Cheney and the for-profit prison scandal

Written by Biloxi
December 8, 2008

Last month, a Texas grand jury indicted Vice President Dick Cheney for “engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers.” And former Attorney General Gonzales was indicted for using his position during his time as Attorney General to block an investigation into abuses at the detention centers, located in south Texas.Click to view the indictments of Cheney and Gonzales.

District Attorney Juan Guerra was the lead person based on evidence from Cheney's tax return records and Cheney's connections lead to an indictment of the Vice President. Last week, the Judge Manuel Bañales [The same judge who last month dismissed indictments that charged Guerra with extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for personal business] threw out the indictments of Cheney, Gonzales, and other officials. Guerra attempted to have the judge replaced but that failed.Click here to download a copy of Guerra's affidavit. Guerra vowed to continue the fight and seek re-indictments. His main focus is not on the other officials but rather on Cheney and Gonzales. The judge and attorneys of Cheney and Gonzales are fighting to block Guerra from seeking re-indictments. Guerra's tenure as District Attorney ends December 31, 2008. Guerra said that he may seek an outside attorney to seek re-indictments which is allowed in this case.

I wanted to focus Cheney's role in the for-profit prison scandal as this case is much bigger than the media wish to ignore.

The three top prison companies Guerra researched were Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Cornell. Those three have the Vanguard Group in common, which is an investment company that puts money into all three prison companies. According to Guerra, Cheney owns shares in the Vanguard Group, an investment company that has holdings in Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Cornell. Willacy is operated by Geo Group, a subsidiary of Whackenhut .

And companies like Corrections Corporation of America specifically target small towns for their prison projects. As these companies profited, Cheney reaped the rewards of profit. And as immigration law was supposed to be one of Bush’s priorities in his first administration, this was put on the backburner and greed, political connections, and profit became the priority over the human rights of the detainees. Here are some examples:

Title: Private Prison Co. Again Accused of Human Rights Abuses [USA]
Author: Julia Dahl, ABC News [USA] Dated: 05 Aug 2008
Immigrants at a Washington State detention center run by the GEO Group...are being held in conditions that violate both international and U.S. law, says a new report released by the Seattle University School of Law and the human rights group OneAmerica. The report concludes that immigrants at the Northwest Detention Facility, including refugees and asylum seekers, are being held in "an atmosphere of intimidation" which includes verbal abuse, sexual harassment, strip searches, and poor to non-existent mental and physical health care.

Title: Immigrant Detainees Beaten, Lawsuit Claims [USA]
Author: Laura Strickler, CBS News [USA] Dated: 20 May 2008
A new lawsuit filed against a private contractor who runs an immigrant child detention center claims nine teenagers were beaten and abused by employees who work for Cornell Companies. The company has been cited by immigration officials for safety problems in the past…The plaintiffs claim they notified authorities of multiple beatings but no action was taken…A spokesperson for Cornell Companies…says the company strongly denies any abuse, “Every complaint has been investigated by the company as well as by the state…and none of these have ever found any evidence of anything that can back up the charges.”

And how does Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is connected to Cheney? Here is how:

In March 2003, President Bush appointed Michael J. Garcia as the Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). See White House website. Garcia is now the federal prosecutor with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.And Garcia was in charge of the federal investigation against the former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer in the Emperor VIP club prostitution probe. Spitzer was not charged in that probe. And the House committee will have an investigation in 2009 into Spitzer's probe. Garcia worked for ICE from 2003-2005.

Garcia was replaced with Julie L. Myers. Myers, a niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard B. Myers, served as Chertoff's chief of staff when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division. She rejoined Chertoff in 2006 and helped oversee ICE during the Bush administration's failed immigration overhaul push. Myers resigned from her position. She became a target of questioning by the Democrats in her position when Bush said that immigration law would be his priority i his first Administration. Myers had set records for three fiscal years in arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records and those violating administrative deportation orders.

Lastly, all roads lead back to Halliburton-Cheney connection to for-profit private prisons:


In January 24, 2006 Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) was awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps. According to Halliburton, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." Critics called that another remake blueprint of Gitmo camps. Read more on connections on Cheney-Halliburton.


Certainly these private prisons violated the 13th Amendment as we deal with currently with human trafficking, other conditions of forced labor, and inhumane rights of detainees in the U.S. and overseas. As much the media noted that nothing will come out of this indictment because Cheney is immune from criminal prosecution. But, that is not the case. According to the Memorandum for the United States Concerning the Vice President’s Claim of Constitutional Immunity, filed Oct. 5, 1973 by the Attorney General’s Office, a Vice President could be subject to indictment and criminal prosecution. In the Nixon Watergate scandal, this was the response to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s argument that both he and then President Richard Nixon were both immuned from criminal prosecution. Cheney didn't think that the Nixon Administration that he worked for and the Watergate probe would come back to haunt him.