Private contractor CACI has done very well in the post 9/11 world (including providing the guards who tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq).
Writer Andrew Cockburn highlights a company that represents the modern world of creating something out of nothing (unless you include maintaining and protecting the bogus “war on terror” as important):
The rise of CACI, a northern Virginia corporation serves as an instructive case study of the beneficiaries of today’s threat environment, in which a corporation can rise to great prosperity (with a headquarters building emblazoned with its titular acronym looming over I-66 on the approaches to Washington D.C.) without actually making anything at all. Its functions, as a close scrutiny of the CACI website reveals, being in the unexplained area of “analysis” and “support”—a pure example of “selling costs.” Originally intended by its founders to commercialize their SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language, the war on terror brought many fresh opportunities to CACI, including a contract to supply interrogators for the notorious Abu Ghraib jail. Though that service does not today appear in the list of employment opportunities on offer on the company’s website, there are no lack of listings for work subcontracted by the Joint IED Defeat Organization, which remains much beloved by the service bureaucracies and their corporate partners for its mandate to apportion funds without specific authorization.
The CACI website also helpfully lists the board of directors, complete with biographies, thereby furnishing a useful cameo of today’s military industrial complex. Topping the list of outside directors is Gordon England, best known for his service as Navy Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush Administration, in which capacity he adroitly avoided the odium incurred by Donald Rumsfeld and displayed a helpful solicitude for the interests of major contractors, ever ready to run interference with Congress on their behalf.12 That was hardly surprising, given England’s prior service with the General Dynamics, Lockheed, Litton and Honeywell Corporations.Another name that catches the eye is the retired and superbly well connected four star Admiral Gregory Johnson, who earned the trust of his peers not only as the commander of far-flung fleets, but also as senior military assistant to… Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Meanwhile, James L. Pavitt, formerly Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA, where, the biography informs us, he led the agency’s “operational response” to the 9/11 attacks, clearly makes a good fit on the board, as does retired four star army general William Wallace, who commanded a corps during the 2003 invasion of Iraq before ascending to the command of the army’s Combined Arms Center and ultimately the potent Training and Doctrine Command. Interestingly, Wallace’s CACI biography cites his role in developing the Future Combat Systems, a $160 billion baroque extravaganza infamous for monumental overruns and technical catastrophe and ultimately cancelled, but perhaps in such circles this is seen as a recommendation.
Also on the CACI board sits James Gilmore, former governor of Virginia, whose biography is larded with references to his experience in the bountiful area of homeland security. Dr. Warren Phillips, a former academic with a expertise in oil pipelines and armored vehicles, along with a lawyer and a graduate of the railroad and natural gas industry round off the roster of this truly twenty-first century defense company, with 2010 sales in excess of $3 billion.