Center of Public Integrity: Iraq and Afghanistan war profiteer contractors.

Blogger Jackie brought up about Senator Feinstein conflict of interest from benefiting for husband's firm in gov't contracts in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I decided to examine Feinstein's husband firm.

Chairman and CEO Ronald Tutor and billionaire investor Richard Blum [Feinstein's husband], who together own investment groups that hold 75 percent of Perini's voting stock, control the company.

Reported in Metroactive, an online report from the Silicon Valley, Feinstein's resigned followed six years of subcommittee work during which time her alleged conflict of interest stemmed from her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of Perini Corp. and URS Corp. Feinstein had quit the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee after a report linked her votes to her husband's companies, which received billions of dollars worth of military construction contracts in which she approved.

The Center of Public Integrity did a six month investigation into the Iraq and Afghanistan contractors. Feinstein's husband firm was one of them.

Center of Public Integrity website:

The Center for Public Integrity’s six-month investigation produced the most comprehensive information to date about the American companies that landed U.S. taxpayer contracts in the two nations targeted in Washington’s war on terror. More than 70 American companies and individuals won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003.

These companies contributed more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush — more than $500,000 — than to any other politician over the last dozen years.

There is more. There were other contractors on the list that benefitted from both wars which some of the companies are or were currently under investigation:

MZM Inc. [which was owned by Mitchell Wade who had been convicted in the bribery scandal with Duke Cunningham]

Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton)

CACI International Inc.

Blackwater Security Consulting L.L.C.

Click to see the rest of the Iraq and Afghanistan contractors.

Insider Information on Feinstein:

The tale thickens with the appearance of Michael R. Klein, a top legal adviser to Feinstein and a long-time business partner of Blum's. The vice-chairman of Perini's board of directors, Klein was a partner in Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, a powerful law firm with close ties to the Democratic Party, for nearly 30 years. Klein and Blum co-own ASTAR Air Cargo, which has military contracts in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Klein also sits on the board of SRA International, a large defense contractor.

In an interview with this reporter 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 startling admission was intended to defuse the issue of Feinstein's conflict of interest, it had the effect of exacerbating it.

Klein said that he regularly gave Feinstein's chief of staff, Mark Kadesh, lists of Perini's current and upcoming contractual interests in federal legislation, so that the senator would not discuss, debate, vote on or participate in matters that could affect projects in which Perini was concerned. "Earmarks, you know, set asides, you name it, there was a system in place which on a regular basis I got notified, I notified her office and her office notified her," Klein said.

"We basically identified any bid that Perini was going for and checked to see whether it was the subject of already appropriated funds or funds yet to be appropriated, and if it was anything that the senator could not act on, her office was alerted and she did not act on it."

Read more on Feinstein's of questionable intersections between Feinstein's legislative duties and her financial interests and her personal finance profiles. Click here. and here.