Austin and “Homeland Security, Inc.”

When you stand in the center of Austin, Texas, on the southern shore of Town Lake and look across the water, you see the valuable riverfront property that lines Cesar Chavez Street. Two new buildings there blend with the look and feel of Austin. There is nothing unusual about this scene.

A closer look at these six-story stone facade structures reveals corporate logos in the upper corners—the initials C-S-C. For most who know what they stand for—Computer Science Corporation—CSC is just another high-tech Austin firm.

Nearly everyone in Austin who pays attention and reads the weekly Austin Chronicle will know that in 1999 the city of Austin struck a deal with CSC to encourage it to build downtown rather than out in the greenbelt. And many, whether they like it or not, are aware that city subsidies in its deal with CSC amount to at least $26 million.

Oddly, though, very few people know that CSC is a leading contractor with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The company has had DOD contracts for the AEGIS weapons system, weapons in space, and ballistic missiles. In 2000, when it occupied its new buildings in Austin, CSC was number 12 in the top 100 list of DOD contractors. Yet a search engine review of more than 200 articles in the Austin Chronicle that mention CSC finds no reference to this fact. And in a recent conversation, an aide to Austin’s Mayor Pro Tern said it never came up in discussions about the agreement with CSC.

This lack of awareness is about to change, largely because CSC has recently acquired DynCorp, a company deeply involved in military privatization. As reported by Jordan Green in Southern Exposure (Spring/Summer 2002), DynCorp has won contracts to support the U.S. “war on drugs” in Latin America, to service military aircraft in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and to help maintain the DOD’s stockpiles of anthrax and smallpox vaccine.

Along with its strong ties to the defense establishment, DynCorp brings to the merger considerable PR baggage. Most notoriously, DynCorp employees and supervisors have been linked to a child prostitution ring in Bosnia. The company is also the subject of a class action suit brought by farmers in Ecuador who claim that DynCorp’s defoliation missions—aimed at coca crops as part of U.S. anti-drug operations—destroyed their agricultural land.

While Austin city leaders and media may have missed the CSC-DOD connection, CSC’s merger with DynCorp has not escaped the notice of the national media. When CSC announced that it had filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission its intent to merge with DynCorp in December, 2002, Wired magazine published a long feature discussing the implications of the deal.

Wired noted that the combination of DynCorp’s work in iris and facial recognition technology with CSC’s computer technology put the new, fortified company in a good position to cash in on the current national security environment. Wired dubbed CSC “Homeland Security, Inc.”

Washington Technology called the merger a “perfect match” and reported that CSC, by combining its assets and government contracts with DynCorp, will be a top-10 defense contractor.

But the kicker is that DynCorp, and hence CSC once the merger is finalized by a vote of DynCorp shareholders, was also involved in the U.S. build-up for war with Iraq.

In May, 2000, DynCorp Technical Services, based in Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded a $180 million 7-year DOD contract for work on the Air Force’s Prepositioned War Reserves in the Middle East, according to DynCorp’s web site.

For the U.S. Air Force’s Prepositioned War Reserve Materiel (WRM) program, DynCorp Technical Services has provided “support to bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment, and associated spares and other consumables at designated locations,” also according to DynCorp’s web site.

These designated locations are five U.S. air bases in the region: in Qatar, at the Al Udeid Air Base; in Oman, at Seeb International Airport, Thumrait Air Base, and the island of Masirah; and in Manama, Bahrain.

Most notable is Al Udeid in Qatar, which has served as an important center of U.S. operations against Iraq, especially for the air war. In August, 2002, ABC News reported on commercial satellite images of the Al Udeid base showing that a “state-of-the-art airfield” had been built. Wire services in February, 2003, reported that a number of F-l 17A stealth bombers had been deployed from the United States to Al-Udeid.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the F-117A stealth fighter was used very heavily during the first days of Desert Storm (January-February 1991). The F-117A, which normally “packs a payload of two 2,000-pound GBU-27 laser-guided bombs, destroyed and crippled Iraqi electrical power stations, military headquarters, communications sites, air defense operation centers, airfields, ammo bunkers, and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons plants.”

Not only does DynCorp Technical Services have a contract for munitions and re-fueling support at Al-Udeid, DynCorp itself is involved in F-117A pilot training with the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base in N.M., according to a web site devoted to the F-117A program.

Ironically, perhaps, Austin became one of the first Southern cities to pass a resolution against Bush’s plans to launch a preemptive and unilateral attack on Iraq. Yet now it faces an interesting moral quandary in that it will have long-term contracts with a company engaged in and benefiting financially from Bush’s war on Iraq, and more broadly the administration’s war on terror. A new City Hall is being built directly between the two new CSC buildings. CSC is on city land.

The U.S. War Machine: Made in Texas

This story about CSC and Dyncorp is Just the tip of the iceberg. As Southern Exposure has documented in detail (see Spring/Summer, 2002), Texas is full of weapons contractors. Of the top 100 DOD contractors, 10 are based in Texas and an additional 50 do business in the state. The Joint Strike Fighter contract is being served by Fort Worth’s Lockheed Martin division and Dallas’ Northrop Grumman division. But scores of lesser known DOD projects are scattered throughout Texas, many involving computers and information systems technology. For example, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) out of Plano has a $6.9 billion contract to develop an Intranet for the Navy. And Dell, based in Austin, has a number of contracts supplying various branches of the military with laptops and other computer hardware.

The Made In Texas campaign seeks to draw attention to how Texas corporations and institutions are benefiting from defense contracts in this new war-on-terrorism economy, and how other sectors of the economy are ailing because of it. A Showdown In Texas is planned for May 3, 2003 in Austin, where people from around the state and the nation will gather to demonstrate against Bush’s war on terror and to show the world that even in the heart of Texas there is opposition.

—Stefan Wray