Fluor Last Updated: June 06, 2008
With a Board brimming with former high-ranking military officials (as well as the
wife of former CIA director R. James
Woolsey), this construction and engineering company received nearly $2 billion
of new Defense contracts in 2007 alone, and its the eighth largest U.S. government
contractor overall.Fluor is also descended from partnership with the bin Laden family’s primary financial conglomerate,, bringing its own multi-billion dollar clout throughout the world
Through interlocking transactions among its subsidiaries, Fluor has a majority partnership with and is controlled in large part by the bin Laden family's holding company, Saudi Investment Corporation (SICO). (SICO partnered with the Fluor subsidiary American Daniels Realty), SICO is managed by Osama bin Laden's brother and close Bush family associate, Yeslam bin Laden, who, while claiming to be estranged from Osama for decades shared a joint bank account in the ‘90s with the Al Qaeda leader.
Fluor and two other contractors probably received preferential treatment from the Army when it was awarding one of its biggest contracts, worth $150 billion. The Government Accountability Office, in an October 2007 review, found problems in the way the Army reviewed the bids of Fluor and the two other contractors, Dyncorp, the Bush family-connected company scandalized by human rights abuses, and the ever-present Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. The contract has not been revoked but the proposals are being reevaluated.
The GAO report was only the latest of many scandals involving Fluor’s contracting. It has paid tens of million dollars in refunds and fines for abuse and overcharging the Defense Department, the Department of Energy and others.
At the DOE, Fluor has a contract worth nearly $4 billion to manage the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, designated the most contaminated site in North America. The company fired whistleblowers who complained that Fluor's cost cutting created health and safety hazards at the high-level site. The Supreme Court ordered Fluor to pay the whistleblowers more than $4.7 million in damages but, surprisingly, the U.S. government reimbursed the company millions of dollars in legal costs associated with the case.
Fluor has been charged with the abuse of black workers and financial fraud in apartheid-era South Africa in two undecided multibillion-dollar lawsuits.
Board member Suzanne Woolsey is the the former CIA director who advocated strongly for the Iraq war and sits on the boards of many companies who have profited immensely from his influence in government. She joined Fluor's board of directors in 2004, and during her tenure, Fluor has received billions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction contracts. Through her trusteeship at an arms consulting group, her membership to the Council on Foreign Relations, and her directorship of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Suzanne Woolsey makes recommendations--often benefiting Fluor--to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war.
Ken Oscar, Fluor's vice-president of strategy, was formerly Assistant Secretary of the Army, where he was in charge of procurement and acquisition, among other things.
Phillip Carroll stepped down as Fluor's CEO in 2002 to work for the Pentagon on plans for Iraq's oil sector in the event of war. President Bush in 2003 appointed Carroll to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq’s oil industry, while Carroll still owned 1 million Fluor shares. The Iraqi Oil Ministry has since doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to Fluor. Carroll is also a top executive of the British defense contractor, BAE systems, with billions in contracts from the defense dept.
U.S. Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who headed the National Security Agency, was vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and was Deputy Director of the CIA, also served Fluor's board from 1985 to 2003.
Another source of fortune for Fluor has been the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), which is supposed to underwrite financing for small to mid-size U.S.firms exporting to emerging countries. Philip Merrill, as head of Ex-Im from 2002 to 2005, instead secured credit for huge Iraq contracts awarded to Fluor, and other insider behemoths, such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Billions of Ex-Im dollars disappeared in Iraq under the politically hard-wired Coalition Provisional Authority. In July 2005, Merrill resigned from Ex-Im after an ongoing dispute with the Bush administration over his refusal to approve a billion dollar loan guarantee for China.
In 2006, Merrill’s body was found in the Chesapeake Bay, with an anchor tied to his ankle, and a shotgun blast through his head.
About the Bin Laden Family, Frontline (exerpted from French intelligence report), November 2002:
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