The funds secured by Arcuri are included in the fiscal year 2008 Defense Appropriations bill, which was approved by the House Appropriations Committee last week and is expected to be considered by the House later this week.
$1.9 million for the Cyber Attack Mitigation and Exploitation Laboratory (CAMEL) Program, which will be conducted by CACI, located in Rome, through Rome Lab. The CAMEL program will provide Research and Development that will help protect Air Force operations in Cyberspace. Tools resulting from this research will be used to protect both military and national critical infrastructure from attack and exploitation by potential adversaries including nation states, cyber criminals and international terrorists. During the course of the research, samples of malicious software will be forensically analyzed to determine intent and points of origin.
Considering Mr. Arcuri's personal involvement in the Franco assault incident, and his strident opposition to the Iraq War, it's more than curious that he would secure close to two million dollars for a no-bid contract to a company implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal by Amnesty International. (PDF link)
Amnesty International condemns the abuses allegedly committed by U.S. agents
in the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq as torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. AI
has documented a pattern of abuses by U.S. agents against detainees in this and other
facilities and we feel that those responsible for abuses should be brought to justice in
accordance with U.S. obligations under international and domestic law. Your company
has performed services contracts with the U.S. military that have led to public allegations
of complicity in abuses against detainees by some of your employees. We hope and
expect that CACI will support and facilitate public investigations and help bring persons
found responsible to justice.
We would like to ask if CACI has a human rights policy, and if it does to tell us
about it. Under international law, all corporations have obligations to uphold, respect and
protect fundamental human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
calls upon every individual and every organ of society, which includes companies and
business operations in general, to promote and protect human rights and to strive "to
secure their universal and effective recognition and observance."
Obviously, as they say on Court Street, "Business is business".
