By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (IPS) - A contract to monitor the Amazon
rainforest in Brazil will include a shadowy company once described
as ''virtually indistinguishable'' from the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), IPS has learnt.
The 1.4-billion-dollar contract for satellite monitoring of drug
trafficking and deforestation in the 3.2-million-square-kilometre
forests in the Brazilian Amazon was awarded last summer to
Raytheon, a 12-billion-dollar, Massachusetts-based company that
makes Patriot and Sidewinder missiles.
Part of the Raytheon contract is to be implemented by E-Systems, a
Texas-based company that Raytheon bought last April. E-Systems'
major clients have historically been the CIA and other spy
agencies like the National Security Agency and the National
Reconnaissance Office.
An unnamed Congressional aide told the Washington Post last year
that the company was ''virtually indistinguishable'' from the
agencies it serves. ''Congress will ask for a briefing from E-
Systems and the (CIA) programme manager shows up,'' the aide is
quoted as saying. ''Sometimes he gives the briefing. They're
interchangeable.''
''E-systems will only conduct a small part of the contract but
most of the work will be done by Raytheon's Bedford facilities and
the office we have is setting up in Rio de Janeiro,'' Elizabeth
Allen, a Raytheon spokesperson, told IPS.
''We're still discussing the details of the Amazon contract. We
have conducted drug enforcement activities for U.S. Customs, such
as reconnaissance and aircraft maintenance, but I can't tell you
any more because that's classified information,'' John Kumpf, E-
systems spokesman, told IPS.
Over 85 percent of the 2.1 billion dollars in contracts handled by
E-Systems in 1994 were classified, Kumpf said. But what little is
known of its record on monitoring drug trafficking is hardly
complimentary.
Aircraft support for drug-enforcement activities become a part of
E-Systems' work after it bought up Air Asia, the CIA's aircraft
repair and maintenance facility in Taiwan in 1975.
Until E-Systems took it over, Air Asia provided support for Air
America, the CIA's covert airline that ferried arms, heroin and
opium in Indo-China during the Vietnam War, according to the
British reporter Christopher Robbins, who wrote the authoritative
account of the airline's history in 1979.
Immediately after acquiring Air Asia, E-Systems won a contract to
maintain planes for the U.S.-funded Operation Condor in Mexico.
Condor monitored drug trafficking in the state of Sinaloa in the
mid-1970s.
A 1985 U.S. congressional study found that the contract was ''a
shambles ... There are no adequate records to indicate how the
funds have been and are being spent.'' The study also cited
incidents of planes being used for joy rides.
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathon Marshall, authors of ''Cocaine
Politics,'' say that the Condor operation ''succeeded in filling
the jails with hapless peasants ... but failed to arrest a single
drug trafficker.''
More recently, E-Systems paid 4.2 million dollars in 1994 to
settle a lawsuit brought by Carlos Uribe, a man in El Paso, Texas,
on the Mexican border. Uribe charged that an E-Systems employee,
Truett Burney, accidentally murdered Uribe's wife in a hotel room
when his gun went off in an adjoining room in September, 1991.
Burney's lawyers said he was helping install ''top secret
listening devices'' on suspected drug traffickers at the time.
''It was a very tragic accident. Burney should not have been
carrying a gun,'' according to E-Systems' Kumpf.
E-Systems has a murky history as a military contractor also. The
first time the company appeared in the news was when it was sued
by the widow of an employee who was killed in a 1971 crash of an
Air Force plane sent to spy on a French nuclear test.
In the early 1970s, E-Systems won the contract to install
communication gear on Air Force One, the U.S. president's plane.
This led to similar contracts for the heads of state of Iran,
Israel, Nigeria, Malaysia, Romania and Saudi Arabia.
E-Systems has since built the ''Doomsday Plane,'' an airborne
command post for the Pentagon and the White House in the event of
a nuclear attack.
In 1976, E-Systems won a contract to monitor the Sinai peninsula
between Egypt and Israel. It has since won contracts to eavesdrop
on Soviet missiles through ground stations in China.
In 1977, during the height of the ''dirty war'' in Argentina, E-
Systems won a contract to supply ''Wheelbarrow'' systems -- a
radio transmitter that detonates explosives by remote control --
to the Argentine police.
In August 1990, E-Systems pleaded guilty to criminal charges of
falsifying results on tactical field radios manufactured at its
Florida factories. The company paid out almost three million
dollars in fines to settle the charges.
Kumpf refused to comment on any of the classified contracts
obtained by E-Systems. ''We can't talk about any of that. I can
tell you about our new venture with Lockheed and Mitsubishi to
sell satellite images to the private sector though,'' he says.
This might involve selling images of the Amazon to oil and mineral
companies who want to prospect in the rainforest, according to a
business competitor who asked not to be identified. E-Systems says
that it does have computer image data-processing contracts with
''three or four oil companies, including Mobil and Exxon,''
according to Kumpf.
E-Systems' new owners have a similar record. In October 1994,
Raytheon paid four million dollars to settle government charges
that it had inflated the cost of a 71.5-million-dollar radar
contract.
In October 1993, Raytheon paid out 3.7 million dollars to settle
U.S. government charges that it had inflated the cost of Patriot
missiles. The year before the company paid out 2.75 million
dollars for overpricing missile test equipment.
In March 1990, Raytheon pleaded guilty in federal court to Judge
Albert Bryan, Jr. in Virginia for illegally obtaining secret Air
Force budget and planning documents. The company paid a million
dollars in fines.
In October 1987, the Justice Department signed on to a 36-million-
dollar lawsuit originally filed by a former Raytheon employee,
which alleged that Raytheon submitted false claims for work done
on missiles.
The Raytheon deal in Brazil is currently under investigation
following allegations that company representatives bribed senior
government officials. Ironically, Raytheon reportedly won the
contract when the CIA supplied evidence that French government-
owned Thompson CSF, its main competitor, was bribing Brazilian
officials.
The deal, which was reportedly clinched by personal lobbying
efforts by President Bill Clinton, was recommended for
cancellation by the Brazilian Senate after an official enquiry
found that the equipment supplied was obsolete and over-
priced.(ENDS/IPS/PC/JL/95)