Tax-free No-bid Cost-plus Government Contracts
by sarabeth at 5:59 am on June 16th, 2009 in Bush Man Date, Corruption, War on TerrorABC News brings us a couple of juicy tidbits about “the two psychologists credited for being the architects of the CIA’s brutal interrogation program after 9/11″:
Dr. James Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen, who suggested and supervised waterboarding at secret prisons around the world … according to their associates, boasted of being paid $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the technique on top al Qaeda suspects.
It’s bad enough that they made money from torture. But these lowlifes liked to boast about it!
One former military psychologist tells ABC News that Mitchell & Jessen charged the CIA roughly $500,000 a year for their services. It was this source’s understanding that the money was largely tax-free and did not include expenses, which the agency also paid for.
How the eff does that even work? The money was presumably paid to Mitchell & Jessen Associates, the consulting company Mitchell and Jessen created for purposes of aiding, abetting and presiding over torture. No-bid contracts weren’t enough of an abuse of power, so the Bush administration decided it was empowered to award tax-free contracts? (Or maybe they hired Mitchell & Jessen Associates as a subcontractor through the UN or the IMF?)
In any case, it looks like Mitchell & Jessen Associates hit the trifecta of government contracting: tax-free no-bid cost-plus contracts. Even Halliburton never had it so good.
matt wrote:
wouldn’t it be more likely that the source got it wrong and that the 500k was net after taxes?
i can’t really imagine the government being able to pay someone tax-free. they’d have to report it even if it came via the UN/IMF.
Posted 16 Jun 2009 at 11:44 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
we’ll find out, though I can’t imagine the reporters on the story not checking that basic fact with the source.
UN/IMF was a joke, of course. (Because UN/IMF employees do not pay taxes on their income.)
And I really don’t think that the administration that decided they had the power to kidnap, and torture, and shut people up for years and years without legal proceedings, would have stopped to ask itself: “hey, is it legal to make this $500k tax free?”
Why they did it is another matter. Maybe somebody bet somebody else $5 that they could do it and get away with it?
Posted 17 Jun 2009 at 3:55 am ¶
matt wrote:
>Maybe somebody bet somebody else $5 that they could do it and get away with it?
Trading Places?
Randal: How much do you want to bet?
Mortimer: The usual amount.
Randall: Why not?
Posted 17 Jun 2009 at 5:51 am ¶