SAIC's board members include Admiral Bobby Inman, former NSA head and deputy director of the CIA; Melvin Laird, Nixon's defense secretary; and retired General Max Thurman, commander of the Panama Invasion. Recently departed board members include Robert Gates, former CIA director; William Perry, current Secretary of Defense; and John Deutch, the current CIA director. ... "At the very time the Internet community is struggling with the issues of encryption and privacy, I'm more than a little uneasy to find this bunch of ex-spooks sitting at the very entry point of the Net," says Jim Warren (a
Yeah, that _is_ a pretty spooky bunch; I don't know if anybody'd have standing to do a conflict-of-interest or governmental ethics case of any sort, since it is more or less a monopoly? [BEGIN NOISE] On the other hand, I suppose I'd rather have the CIA making money by selling directory services than, say, dealing cocaine or collecting graft from third-world governments :-) [END NOISE]
Current SAIC government contracts include re-engineering information systems at the Pentagon, automation of the FBI's computerized fingerprint identification system, and building a national criminal history information system.
SAIC's a fairly generalized contracting firm, specializing in study contracts and other front-end work rather than back-end implementation grunt-work; I'm not surprised by the list. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---