, former Speaker Dennis Hastert and others]."

In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein's wealth at $40 million, up $10 million from just a year earlier. Reports show her family earned between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock. From CB Richard Ellis, her husband earned from $1.3 million to $4 million.

Public records show Blum's company paid $4 a share for controlling interest in Perini, and later sold about three million shares for $23.75 each.

The report also showed URS' military construction work in 2000 was only $24 million, but the next year, when Feinstein took over as MILCON chair, military construction earned URS $185 million. Additionally, its military construction architectural and engineering revenue rose from $108,000 in 2000 to $142 million in 2001, a thousand-fold increase.

In late 2005, Blum sold 5.5 million URS shares, worth $220 million, the report said.

=====================
Where's the call for an investigation - where's the uproar over the millions of dollars worth of NO-BID CONTRACTS (Feinstein's Halliburton?). This whole thing stinks to high heaven and no one is reporting it!

[ggoose25]

when there is a story about Feinstein from a credible news source (e.g. one that doesn't write bullshit stories like this (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327) ), please let me know

[George Gervin's Afro]

Im ready for an open investigation of anyone in Congress or the White House that profited from this unecessary war. I would like to see everyone under oath..Let's do it!!! Democrats , Republicans I don't care...

[Spurminator]

when there is a story about Feinstein from a credible news source (e.g. one that doesn't write bullshit stories like this (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327) ), please let me know



:lmao :lmao :lmao

[101A]

Im ready for an open investigation of anyone in Congress or the White House that profited from this war. I would like to see everyone under oath..Let's do it!!! Democrats , Republicans I don't care...

THAT is a good idea.

[Crookshanks]

when there is a story about Feinstein from a credible news source (e.g. one that doesn't write bullshit stories like this (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327) ), please let me know

Perhaps if you'd READ the article, you would've seen that it WASN"T written by WorldNetDaily. The information came from a report by Peter Byrne in Metroactive, an online report. Of course, it's the libs standard OP - if you don't like the message - shoot the messenger!

[ggoose25]

why report it then? why doesnt yahoo, or msnbc, or cnn post "reports" like that.

you know why? because they are lies.

------------
However, concerns in the Western world about the effects on boys and men from eating soy foods have been raised repeatedly and addressed in numerous laboratory and population studies. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed men and women who, as babies, were given soy-based formulas to see if any of them had sexual, fertility or hormonal problems; they were then compared to a matched group raised on cow's milk formula. The only discrepancies noted were some minor menstrual complaints among the women (their periods lasted one-third of a day longer and they reported slightly more menstrual pain). Results were published in the August 15, 2001, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.


In March 2002 the Journal of Nutrition published results of a survey of men consuming soy foods or supplements containing 40-70 milligrams of isoflavones (the phytogenic components). None of the studies showed that consuming soy had any effects on reproductive hormones or semen quality, both changes that you might expect to see before any overt "feminization" would occur.

------------------

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA312211

[Spurminator]

Of course, it's the libs standard OP - if you don't like the message - shoot the messenger!

Yes, that's an exclusively Liberal fallacy. That whole Republican uprising against the Liberal Media in the late 90's/early 00's led by Fox News, Ann Coulter and others was another Liberal myth.

[Spurminator]

To be fair though, this story is also being reported by FuckFrance.com (http://www.fuckfrance.com/topic/2517515/1/USA/Feinstein-quits-committee-under-war-profiteer-cloud.html&replies=1)

[Crookshanks]

ggoose - I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit - I wasn't referring to your linked article - I was referring to the original article that I posted!

Who cares what other articles WND has reported - this story about Feinstein is backed up by pages and pages of evidence!

[ggoose25]

Hey all you libs - you LOVE to point out the "scandals" involving Republicans - how come NO ONE in the MSM is reporting this story?

Where's the call for an investigation - where's the uproar over the millions of dollars worth of NO-BID CONTRACTS (Feinstein's Halliburton?). This whole thing stinks to high heaven and no one is reporting it!

I guess you dont remember your own opinions very well. You are bitching that no one in the MSM is reporting it, and I am saying no one is reporting it because it is probably a lie. If a news source loses credibility by reporting things that are not true then typically no one respects or cares about that source. The soy story is just an example of how fucking stupid it is to base a complaint over the MSM with stories from worthless, partisan, untrue sources.

AND, ill reiterate what I said above. If this Feinstein story comes out in a credible newspaper, I would love to know about it. She should then be subjected to an investigation.

[01Snake]

I guess you dont remember your own opinions very well. You are bitching that no one in the MSM is reporting it, and I am saying no one is reporting it because it is probably a lie. If a news source loses credibility by reporting things that are not true then typically no one respects or cares about that source. The soy story is just an example of how fucking stupid it is to base a complaint over the MSM with stories from worthless, partisan, untrue sources.

AND, ill reiterate what I said above. If this Feinstein story comes out in a credible newspaper, I would love to know about it. She should then be subjected to an investigation.

Please list some credible MSM sources...if you can.

[Crookshanks]

I won't hold my breath waiting for the MSM to report this - Feinstein has a (D) after her name - if it was an (R), then this would be the lead story!

[ggoose25]

Please list some credible MSM sources...if you can.

well, you cant believe just one source. i wouldnt trust msnbc or nyt to report fairly about republicans, or the washington post and fox news for dems. but if they agreed, im more likely to believe it as true. im skeptical of all independent blog shit.

[Crookshanks]

Okay, I googled Senator Feinstein and this was the 6th entry down. It's from antiwar.com - not exactly mainstream, but also not by any means conservative.

Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering

by Joshua Frank
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bulletproof administration ruling the roost in Washington?" somebody recently e-mailed me. "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"

Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bulletproof – nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."

And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem – the Democrats are the problem.

I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East? Not me. That's just what unreasonable neocons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak, and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.

The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however: some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war on terror."

The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.

In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.

Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband's investments. The Democratic royal family recently purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading Democrat should be called out for her offense.

And that's exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bulletproof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

[Crookshanks]

This was 2 more entries down on google - it's the original article cited by WND - is this enough for you to believe it now?!

Senator Feinstein's Iraq Conflict
As a member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions to her husband's firms

By Peter Byrne

In the November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.

As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.

Each year, MILCON's members decide which military construction projects will be funded from a roster proposed by the Department of Defense. Contracts to build these specific projects are subsequently awarded to such major defense contractors as Halliburton, Fluor, Parsons, Louis Berger, URS Corporation and Perini Corporation. From 1997 through the end of 2005, with Feinstein's knowledge, Blum was a majority owner of both URS Corp. and Perini Corp.

While setting MILCON agendas for many years, Feinstein, 73, supervised her own staff of military construction experts as they carefully examined the details of each proposal. She lobbied Pentagon officials in public hearings to support defense projects that she favored, some of which already were or subsequently became URS or Perini contracts. From 2001 to 2005, URS earned $792 million from military construction and environmental cleanup projects approved by MILCON; Perini earned $759 million from such MILCON projects.

In her annual Public Financial Disclosure Reports, Feinstein records a sizeable family income from large investments in Perini, which is based in Framingham, Mass., and in URS, headquartered in San Francisco. But she has not publicly acknowledged the conflict of interest between her job as a congressional appropriator and her husband's longtime control of Perini and URS--and that omission has called her ethical standards into question, say the experts.

Insider Information
The tale thickens with the appearance of Michael R. Klein, a top legal adviser to Feinstein and a long-time business partner of Blum's. The vice-chairman of Perini's board of directors, Klein was a partner in Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, a powerful law firm with close ties to the Democratic Party, for nearly 30 years. Klein and Blum co-own ASTAR Air Cargo, which has military contracts in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Klein also sits on the board of SRA International, a large defense contractor.

In an interview with this reporter in September, Klein stated that, beginning in 1997, he routinely informed Feinstein about specific federal projects coming before her in which Perini had a stake. The insider information, Klein said, was intended to help the senator avoid conflicts of interest. Although Klein's startling admission was intended to defuse the issue of Feinstein's conflict of interest, it had the effect of exacerbating it.

Klein said that he regularly gave Feinstein's chief of staff, Mark Kadesh, lists of Perini's current and upcoming contractual interests in federal legislation, so that the senator would not discuss, debate, vote on or participate in matters that could affect projects in which Perini was concerned. "Earmarks, you know, set asides, you name it, there was a system in place which on a regular basis I got notified, I notified her office and her office notified her," Klein said.

"We basically identified any bid that Perini was going for and checked to see whether it was the subject of already appropriated funds or funds yet to be appropriated, and if it was anything that the senator could not act on, her office was alerted and she did not act on it."

This is an extraordinary thing for Klein and the senator to do, since the detailed project proposals that the Pentagon sent to Feinstein's subcommittee for review do not usually name the firms already contracted to perform specific projects. Nor do defense officials typically identify, in MILCON hearings, which military construction contractors are eligible to bid on upcoming work.

In theory, Feinstein would not know the identity of any of the companies that stood to contractually benefit from her approval of specific items in the military construction budget--until Klein told her.

Klein explained, "They would get from me a notice that Perini was bidding on a contract that would be affected as we understood it by potential legislation that would come before either the full congress or any committee that she was a member of. And she would as a result of that not act, abstain from dealing with those pieces of legislation."

However, the public record shows that contrary to Klein's belief, Feinstein did act on legislation that affected Perini and URS.

According to Klein, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled, in secret, that Feinstein did not have a conflict of interest with Perini because, due to the existence of the bid and project lists provided by Klein, she knew when to recuse herself. Klein says that after URS declined to participate in his conflict-of-interest prevention plan, the ethics committee ruled that Feinstein could act on matters that affected URS because she did not have a list of URS' needs. That these confidential rulings are contradictory is obvious and calls for explanation.

Klein declined to produce copies of the Perini project lists that he transmitted to Feinstein. And neither he nor Feinstein would furnish copies of the ethics committee rulings, nor examples of the senator recusing herself from acting on legislation that affected Perini or URS. But the Congressional Record shows that as chairperson and ranking member of MILCON, Feinstein was often involved in supervising the legislative details of military construction projects that directly affected Blum's defense-contracting firms.

After reviewing the results of this investigation, Wendell Rawls, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., observes that by giving Feinstein notice of Perini's business objectives, Klein achieved the opposite of preventing a conflict of interest.

Rawls comments, "Sen. Feinstein has had a serious conflict of interest, a serious insensitivity to ethical considerations. The very least she should have done is to recuse herself from having conversations, debates, voting or any other kind of legislative activity that involved either Perini Corporation or URS Corporation or any other business activity where her husband's financial interests were involved.

"I cannot understand how someone who complains so vigorously as she has about conflicts of interest in the government and Congress can have turned such a deaf ear and a blind eye to her own. Because of her level of influence, the conflict of interest is just as serious as the Halliburton-Cheney connection."

Called into Question
Here are a few examples from the Congressional Record of questionable intersections between Feinstein's legislative duties and her financial interests:


At a MILCON hearing in 2001, Feinstein interrogated defense officials about the details of constructing specific missile defense systems, which included upgrading the early warning radar system at Cobra Dane radar on Shemya Island, Alaska. In 2003, Perini reported that it had completed a contract to upgrade the Cobra Dane radar system. It has done similar work at Beale Air Force Base in California and in the United Kingdom. URS also bids on missile defense work.


In the 2002 MILCON hearings, Feinstein questioned an official about details of the U.S. Army's chemical demilitarization program. URS is extensively involved in performing chemical demilitarization work at key disposal sites in the United States.


At that same hearing, Feinstein asked about the possibility of increasing funding for anti-terrorism-force protection at Army bases. The following year, on March 4, 2003, Feinstein asked why the antiterrorism-force protection funds she had advocated for the year before had not yet been spent. On April 21, 2003, URS announced the award of a $600 million contract to provide, among other services, anti-terrorism-force protection for U.S. Army installations.


Beginning in 2003, both Perini and URS were awarded a series of open-ended contracts for military construction work around the world, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Feinstein's leadership, MILCON regularly approved specific project "task orders" that were issued to Perini and URS under these contracts.


At a March 30, 2004, MILCON hearing, Feinstein grilled Maj. Gen. Dean Fox about whether or not the Pentagon intended to prioritize funding the construction of "beddown" maintenance facilities for its new airlifter, the C-17 Globemaster. After being reassured by Fox that these funds would soon be flowing, Feinstein said, "Good, that's what I really wanted to hear. Thank you very much. Appreciate it very much, General." Two years later, URS announced a $42 million award to build a beddown maintenance facility for the C-17 at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii as part of a multibillion dollar contract with the Air Force. Under Feinstein's leadership, MILCON approved the Hickam project.


In mid-2005, MILCON approved a Pentagon proposal to fund "overhead coverage force protection" in Iraq that would reinforce the roofs of U.S. Army barracks to better withstand mortar rounds. On Oct. 13, 2005, Perini announced the award of a $185 million contract to provide overhead coverage force protection to the Army in Iraq.

In the 2005 MILCON hearings, Feinstein earmarked MILCON legislation with $25 million to increase environmental remediation at closed military bases. Year after year, Feinstein has closely overseen the environmental cleanup and redevelopment of McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, frequently requesting that officials add tens of millions of dollars to that project. URS and its joint ventures have earned tens of millions of dollars cleaning up McClellan. And CB Richard Ellis, a real estate company headed by Feinstein's husband Richard Blum, is involved in redeveloping McClellan for the private sector.

This investigation examined thousands of pages of documents, including transcripts of congressional hearings, U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filings, government audits and reports, federal procurement data and corporate press releases. The findings were shared with contracting and ethics experts at several nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based government oversight groups. Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that analyzes defense contracts and who examined our evidence says, "The paper trail showing Sen. Feinstein's conflict of interest is irrefutable."

On the face of it, there is nothing objectionable about a senator closely examining proposed appropriations or advocating for missile defense or advancing the cleanup of a toxic military base. Blum profitably divested himself of ownership of both URS and Perini in 2005, ameliorating the conflict of interest. But Feinstein's ethical dilemma arose from the fact that, for five years, the interests of Perini and URS and CB Richard Ellis were inextricably entwined with her leadership of MILCON, which last year approved $16.2 billion for military construction projects.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, remarks, "There are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest. [California Republican Congressman John T.] Doolittle, for example, hired his wife as a fundraiser, and she skimmed 15 percent off of all campaign contributions. Others, like [former] Speaker [Dennis] Hastert and Cong. [Ken] Calvert were earmarking federal money for roads to enhance the value of property held by their families.

"But because of the amount of money involved," Sloan continues, "Feinstein's conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts."


Family Matters
Californians elected San Francisco's former mayor Dianne Feinstein to the Senate in 1992. She was overwhelmingly reelected in November 2006. She is well-liked by both liberals and conservatives. She supports abortion rights and gun control laws. She politicked this year for renewal of the Patriot Act and sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban American flag burning. She is currently calling for President Bush to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but she strongly supported the invasions, occupations and "reconstructions" of both Iraq and Afghanistan. She sits on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she is a consistent hawk on matters military.

And she is wealthy. In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein's wealth, including Blum's assets, at $40 million, up 25 percent from the year before. That made her the ninth wealthiest member of Congress. Feinstein's latest Public Financial Disclosure Report shows that in 2005 her family earned income of between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock combined. From CB Richard Ellis, Blum earned between $1.3 million to $4 million. (The report allows for disclosure of dollar amounts within ranges, which accounts for the wide variance.)

A talented financier and deal-broker, Blum, 70, presides over a global investment empire through a labyrinth of private equity partnerships. His flagship entity is a merchant banking firm, Blum Capital Partners, L.P., of which he is the chairman and general partner. Through this bank, Blum bought a controlling share of Perini in 1997, when it was nearly broke. He named his close associate, the attorney Michael R. Klein, to represent his interest on the board of directors. Blum declined to comment for this story. Perini CEO, Robert Band, deferred to Klein for comment.

In 2000, according to public records, Perini--which partly specializes in erecting casinos--earned a mere $7 million from federal contracts. Post-9-11, Perini transformed into a major defense contractor. In 2004, the company earned $444 million for military construction work in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for improving airfields for the U.S. Air Force in Europe and building base infrastructures for the U.S. Navy around the globe. In a remarkable financial recovery, Perini shot from near penury in 1997 to logging gross revenues of $1.7 billion in 2005.

In December 2005, Perini publicly identified one of its main business competitors as Halliburton. The company attributed its growing profitability, in large part, to its Halliburton-like military construction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the company warned investors that if Congress slammed the brakes on war and occupation in the Middle East, Perini's stock could plummet.

According to Klein and to public records, Blum's firm originally paid $4 a share for a controlling interest in Perini's common stock. After a series of complicated stock transactions, Blum ended up owning 13 percent of the company, a majority interest. In mid and late 2005, Blum and his firm took their profits by selling about 3 million Perini shares for $23.75 per share, according to Klein and reports filed with the SEC. Klein says Blum personally owned 100,000 of the vastly appreciated shares when they were sold. Shortly thereafter, Feinstein began calling for winding down the Iraq war while urging that the "global war on terror" continue indefinitely.

Perini
It is estimated that Perini now holds at least $2.5 billion worth of contracts tied to the worldwide expansion of American militarism. Its largest Department of Defense contracts are "indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity" or "bundled" contracts carrying guaranteed profit margins. As is all too common, competitive bidding was minimal or nonexistent for many of these contracts.

In June, Cong. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, released a report by the House Committee on Government Reform criticizing the Pentagon's growing use of bundled contracts. Waxman complained that these contracts give companies an incentive to increase costs. One of the "problem contracts" identified by Waxman was a no-bid, $500 million contract held by Perini to reconstruct southern Iraq's electrical grid.

In fact, bundled military construction contracts fueled Perini's transformation from casino builder to major war contractor. As of May 2006, Perini held a series of bundled contracts awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers for work in the Middle East worth $1.725 billion. Perini has also been awarded an open-ended contract by the U.S. Air Force for military construction and cleaning the environment at closed military bases. Perini shares that $15 billion award with several other firms, including URS.

Perini regularly performs military construction jobs from Afghanistan to Alaska. It built a biological warfare laboratory for the Navy in Virginia. It built fuel tanks and pipelines for the Navy in North Africa. Details of these projects are typically examined and approved or disapproved by MILCON.

At a 2001 MILCON hearing, Feinstein, attending to a small item, told Maj. Gen. Earnest O. Robbins that she would appreciate receiving an engineering assessment on plans to build a missile transport bridge at Vandenberg Air Force Base. He said he would give it to her. She also asked for and received a list of unfunded construction projects, which prioritize military construction wish lists down to the level of thousand-dollar light fixtures. While there is no evidence to point to nefarious intent behind Feinstein's request for these details, it is worth noting that Perini and URS have open-ended contracts to perform military construction for the Air Force. The senator could have chosen to serve on a subcommittee where she had no potential conflict of interests at all.

In 2003 hearings, MILCON approved various construction projects at sites where Perini and/or URS are contracted to perform engineering and military construction work. The sites included: Camp Lejeune; the Underwater Systems Lab in Newport, R.I.; Hill Air Force Base, Utah; the Naval facilities at Dahlgren, Va.; projects at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, and military bases in Guam, Diego Garcia and Crete.

There are some serious problems with Perini's work in Iraq. In June 2004, the Government Accountability Office reported that Perini's electrical reconstruction contract in southern Iraq suffered from mismanagement and lack of competition. In 2006, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found that Perini was paid to construct multimillion dollar electrical substations in the desert that could not be connected to the electrical grid. And the company was billing the government for purchasing and subcontracting costs that were not justified, according to the Defense Contract Audit Agency. An October 2005 audit by the Defense Department's Inspector General criticized the execution of Perini's cost-plus military construction work in Afghanistan, saying, "The contractor had an incentive to increase costs, because higher costs resulted in higher profit."

URS & McClellan
URS dwarfs Perini. With more than 100 subsidiaries, it employs nearly 30,000 engineers and workers worldwide. The firm's largest customer is the U.S. Army, from which it booked $791 million in work in 2005 out of a total revenue of $3.9 billion.

URS is not just a construction company; it also develops and maintains advanced weapons systems. In 2002, URS purchased weaponry firm EG&G Technical Services from the Carlyle Group, in which former President George H. W. Bush was a principal. But as profitable as its arms dealing division is, URS reports that its growth sectors are military construction, homeland security and environmental services for military sites under existing defense department contracts.

According to a database of federal procurement records made available for this investigation by Eagle Eye Publishers of Fairfax, Va., URS's military construction work in 2000 earned it a mere $24 million. The next year, when Feinstein took over as MILCON chair, military construction earned URS $185 million. On top of that, the company's architectural and engineering revenue from military construction projects grew from $108,726 in 2000 to $142 million in 2001, more than a thousand-fold increase in a single year.

As Congress gave the Bush administration the green light on military spending after 9-11, the value of Blum's investment in URS skyrocketed. Between 2003 and 2005, URS' share price doubled. In late 2005, Blum resigned from the URS board of directors, after 30 years as a member. Simultaneously, he sold 5.5 million URS shares, worth about $220 million at market price.

The Congressional Record shows that in year after year of MILCON hearings, Feinstein successfully lobbied defense officials to increase the budget for military base cleanup and redevelopment, especially at the decommissioned McClellan Air Force Base. The detoxification of McClellan is a plum job: it is estimated to cost $1.3 billion and take many years to complete. There is, of course, nothing unusual about a senator advocating for projects that improve environmental health, particularly when the project is in her home state; and the Pentagon is notoriously lax about cleaning up its Superfund sites.

It turns out, though, that URS specializes in environmental consulting and engineering work at military installations. It holds a $69 million contract to manage the cleanup of Hill Air Force Base in Utah, which was awarded in 2004. It has a $320 million contract to remediate pollution at U.S. Army bases in the United States and the Caribbean, which was awarded in 2005. And from 2000 to 2005, URS and its partners were paid $204 million for work at McClellan Air Force Base, according to Eagle Eye.

At a MILCON hearing in 2001, Feinstein cited the environmental work at McClellan as needing more money. "That is a base that I am very familiar with, and I am glad that we were able to provide that funding so that work at McClellan can proceed," she said. Feinstein then asked for and received detailed information concerning the Pentagon's projected schedule to finish the McClellan cleanup and the effect of delaying cleanup upon its potential for commercial reuse.

At a MILCON hearing in March 2002, Chairman Feinstein interrogated Assistant Secretary of Defense Nelson F. Gibbs:

Sen. Feinstein. Is the Air Force capable of executing greater [cleanup] funding in 2003 at McClellan?
Mr. Gibbs. Yes, ma'am.
Feinstein. And how much would that be? How about $22 million?
Gibbs. That would be very close. That would be almost exact as a matter of fact. . . . If you would like, I can provide for you a list of those individual projects.
Feinstein. I would. If you would not mind. Thank you very much.

The next week, Gibbs sent Feinstein a memo showing the addition of $23 million to the McClellan environmental budget, mostly for groundwater remediation, URS' specialty.

In the 2003 MILCON hearings, Feinstein told Dov S. Zakheim, then the Defense Department comptroller, that she "was really struck by the hit that environmental remediation [at McClellan Air Force Base] took. . . . However, I have just [received] a list from the Air Force of what they could use to clean up . . . McClellan, and one other base, and it is 64 million additional dollars this year."

Dr. Zakheim replied, "Well, let me first say that I remember your concern last year, and I am glad that we took care of [McClellan]. That is important." Feinstein remarked that the Pentagon had already spent $7 billion on environmental cleanup of closed bases, and that another $3.5 billion should be immediately allocated so that the clean bases can be transferred to the private sector. Demonstrating her grasp of technical details, she remarked, "I am particularly concerned with the dilapidated condition of the sewer line at McClellan that continues to impede significant economic redevelopment of the base."

That is where CB Richard Ellis comes in.

The real estate firm is politically well-connected. Sen. Feinstein's husband chairs the board of directors. Bill Clinton's secretary of commerce, Michael Kantor, joined in 2004. Former Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle signed on in 2005. The firm specializes in consulting with local governments and developers from California to Puerto Rico on how best to redevelop cleaned-up military bases. It also brokers the sale and lease of redeveloped base lands to the private sector. Since Blum took over CB Richard Ellis, for example, the company has closed deals leasing tens of thousands of square feet of commercial space on cleaned-up portions of McClellan to private developers.

In a 2003 MILCON hearing, Sacramento County redevelopment official Robert B. Leonard told Feinstein, "We wanted to express our appreciation for your efforts over the last year in supporting our needs at McClellan." During the five years that Feinstein led the subcommittee, support for the McClellan cleanup and the redevelopment deals were particular focuses of her attention.

URS declined to comment for this story. The sole comment that Feinstein's office made in response to a series of written questions about significant facts reported in this story is that "Sen. Feinstein has never had any knowledge nor has she exercised any influence on the award of environmental cleanup contracts under the jurisdiction of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee."

Let the Sunlight In
Last week, the Senate voted to close some significant loopholes in its ethics rules. But it stopped short of creating an office of public integrity, which would independently monitor lobbyists and members of congress for ethical compliance. Setting her own limits on the extent of reform she will countenance, Feinstein says she is opposed to the creation of an independent congressional ethics watchdog. "If the law is clear and precise, members will follow it," she assured the New York Times on Nov. 18, 2006.

The problem with the existing rules governing congressional ethics is that they are neither clear nor precise, and neither are they effective. Senate rules governing conflicts of interest are so vaguely worded, say government watchdogs, that short of stashing cash bribes in the refrigerator, the line between serving constituents and serving oneself is often blurred. The public record shows that Feinstein has a history of crossing that blurry line.

Charles Tiefer is a professor of law specializing in legislation and government contracting at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. He served as solicitor and deputy counsel to the House of Representatives for 11 years. He has taught at Yale Law School and written books on congressional procedures and separation of powers. Tiefer observes that, unlike the executive and judiciary branches of government, Congress does not have enforceable conflict of interest rules. It is up to Sen. Feinstein's constituents, Tiefer says, to decide if she has a conflict of interest and to take whatever action they want. To make that possible, Feinstein should have publicly disclosed the details of her family investments in Perini, URS and CB Richard Ellis as they related to her actions on MILCON. Tiefer avers that when Klein gave Feinstein lists of Perini's interests, he worsened her conflict of interest.

"The senator should, at a minimum, have posted Klein's lists on her Senate website, so that the press and the public would be warned of her potential conflicts," Tiefer says, noting that she should also make public her correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee.

As the arbiter of Senate rules on ethics, it is incumbent on Feinstein to provide the public with an explanation of why she did not recuse herself from acting on MILCON details that served her financial interests, and why she failed to resign from the subcommittee after she recognized the potential for conflicts of interest, which, unfortunately, materialized in an obvious way and over a long period of time.

[Spurminator]

This really isn't new news. Feinstein's war profiteering has been a point of discussion for a while. There's even a website (http://www.feinsteinwatch.com/) dedicated to it (albeit a pretty lousy one...).

[101A]

Googled:

"Cheney Halliburton war profiteering" - 354,000 results

"Feinstein Perini war profiteering" - 587 results

Seems most agree you ought not criticize the dems.

[clambake]

So pick up a shovel and dig in. All dems and repubs are fair game. "See, the dems do it too" is hardly a defense. Round'em all up.

[ChumpDumper]

:lol you jut found this out?

You know, the Republicans were in charge of everything up until this year -- why didn't they say or do anything about them?

Why did the Republicans allow all this money to go to Feinstein's husband's company?

I'm sure one of the new US Attorneys would be glad to prosecute -- why aren't they?

[ggoose25]

So pick up a shovel and dig in. All dems and repubs are fair game. "See, the dems do it too" is hardly a defense. Round'em all up.

Agreed. She should be held to the same fire I roast Cheney with. Any politician financially profiting off of US soldiers dying for a worthless cause should be held accountable. that just makes me sick.

[ChumpDumper]

I got no problem with Feinstein's being investigated. Put her under oath if you like.

Can Republicans say the same about Gonzales, et.al.?

[ggoose25]

i should add, if someone tries to make money off of the war, that is one thing (you cant blame an American capitalist), but if you are a politician and you are a pushing an unjustified war for your own financial gain....

:vomit:

[boutons_]

I know nothing about WorldNet or Rutz or this Feinstein story, but soy as industrialized into US industrial factory food is controversial. The US soy industry pushes it heavily FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT. There is widespread evidence that industrial soy is not completely harmless, and may be harmful. Here's a link page to lots of anti-soy articles:

http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/index.htm

phyto-estrogen, as found in and derived from soy, works as well as any estrogen. Note that deaths from breast cancer, fertlized by estrogen in the same way prostate cancer is fertilized by testosterone, dropped significantly when many US women went off estrogen-based contraceptives.

There was a famous study in Denmark many years ago that showed the male sperm counts had decreased drastically over several decades. I'm not sure if they ever nailed down the culprit, but a suspect was vinyl plastic that mimics estrogen
and is pervasive in the environment.

[Spurminator]

But does it turn you gay?

[RighteousBoy]

The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.

In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.


Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband's investments.

So what's the problem? Would it have been better had he invested in Enron instead? The man made good investments, and now is reaping the benefit from them, I have no problem with someone making money - I see more of a problem with a government that would rather take it away.


The Democratic royal family recently purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

Good for them, how many people benefited from the home, how many contractors, architects, plumbers, electricians, etc. Myself, I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a home, even if I could easily afford it, but the fact is that they can/did. They, like most us on this board, live in a country that allows us a tremendous oppurtunity to do well - it makes no sense to do without to quench some kind of prosperity/guilt.


It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading Democrat should be called out for her offense.

If the government goes out for bids, and chooses a company based on ability, past performance, price, etc., and finds that company X is best suited for the task, why is there a problem? I can see an arguement, if Feinstein was doing some type of shady dealing, but if these were legal contracts, I see no problem. If she is against the war effort, and profits from war funding, it does show a bit of hypocracy - but if these stocks are controlled by her husband, then who knows just how much influence she has over them.

But if this is all about putting your money where your mouth is, then she could always take Cheney's example,(when he sold his halliburton stock), and do the same.

[boutons_]

"senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq."

The whole fucking world knows know dubya and dickhead lied their stinking asses off to get their war for oil, cherry-picked, forged, and hyped intel and suppressed all intel doubts, and bullied and slimed anybody who dared call them out (eg, Joe Wilson).

Claiming to have been misled is fully justified.

[Nbadan]

For once, the M$M won't touch this story because it's all bullsh1t. Ms. Feinstein couldn't have possibly chaired the MILCON committee for the past six years because Democrats were the Senate minority. She was a ranking minority member most of that time, and the Metroactive is misleading the reader by confusing Ms. Feinstein’s role in the committee.

Metroactive also misleads by stating that Diane Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum "owned" those companies because he didn't.

Even if Ms. Feinstein was chair of the committee during the period, any contract decisions have to be approved by a quorum of the committee and the Senate. Diane Feinstein has been married to Richard Blum for 26 years and disclosed the possibility of a conflict of interest a long time ago. Mr. Blum had those investment holdings long before Diane Feinstein was in the Senate and long before they were married in 1980.

Since she has disclosed the possibility of the conflict of interest the committee itself is the party to decide if Diane Feinstein is steering military contracts through the committee. Since both contractors, UDS and Perini Corp. are longtime government military contractors in all likelyhood someone else, not Ms. Feinstein, made the contractual decisions because the committee and the Senate were well aware of her relationship to Mr. Blum.

Metroactive is a right wing blog in Santa Cruz CA with ties to the Republican National Committee. The primary political function of Metroactive has been to smear Ms. Feinstein and hound her out of the Senate because the Republicans can't come close to defeating her in a statewide election.

If you read the blog you'll see that the Metreoactive's vendetta against Feinstein is laughably groundless and the blog is quite delusional about its own overblown sense of self importance. Metroactive acts as if Diane Feinstein spends her entire day preoccupied with their blogging investigations that 16 wacko Republicans actually read about. I doubt if Ms. Feinstein even knows that Metroactive even exists.

There isn't a conflict of interest because Mr. Blum doesn't and never did own any defense contracting businesses. Richard Blum is investment analyst, founder and senior partner of Blum Capital who once had investment holdings in two different defense contracting firms, Perini Corp. and URS. He divested himself of those holdings in 2005. The Committee and the Senate were both aware of Richard Blum's investment holdings because Diane Feinstein disclosed them to the Senate to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest when she was assigned to work on that committee years ago.

It's perfectly legal and ethical to have a spouse or family member have investment holdings in a company that contracts with the United States government. Mr. Blum had nothing to do with the day to day operations, or contract bidding decisions of Perini Corp or URS because he was not an employee of either company. The ethical violation is not disclosing that relationship and steering contracts to benefit a friend, family member, or your own personal financial interests.

Allow me to point out that George W. Bush's own father is one of the founders of the Carlyle Group who is the largest investor in URS and President Bush routinely signs bills awarding contracts to URS.

Dick Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton who maintains stock options in Halliburton and was the prime mover behind the decisions to award multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq and the post-Katrina construction. As a result Mr. Cheney enriched himself by millions of dollars with those decisions. The extent of Dick Cheney's direct ties to Halliburton are a ethics and legal conflict that Mr. Cheney has never felt significant enough to fully disclose or answer to anyone for. Cheney's ties to Halliburton also raise Mr. Cheney's motivations when he was the primary cheerleader for the Iraq invasion in 2002. Cheney activities on behalf of Halliburton reek with the stench of corruption and greed. If Cheney's case isn't a conflict of interest, then there is no such thing as a conflict of interest.

Nobody in the Republican controlled House and Senate or at the Justice Department felt Mr. Cheney's personal holdings in Halliburton and his no-bid contract awards to Halliburton were worthy of their oversight or investigative attention. War profiteering is in the same class of criminal behavior as treason.

The real reason Diane Feinstein left the MILCON committee in January was her new assignment as chair of Senate Rules Committee. She didn't resign in disgrace but resigned as a mere formality to take on new committee assignments in a newly elected Senate.

The reason why the media didn't " cover it" is all 100 Senators get new committee assignments in a newly election Senate and all of them resign from the committees they no longer serve on. A routine procedural task of the Senate is not newsworthy.

What I find is disturbing is the modus operandi of the right wing blogoshere. Right wing bloggers are well aware of the misleading content of the story but still give the green light for publication. These partisan kamikazes know the story is a great big pile of unmitigated horse crap but they're hoping that some of the bovine manure they're tossing at Diane Feinstein will stick to her. (See John Kerry, Swiftboat Vets for more info)

Metroactive is the party with questionable ethics, not Diane Feinstein. The ethical duty of any journalist is to write a story that is factual and something resembling a fair minded treatment of the subject matter. By that standard Metroactive's news stories would not pass the scrutiny of the editor of high school newspaper.

Apparently the Republicans haven't learned a thing from their route in the 2006 election. They are the same old partisan hacks, cheap liars, swiftboaters, meglomanics, finger pointing incompetents double dealers, bribe takers and low life weasels they've always been. They need to be taken out to the woodshed for another good thrashing in 2008.