US Senator Feinstein Now Bush's Whore In The US Senate
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Senator Feinstein's husband has made from his construction companies'
Iraqi military contracts in the past 4 years, contracts which
Feinstein pushed for approval while she ran the Senate Military
Construction subcommittee, it is no surprise that that US Senator
Diane Feinstein now appears to be glued at the hip to the Bush
administration.
She has in the past ten days broken ranks with the Democratic party to
appear at a photo opportunity with Bush at the San Diego fire scene,
voted to let the Bush nomination of überconservative Judge Leslie
Southwick for appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th
Circuit based in Louisiana go to the full Senate (for certain
approval) and now will vote for Mukasey's appointment as US Attorney
General. Mukasey, who goes along with the White House lie that
"waterboarding" is a classified interrogation technique, even if this
torture technique was used by the Spanish Inquisition.
With Bush in charge, rules covering the unjust enrichment from Federal
contracts by corporate insiders like Feinstein's husband are being
totally ignored. Feinstein's undue influence on the tainted Iraqi
construction contracts handed to her husband on a gold platter would
have already been investigated by the US Department of Justice (USDOJ)
if the Bush administration were not so totally corrupt. With people
like Gonzales and Mukasey in charge of the USDOJ, Bush and his cronies
(including Senator Feinstein) are in the clear.
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Billions in Military Contracts to Husband's Firms Were Approved by
Sen. Feinstein's Committee, Metro Newspapers Investigation Reports
http://www.metronews.com/feinstein.html
January 24, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband was a major
beneficiary of military appropriations blessed by a subcommittee that
she headed, Metro Newspapers reports this week.
Feinstein (D-Calif.) acted in apparent conflict of interest while
approving billions of dollars in military construction expenditures,
according to an investigative story by award-winning journalist Peter
Byrne. The story was published jointly in the North Bay Bohemian and
Metro Silicon Valley weekly newspapers this week.
Following Feinstein's participation at the legislative level, large
contracts were awarded to two firms - URS Corporation and Perini
Corporation - that were controlled by an investment group headed by
the senator's spouse, financier Richard C. Blum.
Byrne's investigation reveals the following details about Feinstein's
service as a member of the United States Senate's Military
Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON):
· From 1997 through the end of 2005, with Feinstein's knowledge, her
husband's group held a majority interest in two defense contractors
active in Iraq and U.S. military bases.
· While setting MILCON agendas, Feinstein supervised her own staff of
military construction experts and lobbied Pentagon officials in public
hearings.
· From 2001 to 2005, URS earned $792 million from military
construction and environmental cleanup projects approved by MILCON;
Perini secured $759 million from MILCON projects.
· Attorney Michael R. Klein, a Feinstein legal adviser and long-time
Blum business partner, also served as vice-chairman of Perini's board
of directors. In an interview with Byrne 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 admission was
intended to defuse the issue of Feinstein's conflict of interest, it
instead exacerbated it, and Sen. Feinstein did in fact vote on
legislation that affected Perini and URS.
The story published in Metro Silicon Valley and the North Bay Bohemian
examines the many ways in which Sen. Feinstein committed repeated
breaches of ethics as MILCON's chairperson from 2001-2005.
Metro Newspapers is a group of three free circulation weekly
newspapers based in Northern California.
Research assistance was provided by the Investigative Fund of the
Nation Institute.
The story appears online at www.bohemian.com/feinstein or
www.metrosiliconvalley.com/feinstein.