Know the Carlyle Group (owns Booz Allen), it's the Face of Evil

Few Americans have even heard of the Carlyle Group but thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, the name Booz Allen Hamilton, who employed Snowden, is suddenly on the radar and much to the chagrin of the government.  Booz Allen Hamilton is owned by the Carlyle Group, a  very secretive but extremely powerful consortium of well connected insiders including many Saudis and the bin Laden family; Carlyle investors earned vast fortunes from defense contractors, government contracts and insider information.

Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that the Carlyle Group is the world's most profitable spy corporation.

Booz Allen, the World's Most Profitable Spy Organization

In the fiscal year ended in March 2013, Booz Allen Hamilton reported $5.76 billion in revenue, 99 percent of which came from government contracts, and $219 million in net income. Almost a quarter of its revenue—$1.3 billion—was from major U.S. intelligence agencies. Along with competitors such as Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), CACI, and BAE Systems (BAESY), the McLean (Va.)-based firm is a prime beneficiary of an explosion in government spending on intelligence contractors over the past decade. About 70 percent of the 2013 U.S. intelligence budget is contracted out, according to a Bloomberg Industries analysis; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says almost a fifth of intelligence personnel work in the private sector.

Forbes reported that Booz Allen has made $2 billion for the Carlyle Group, here.  Spying on Americans and everybody else on the planet is extremely profitable for corporate insiders.

Corporations, defense contractors and the technology industry are very well connected in the District of Crime and in DC just about every Congress Critter is bought and paid for by defense contractors, banksters and other corporatist special interests.  It's just how the filthy special interest money sloshes around in America's corrupt to the core political toilet bowel.

What do we know about the Carlyle Group?  A lot.   Greg Schneider of the creepy Washington Post that defends everything in the District of Crime wrote a most interesting piece in March 2003 that focused on the Carlyle Group.

David M. Rubenstein is exasperated, and he blurts something that a quick look around the room proves is outrageous: "We're not," he nearly shouts, "that well connected!" Behind him is a picture of Rubenstein on a plane with then-Gov. George W. Bush. Across the room, a photo of Rubenstein with the president's father and mother. Next to that, Rubenstein and Mikhail Gorbachev. Elsewhere: Rubenstein and Jimmy Carter. On a bookshelf: Rubenstein and the pope.

Rubenstein, after all, is co-founder of the Carlyle Group, an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor, former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is senior adviser -- the list goes on.

"We've actually replaced the Trilateral Commission" as the darling of conspiracy theorists, says Rubenstein -- who, truth be told, happens to be a member of the Trilateral Commission.

It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day.

The Washington Post link has since been expunged but WanttoKnow.info captured it in its entirely, here.

The Carlyle Group existed as a private equity company until 2012 when it went public, here.  In 2005, the Washington Post wrote a fairly revealing piece about the Carlyle Group titled Carlyle Group Prepares for the Next Generation. 

Carlyle Group is putting the finishing touches on what will be the biggest independently managed corporate buyout fund in history, a $6.5 billion pile of cash that will probably be the last such fund for Carlyle's three founders.

A ton of insider money has always flowed into the Carlyle Group.  Carlyle acquired Booz Allen Hamilton in 2008 for $2.54 billion, a business that Bloomberg described as "a U.S. government-consulting business", here.

The UK based Guardian that broke the Edward Snowden story is an excellent source of outstanding investigative journalism.  The Guardian did a piece on the Carlyle Group in 2003.

'Ex-presidents club' gets fat on conflict

High-flying venture capital firm Carlyle Group cashes in when the tanks roll, writes Jamie Doward.

It is the sort of thing they really could have done without. For 15 years one of America's most powerful venture capital groups has tried to play down suggestions that its multi-billion dollar funds get fat on the back of global conflict. But now, with the invasion of Iraq under way, a new book chronicling the relatively short history of the Carlyle Group threatens to draw attention to the company's close links with the Pentagon.

Dan Briody, author of the Iron Triangle, Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, alleges the company's executives were so worried about his book they told staff not to talk to him....

Briody's account of how an upstart venture capital firm went from nothing to managing funds of nearly $14 billion in just 15 years, earning investors returns of around 36 per cent, is likely to reinforce the controversial image of the Carlyle Group and raise concerns about its influence in Washington and beyond.

Sometimes called the Ex-Presidents Club, Carlyle has a glittering array of ex-politicians and big league bankers on its board. Former secretary of state James Baker is managing director while ex-secretary of defence Frank Carlucci is chairman. George Bush senior is an adviser. John Major heads up its European operations. To give the conspiracy theorists plenty of ammunition, US newspapers have also highlighted the fact that current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a wrestling partner of Carlucci's at Princeton and the two have remained close friends ever since.

Frank Carlucci is another creepy Carlyle character.  He roomed with Rumsfeld in college and they remained very close friends and political associates over the decades.  Carlucci has an impressive neocon resume - Secretary of Defense under Reagan, CIA Deputy Director under Carter and National Security Advisor to Reagan.  Carlucci also had a high ranking position in the Nixon Administration.  Carlucci's Widipedia biography is here.  Carlucci was also implicated in the assassination of Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba according to Widipedia.

Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, was assassinated in January 1961 during The Congo Crisis. During that time, Carlucci was the second secretary at the US embassy in the Congo and, covertly, a CIA agent. His participation in Lumumba's assassination is implied with the release of US government documents revealing that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to murder Lumumba. Minutes of an August 1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles to "eliminate" the Congolese leader. The official note taker, Robert H. Johnson, testified to this before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975.

During a broadcast on HBO of the film Lumumba, directed by Raoul Peck, the name of Carlucci was bleeped and removed from the credits due to the ex-CIA official's lawsuit threat. Carlucci’s lawyers threatened Peck and distribution company Zeitgeist Films with legal action if the name of the former US official was not bleeped out of a scene that shows American Ambassador Clare Timberlake and Carlucci, along with Belgian and Congolese officials, plotting Lumumba’s assassination.

Carlucci was also a key player in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the premier think tank of the neocons that was hugely powerful, influential and controlled the Republican Party as well as its agenda.  PNAC was founded by William Kristol, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quale during the term of Bush Sr.  Any Google search of the Project for a New American Century will validate its goals of non-stop wars; Global Research documented the overt militarism of PNAC, here.

I've barely skimmed the surface on the Carlyle Group and PNAC and am only covering very few major points.  The Carlyle Group and PNAC represent an unspeakable evil in America and these folks have unlimited power.

The PNAC was subjected to so much bad publicity and largely based on its own publications and agenda that the neocons formed a new neocon think tank called The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) in 2009 which is headed by pretty much the same cast of characters who ran PNAC, here.

Neoconservatives form a new think tank to rehabilitate their image and regain some of the influence they had under the Bush administration, according to news reports. The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is headed by Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol, foreign policy consultant Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor. Its first activity will be to sponsor a March 31 conference (see March 31, 2009) pushing for a US “surge” in Afghanistan similar to the one Kagan helped plan for Iraq (see January 2007).

Successor to PNAC - Many see the FPI as the logical successor to Kristol and Kagan’s previous neoconservative organization, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC—see January 26, 1998). PNAC’s membership roll included many prominent Bush administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and the Defense Department’s top two officials, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

That a handful of power hungry elected psychopaths, powerful defense contractors and their thieving banksters were able to seize control of an entire nation of 310 million folks and subject them to endless wars, impoverishment and tyranny is beyond evil.  But that is precisely what has happened in America.

The Democratic Party is no better than the Republican Party because at the end of the day both the Republicans and Democrats (with minor exceptions) report to their corporate bosses who fund their campaigns.  Many Democrats are of the opinion that the Democrats they vote for are peace loving folks who are not affiliated with the likes of Carlyle Group.  But Carlyle's founder, David Rubenstein, was a Democrat and advisor to Jimmy Carter.  Fox News reports, link here:

The Carlyle Group, the world’s third largest private equity firm in Washington, D.C. with more than $150 billion in assets under management, was co-founded by David Rubenstein, one of former President Jimmy Carter’s top domestic policy advisors.

The Carlyle Group also has among its executives President Clinton’s chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty, and Arthur Levitt, President Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

President Obama’s auto “czar,” Steve Rattner, spent three decades on Wall Street and co-founded the Quadrangle Group, a Wall Street private equity firm that focuses on restructuring mid-market companies in the media, telecom and information technology sectors.

Nearly all the Republicans and all the Democrats are on the same team and they are all bought and paid for by the same players.  That's the primary reason why the elites who lord over us could care less who wins elections - both parties will deliver what they demand.

Although the once private and secretive Carlyle Group has now gone public, it's activities are not so secret anymore and it's embarked on diversification that includes technology and healthcare.  As with the Bush Administration passing the Patriot Act with votes from the Democrats that dropped an iron curtain of NSA surveillance over the planet and resulted in huge profits for spy contractors like Booz Allen, Obamacare has also opened up opportunities in government controlled healthcare.  Carlyle invested in a CRO or contract research organization.  Irvin Levin Associates, Inc. reports:

At the beginning of October, two private equity firms, The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman LP, (H&F) joined forces to make a $3.9 billion bid for Pharmaceutical Product Development (NASDAQ: PPDI). The target is a contract research organization, or CRO, that provides drug discovery, development and life-cycle management services in clinical development and laboratory services.....

The transaction has fully committed financing, consisting of a combination of equity provided by Carlyle Partners and Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners, and external debt financing commitments provided by Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and UBS.

It's not surprising that whenever the government intervenes, the Carlyle Group and its bankster partners are there to reap vast profits, profits that in all likelihood wouldn't exist in a free market.  However, when the government mandates or subsidizes, crony capitalists are quick to embrace ill gotten fascist profits.

The marriage of big business and big government is a very bad idea because it results in oppression of the people as well as impoverishment.  There is no better example of such incestuous marriages than the Carlyle Group.