"There does exist...an international Anglophile network...In fact, this network...has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know...because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years...to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and many of its instruments...In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."
Bill Clinton's mentor Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor at Georgetown University
HIGHWAY CORRUPTION FROM CALIFORNIA TO SOUTH CAROLINA
Previously, I detailed how I found that certain international construction companies were getting large highway contracts in California and other states (e.g. Pat Stricklin, president of Flatiron, an HBG subsidiary) using inferior foreign steel, and the complicity of the Clinton administration in funding these projects through SIBs, etc. There were ties from this network to the fraudulent construction of the Denver International Airport, which was also managed by Stricklin. I then wondered what type of evidence for highway fraud existed in these other states. Since my resources were limited, I felt that if I could find more evidence of questionable activities by these international companies on the east coast, then it would be a reasonable assumption that this was occurring throughout America. I felt that Pat Stricklin's track record of his construction of the fraud-ridden DIA was a hot lead, and noticed that he was in charge of construction of the Carolina Bays Parkway in South Carolina, which was a large project his company was constructing there (and after my investigation began his company "coincidentally" also received a $631 million contract to construct the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western hemisphere, to be built across Charleston Harbor, S.C.). So I turned my attention to S.C., Stricklin and Flatiron. Little did I know at the time that I would strike paydirt there.
It turned out that some other questionable activities were occurring besides what I originally intended to investigate, which requires me to set the stage. S.C. reminded me of Arkansas: a small, corrupt, historically Democrat, southern state. Not meaning to appear biased, but virtually all the corruption I found in California and S.C. had the word "DEMOCRAT" emblazoned upon it, which explains why most of it occurred while Clinton was in office. The only difference between S.C. and Arkansas is that there seemed to be fewer political murders in S.C., unlike all the people Clinton had "arkancided."
The corrupt design/build process had invaded S.C. just like the rest of the country, but evidently even the contracts they bid out were corrupt. It seems they have a peculiar way of bidding down there (I am not making this up). According to a legislative audit (The State, 12/19/01), until the practice was recently publicly exposed, the S.C. Department of Transportation (SCDOT) rented rooms in a hotel in the state capital, where the bidding contractors stayed the night before the bids were due. This allowed the opportunity for (state-sponsored) collusion to occur. But maybe that didn't happen often, because between 1995 and 2000 half of the advertised jobs had two or less bidders. According to the news article, SCDOT never used the $246,000 worth of software they leased to detect unusual bidding patterns, but why bother if only one or two companies bid? In fact, in some of the counties (such as Horry, see below), only two companies did 95% of the road paving. The results of this legislative audit were forwarded in six different letters to the U.S. Justice Department, who refused to comment on the situation (The State, 9/29/02).
This is not the first dark cloud that has hovered over SCDOT. According to The State (9/29/02), in the '80s executives of at least ten companies were convicted of bid rigging on highway projects.
My immediate interest, however, was HBG's Carolina Bays Parkway in the Myrtle Beach area, one of the most popular tourist destinations in America. Located in Horry county, this is largely a rural tobacco-farming county currently undergoing tremendous development and highway construction because of Myrtle Beach. I was interested to find out, in light of the events of September 11, that Myrtle Beach has a significant middle eastern population which has substantially increased their presence and "investments" in the area in recent years. Recall also that Osama bin Laden's family owns a construction firm in Saudi Arabia. The Kuwaitis have substantial business interests in S.C., and also own part of Kiawah Island south of Charleston. Some of the most famous tourist attractions in Myrtle Beach are actually owned by Arabs who don't dare show their face on the premises, allowing their front men to operate the facilities. In addition, organized crime appears to have a strong influence there, having established offshore gambling boats in the Myrtle Beach area (see below).
CONWAY BYPASS
S.C. Violated Their Own Procurement Laws to Give $386 Million Contract to Clinton/Gore Supporter
But the Carolina Bays Parkway was not the first major highway being built in the area. Another was the Conway Bypass, a $386 million project almost 30 miles in length. The background on that road was very interesting. It seemed to have come to fruition primarily when Gov. David Beasley was in office. Beasley was a Democrat (from a Democratic area near Myrtle Beach) who switched to the Republican Party, apparently as many other politicians have nationwide because they smelled the winds of change as the nation becomes more conservative. But S.C. appears to still have a strong Democratic base (their next governor was a Democrat, Jim Hodges, who defeated Beasley).
The Conway Bypass was the first project in S.C. constructed using the design/build method, in which a state commission chose the firm to do the work. The design/build method is a violation of S.C. procurement law. A former highway contractor, Ed Sloan, has sued SCDOT for violating this law on the issuance of several highway contracts worth about $1 billion. Section 57-5-1620 of the S.C. Code of Laws (see http://www.scstatehouse.net) reads: "Awards by the department of construction contracts for ten thousand dollars and more shall be made only after the work to be awarded has been advertised...Awards of contracts, if made, shall be made in each case to the lowest qualified bidder..." Not surprisingly, all of his cases were first thrown out by state judges, and appeals are pending.
But it turns out that the lowest bid proposal for the Conway Bypass was rejected and instead Fluor-Daniel was selected. The contractor that had the lowest bid sued the state for rejecting his bid. Incredibly, his case was thrown out of court when the state judge declared that he had no standing. Originally funding for the highway was supposed to come from a sales tax increase, which voters rejected, and now that the road is built, it does not have much traffic (Sun News, 6/6/02). So even though local citizens knew the road was unnecessary, the politicians managed to finagle funds to provide a contract to Fluor Daniel. And it's not hard to connect the dots when you look at Fluor's background.
Some of you may recall the coal mining disaster in Kentucky in October of 2000, when the A.T. Massey Coal Company spilled 250 million gallons of toxic waste. It turns out that A.T. Massey is owned by the Fluor Corporation, which owns Fluor Daniel. Fluor also got the $5 billion contract for the Hanford nuclear power station in August 1996, two months after Fluor and its PAC gave $100,000 to the Clinton/Gore campaign (Fluor then selected the government-front DynCorp for their $565 million Hanford administrative contract). Shortly before that Fluor had given them $103,000. Some Department of Energy officials said Fluor should never have gotten the contract because of their previous shoddy work history, having over 1,000 violations at the Fernald nuclear facility in Ohio. In 1997, Fluor almost caused America's Chernobyl disaster when a chemical tank exploded within 20 yards of ten tons of plutonium.
Then later, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, dated May 7, 2001:
"Fluor Daniel, Inc., one of the nation's largest engineering and construction companies, has agreed to pay the United States $8.2 million to settle a 'whistleblower' lawsuit that accused it of improperly charging commercial overhead costs to federal contracts, United States Attorney John S. Gordon announced today.
"The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed in 1997 under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act...
"Patrick C. Hoefer, Fluor Daniel's former director of Government Financial Compliance, filed the whistleblower lawsuit, accusing Fluor Daniel of 'knowingly and deliberately' submitting millions of dollars in false invoices to the Government during Fluor Daniel's 1995 and 1996 fiscal years.
"The Government...took over prosecution...in 1999. In settling the lawsuit, Fluor Daniel...denies any wrongdoing."
It's pretty obvious that Fluor was allowed to buy their way out of that one. But in light of all the above, the natural question arises, should a company with such a track record be selected to construct a multi-million dollar highway, much less manage a nuclear facility? It turns out there is good reason to question the quality of Fluor's highway construction. The following description of the Conway Bypass comes right from a Fluor subcontractor's website:
"The 28.5 mile roadway project contains sixteen flat slab bridges ranging in length from 120 feet to 3,980 feet...This is the first application in South Carolina of a flat slab system using pre-cast components that are post-tensioned in the field and then overlayed with a concrete riding surface...The design of the pre-cast flat slab bridges...provided rapid constructability, [and] economical cost...[T]he pre-casting of all major structural components for the construction of an SCDOT flat slab bridge has never been attempted."
There is a reason why SCDOT has never attempted this-their official policy is to only use them for lengths less than 50' under extenuating circumstances, because this type of bridge is unsafe. They are quicker to use and can be cheaper in certain situations, which explains why Fluor Daniel used them. At best, the Conway Bypass is a $386 million taxpayer-funded experiment. There was one case in England where a post-tensioned bridge suddenly collapsed in 1985, and Britain soon banned the construction of post-tensioned bridges in 1998. I should also point out that T.Y. Lin is the "father of pre-stressed concrete" which includes this type of bridge construction. I will discuss these types of bridges in more detail in the next part on steel and concrete.
Beyond the fact that this bridge technique is unsafe under most circumstances, initially it seems hard to believe that the state of S.C. would allow the use of an unsafe construction technique that violated their own highway construction policy.
Conway Bypass Develops a "Sinkhole"
As confirmation that Fluor Daniel built a substandard roadway, consistent with their track record of shoddy work, The State (3/29/02) reported that a 10' deep "sinkhole" suddenly appeared in the Conway Bypass. According to a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, sinkholes are extremely rare in S.C. and the problem was likely attributable to poor backfill. The Fluor Daniel project manager said the cause was geological and wondered "if similar sink holes (sic) may lurk elsewhere." (Trying to psychologically prepare the public to expect more? Why none on any other highways? And how do sinkholes confine themselves to the limits of a highway?) The road had only been open for 11 months, and miraculously, no vacationing motorists were killed or injured.
Peter Knight Lobbies for Fluor, Other Clinton Contributors
But understanding the Democratic Clinton/Gore/Fluor connections clarifies how Fluor got the contract. Peter Knight is a close advisor and former campaign manager of Al Gore, who has been accused of using his inside contact with the Clinton administration to get lucrative contracts for associates. He helped Fluor get the aforementioned Hanford contract. He also lobbied for Lockheed Martin, a member of the Fluor team that also donated $100,000 to the Democrats just before winning the contract. In September 1997, a Senate committee investigated this contract. The committee also specifically requested all documents related to "any meetings or communications regarding political fund-raising or contributions" since 1993 between Energy Department officials and White House and Democratic Party leaders, including: Harold Ickes, Bruce Lindsey, Don Fowler (former head of DNC), Marvin Rosen and Richard Sullivan.
In November 1997, a House Commerce subcommittee held hearings on Molten Metal Technology, a Massachusetts firm represented by lobbyist Knight, who made many campaign contributions to the Democrats prior to being awarded lucrative contracts from Clinton's Dept. of Energy.
Knight also received $1 million from Tennessee developer Franklin Haney just before becoming Clinton's campaign manager. Haney also contributed $280,000 to the Democrats. The FCC then moved to Haney's controversial office building development in Washington, D.C.
As a result of the investigation, Haney was indicted on 42 counts of illegal campaign contributions. However, the Justice Dept. cleared Knight of any wrongdoing. Janet Reno said there was "no basis to commence a preliminary investigation into allegations against Peter Knight."
Former DNC Chairman Fowler Has Links to China, SCDOT
Don Fowler, former head of the Democratic National Committee and native of S.C., was investigated for taking illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese for Clinton's election. He was never punished.
In 1995, Fowler arranged for Johnny Chung and COSCO (China Ocean Shipping Company) to attend a Clinton radio address, after which they made a $50,000 DNC contribution. White House insider Mark Middleton set up meetings for President Clinton, Hillary and Fowler to meet with the wealthy Widjaja family of Indonesia.
In a House investigation, Representative Dan Burton asked John Huang if Don Fowler knew that contributions were being collected from such foreigners. Huang twice responded that Fowler was aware of this illegality.
In 1997 the CIA Inspector-General investigated Fowler's contacting the CIA to obtain a favorable report on a Clinton contributor, Roger Tamraz, who wanted a Caspian oil pipeline. Fowler denied doing so, though National Security Council witnesses confirmed he did so. In 1995, Tamraz donated $300,000 to the DNC. He asked Fowler to contact the CIA. Two weeks later, Tamraz donated $75,000 to the Va. Democratic Party, whereupon Fowler called the CIA that day, and again in December.
Fowler quit the DNC job and became a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and professor of political science at the University of S.C. In 1997 Senate investigators presented evidence that Fowler repeatedly lobbied federal agencies for major Democratic contributors. He contacted such agencies as the Dept. of Interior, Energy, CIA, and others on behalf of former contributors. Elizabeth Mabry, Executive Director of SCDOT, took selected SCDOT employees on political junkets to Washington, D.C., where they were escorted around town by Fowler.
S.C. Gov. Hodges Appoints Fluor Daniel Subcontractor's Inlaw to Head SCDOT
In a continuation of this Democratic corruption, after Democratic Governor Jim Hodges took office, he appointed a Democrat named Morgan Martin as chief commissioner to SCDOT. Martin was a former state representative from the Myrtle Beach area. Martin's father-in-law owned an earth-moving company named A.O. Hardee & Sons in Little River, near Myrtle Beach. Prior to his appointment, Fluor Daniel had already given A.O. Hardee & Sons the multi-million dollar earthwork contract on the Conway Bypass. So when Hodges appointed Martin, there was already a serious ethical violation. But after Martin became chief highway commissioner, SCDOT selected HBG as the contractor to design and build the $230 million Carolina Bays Parkway. And then, HBG turned around and gave the earth-moving contract to Chief Commissioner Martin's father-in-law, A.O. Hardee!
Further displaying this blatant corrupt behavior, this year Hodges publicly advertised the fact that he spent two weeks for free at SCDOT Commissioner Martin's beach house on vacation (The State, 7/11/02). Hodges purposely chose this vacation spot to endorse Myrtle Beach's tourism industry, controlled largely by Muslim and organized crime interests and used for their money laundering, terrorist funding, etc., along with their local terrorist training activities. (More on this shortly.)
This is a perfect example epitomizing the extent of this cancerous highway fraud, persistent throughout the country and reaching from the Olympians in Europe right down to America's state legislatures, governorships and agencies. When the Democratic President of the U.S. receives campaign support from foreign sources, then pushes fraudulent contract selection and funding procedures (even in violation of state procurement laws), which leads to U.S. taxpayers paying international construction firms billions to sabotage our own highway system, while Democratic governors appoint Democratic contractors' family members to decision-making positions, and said families are in turn rewarded by the foreign firms with lucrative subcontracts-well, this treachery couldn't be spelled out any plainer.
Building 27 Years Worth of Roads in 7 Years (Or Making Political Hay While the Sun Shines)
Since I just mentioned Fluor Daniel, I'll briefly explain another contract they received from SCDOT. On SCDOT's webpage is a report detailing how their agency is planning to build 27 years worth of road in 7 years. This would seem to be a blatant case of politicians and their contractor friends trying to make money while in office. Some of the money for consultants went to the usual suspects, among them Fluor Daniel (surprise!). According to the SCDOT website document, "Innovative financing is how South Carolina overcame a last-place position for federal funds to launch an unprecedented $5 billion worth of road construction...Expecting to complete 200 construction projects in seven years...SCDOT selected the assistance of Construction and Resource Managers, or CRMs...After a detailed evaluation process, the SCDOT commission voted to ask the staff to negotiate a contract with two firms Fluor Daniel, headquartered in Greenville, and Parsons Brinckerhoff with LPA, headquartered in New York...[Note: PB is well-connected-they worked on Cheyenne Mtn.-JS] The contract signed in July 1999 by SCDOT calls for each CRM to assist SCDOT in more than $760 million worth of road and bridge work...It's the first of this type of public-private partnership on this large of a scale in the United States. The FHWA has worked closely with SCDOT to administer this partnership and a number of other innovative financing programs...Because of SCDOT's innovative financing successes, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation chose South Carolina as one of a handful of state infrastructure bank programs in the country. South Carolina has led the nation in use of its own State Infrastructure Bank (SIB)...This program takes advantage of federal laws that allow future federal highway funds to be leveraged through the issuance of bonds to build current highway system improvements. Eight of 10 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) have partnered with SCDOT in this financing program to accelerate projects in these urban areas."
Recall again after reading the above, that the MPOs was a plan invented and pushed by the UN and Prince Charles to bypass state and federal governments, as was previously discussed (Veon, 1998). This was to give direct control over local government to the UN.
THE SOUTHERN CONNECTOR
I will save the Carolina Bays Parkway for last, because that trail leads elsewhere, but for now will discuss another fraudulent highway in S.C. which is a perfect copy of what happened in California: the Southern Connector located in Greenville. The Southern Connector was a road project of dubious necessity. It was implemented as a design/build toll road, and since it was only a few miles shorter than the current free route, it was doomed to failure from lack of use. Now, after completion, there are hardly any drivers on the roadway and one of the partners, Wilbur Smith Associates, fears bankruptcy. The project, estimated to cost $237 million, was underwritten by Lehman Brothers and Mesirow Financial of Chicago. Federal funds contributed 33% to the project. The contract was awarded to DLR Group of Nebraska, one of the largest construction firms in the country. Nebraska is a state heavily infiltrated by organized crime and any major company from there should be viewed with suspicion (for more on this, read "The Franklin Cover-up" by lawyer John Decamp).
DLR Group was started by Irv Dana, Bill Larson and Jim Roubal in 1966, hence the name. One of their specialties is "leaseback financing" (LBF). Quoting from the webpage: "LBF is of particular interest to municipalities and has emerged as a significant form of municipal financing since 1960...because properly structured LBF can be tax-exempt and avoid the constitutional and statutory limitations on the issuance of public debt."
DLR has built a number of prisons, educational, health care and sports facilities, etc. across the country. Interestingly, they built the Peter Kiewit Institute of Information Science, Technology and Engineering at the University of Nebraska. Recall that Kiewit is the largest North American contractor who got the $780 million San Joaquin Hills Toll Road.
As an indication of the philosophical outlook of one of the founders, Irving Dana, (and perhaps that of DLR itself), he belongs to the Presbyterian Church of the Cross (USA). The Presbyterian USA is the liberal branch of the Presbyterian Church that believes homosexuality should be accepted as normal, allows women as preachers, etc. Dana's wife was an elder and deacon at the Church of the Cross and Irving Dana provided the architectural design for part of their church. Eight panels were designed for the church narthex by a woman who describes some of the New Age panels: "The stars lighting the darkness of the heavens at night is a symbol of Divine guidance and favor and with the planets are symbolic of the space age setting of this Confession. The features I've used to tie the design together are the earth, rocks and clouds. The earth, which produces plants and trees and furnishes a habitation for man is a symbol for the Church which feeds man with spiritual faith and offers him shelter." This just gives a glimpse into what I believe is the New Age philosophical outlook of the company.
DLR gave the management of the Southern Connector to Infrastructure Solutions Incorporated (ISI), whose president was Richard L. Carr of Arizona. Carr had a management team that included two former SCDOT engineers who were found guilty of taking payoffs from a contractor during their employ at SCDOT, and that contractor was also hired for the Southern Connector (Phoenix New Times, 4/10/97). It just so happens that a retired FBI agent lived on the project outside of Greenville and had some FBI buddies back in Arizona who knew of Carr's reputation as a fraud, since the FBI was investigating Carr there. This FBI agent gave his information to Forbes magazine, which wrote a critical article on Carr. Let me quote from Forbes (7/7/97), which is a long excerpt but a perfect example of how most of these projects are developed [emphasis mine]:
"To politicians, there are few phrases more hip than 'public-private partnership.' You know: business and government working together for the common good. The free market and caring pols hand in hand.
"Phoenix, Ariz. civil engineer Richard Carr, 59, smelled money in that slogan.
"Come with us to the municipality of Apache Junction, Ariz...This scenic spot is a winter haven for 45,000 snowbirds..
"All those winter visitors strain the town's sewage facilities...That was okay with most of the residents, who twice voted down proposals to construct a sewage system. These modest-income folk had no wish to pay higher taxes.
"Then Richard Carr came to town extolling public-private partnerships. Carr had a dubious past. His prior construction management company was liquidated, and Carr declared personal bankruptcy in 1990. Another sewage project in Quartzite, Ariz. ended in a legal mess after Carr was fired.
"Nevertheless, in 1992, Carr talked Apache Junction's elders into creating a not-for-profit municipal district...[that] could issue tax-exempt bonds to finance the treatment plant, to be repaid by user fees. Taxes would not be raised and a referendum would not be needed...
"Carr's company, Interwest Management, organized the whole deal: doing feasibility studies,...lining up bond underwriters-Chicago-based Mesirow Financial.
"In late 1994 and in 1995 Mesirow sold $32 million in 20-year tax-free bonds...Allstate Insurance bought both issues and is now suing.
"One of Carr's project managers was a convicted felon who, according to a complaint filed by Allstate, had served time for an attempted bombing in an insurance fraud. He was also allegedly involved in bid-rigging in the Apache Junction deal. During the second half of 1996 the sewage plant had losses of $1.2 million, and, in January 1997, the district filed for bankruptcy.
According to the lawsuit, the feasibility study done by Carr's company grossly overstated the number of Apache Junction residents who would sign up for sewage connection. The system needed at least...1.2 million gallons of sewage...However, only a fraction had signed up...A new feasibility study...estimates less than 1 million gallons after ten years.
"Busted, the public-private authority is trying to get Allstate to take a 50% haircut on the $32 million in principal of the bonds.
"Richard Carr has an explanation for all his failures. He says Apache Junction is the victim of poor marketing by the district. Still, his company drew $1.5 million in project management fees from the sewage plant. The underwriter, Mesirow, got $900,000 in fees.
"While Apache Junction and Allstate nurse their wounds, Richard Carr has moved on. He is now pushing yet another public-private project, this one a 16-mile, four lane toll highway in Greenville, S.C...
"This, too, was a deal that developers coveted, but local voters appear to be against it. In early 1995 Carr set up a limited-liability company, Interwest Carolina Transportation Group, to do the deal. Carr's group includes a local feasibility firm, Wilbur Smith Associates. This time the financing amount is close to $200 million, and Lehman Brothers will assist Mesirow.
"When the toll road came up for bid, two experienced highway construction management companies, Fluor Daniel and Perini, Harbert-Yeargin, using Smith's figures from a 1994 study to formulate their bids, lost out to Carr's group, which has never built a toll road. How did Carr's Interwest win the contract? By projecting traffic and toll revenues 50% higher than in the original study made by Smith, now on Carr's project team.
"Lehman and Mesirow plan to sell the bonds this summer. If the fees are anything like Apache Junction's, Carr's outfit stands to make nearly $10 million in management fees.
"Will the toll road go the way of the sewage treatment plant? 'This is a very rural area, an area where moonshine cut its teeth,' says local resident George Price. 'I don't think people are going to want to pay the tolls.'
"Carr has also set his sights on even bigger game. The Clinton Administration has set up a program of State Infrastructure Banks to help finance highways and other such projects. The program, using federal seed money, is supposed to encourage innovative financing. Right on Carr's turf."
Just in case there's any doubt about the veracity of this article from the prestigious Forbes magazine, Carr sued Forbes for libel after its publication and lost. And just think, none of this would have become public if a retired FBI agent hadn't been affected by the project. How many other times does similar fraud occur which we never hear about?
You might wonder, just how does Carr make his money? The Phoenix New Times (4/10/97) said:
"Still, if Carr can reel in just one toll-road project, he stands to make a lot of money, regardless of that road's viability. Carr would get a good chunk of his money up-front, simply for putting the deal together. And with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, what may seem like a modest percentage...could be a bonanza.
"'That's where the scam can come in,' warns C. Richard Lehmann, who tracks bond defaults for the Bond Investors Association, a nonprofit industry watchdog group based in Miami, Florida.
"Lehmann says Carr's method--creating a special district to issue bonds--has proved a recipe for disaster in the past.
"'You set these things up, and no one's left minding the store,' Lehmann says. 'And since there's no equity, the bondholders take the loss.'"
In a refrain heard across the country, another way money is made on such projects is when developers buy property around the road ahead of time. Dave Wettland, leader of a citizen's group against the Southern Connector, said in the Phoenix New Times (4/10/97) that he got involved when "I looked at the road and saw who was gonna benefit from it, and I realized this wasn't for the people at all, like they said it was and it made me mad. It's a developer's driveway, plain and simple. If the road goes through, all those developers who bought land out there in the middle of nowhere in anticipation of this are gonna suddenly find themselves holding onto...prime industrial land."
In addition to the fraud involved with forging traffic projections, there is also the question of the quality of construction. From another article in the Phoenix New Times (6/5/97, emphasis mine):
"The sewer imbroglio in Apache Junction was the latest chapter in Interwest's dubious string of 'public-private' partnerships.
"Over the past several years, Carr has scrambled to land development deals with municipalities throughout Arizona and across the nation.
"In addition to Apache Junction, Carr also tried to set up a sewage system in Quartzite. Officials there nixed the deal after accusing Carr of trying to line his pockets at the town's expense.
"Carr also pitched a privatized prison in Douglas several years ago, but city leaders balked after the Cochise County jail he helped build in nearby Bisbee was found to have construction defects. The walls lacked rebar, and several prisoners escaped by simply scraping mortar from between the blocks."
Regardless of the state or the company, the pattern of fraud with these public projects emerges: create false traffic or usage estimates, get a bunch of greedy local politicians lusting after federal funds and municipal bond money, get a fraudulent company to charge a sizeable fortune building the project, while bond companies charge outrageous fees underwriting the useless project. In the end when the project fails, since it is a public project, it is likely that the government will end up bailing out the bankrupt parties. It is sort of like the S&L scandals of the eighties.
[The above was written from 2-5 years ago. As this is being posted on the Internet, it is now reported that toll revenues for the Southern Connector are 66% short of projections and Wall Street banksters want taxpayers to ensure that there will be no default on their investment (see http://www.greenvilleonline.com/news/2002/11/02/2002110230979.htm.)]
BALFOUR BEATTY GETS CONTRACT FOR ROUTE 170 PROJECT IN SPITE OF FBI INVESTIGATION
You may recall that the British construction firm Balfour Beatty (BB) received sizeable contracts in California and used inferior Chinese steel. Yet it has a very shady history of shoddy construction across the world with possible ties to Muslim terrorism. This international construction firm also received a large highway project in S.C., the $170 million Route 170 widening. SCDOT gave BB the contract while they were under the aforementioned FBI investigation for inferior Amtrak construction in Connecticut, and while barred from doing business in Pennsylvania. Again, this project was not even bid out but was awarded illegally, in violation of S.C. procurement law. Former contractor Ed Sloan is suing SCDOT for this illegal behavior.
In light of the American publicity, SCDOT Chief Commissioner Morgan Martin said that his agency would review whether or not to award the SC 170 contract to BB. He said the final decision would be made by director Elizabeth Mabry. In spite of the above public information on the Internet detailing the BB federal investigation in Connecticut, and their horrendous record in the international construction field, in the August 1, 2000 ezine Lowcountry Now, Mabry said she was still in negotiations with BB and had not reached a decision yet to them drop them because "[W]e don't know the specifics of that investigation and whether it involved the Balfour Beatty contract." Finally on September 28, 2000 Mabry and SCDOT signed a contract with BB for the project, which was $14 million above the original bid because a bridge was lengthened. Again, I can only speculate why state transportation agencies such as in California and S.C. would hire a company that was prosecuted for inferior construction, investigated for alleged bribery of government officials, and was banned by Pennsylvania and Singapore.
HBG GETS CONTRACT FOR CAROLINA BAYS PARKWAY
An anonymous source said questionable construction practices were being used on the Carolina Bays Parkway. He also spoke of the middle eastern connections of some of HBG's subcontractors. His report turned out to be true when eight defective concrete girders had to be replaced (see below).
International Real Estate Companies/HBG Partners Profit from Highway
The Carolina Bays Parkway was designed as a controlled access route to alleviate (legitimate) public objections that the project was being promoted for real estate development of the surrounding area (to enrich the pockets of Muslims/organized crime-see below). However, after construction began, the project was modified to allow certain property owners to have their own interchange, which provided proof of the true motivation for the highway.
It was difficult to obtain basic information concerning this highway, which should have been readily available to the public. For example the public notice for the project issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers omitted the property owners' names from plans, making it impossible for the public to see who would profit from the roadway. However, this information was obtained through special request, which proved to be highly enlightening. Such information restriction is not uncommon since organized crime controls so much of highway planning/construction and wants to inhibit public citizen/grassroot efforts to halt its corrupt development plans. This pattern has been observed in other states nationwide.
It was determined that some of the property owners who stood to profit from the roadway modifications, besides, the project in general, were front companies for a major international real estate company, Trammell Crow. This company was started after its namesake, Trammell Crow, returned from WWII and invested in real estate. Crow eventually developed the largest real estate company in America and became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Crow's headquarters are in Dallas, where he built the Dallas World Trade Center.
One of the international branches of Trammell Crow is TCN Property Projects, formerly Trammell Crow Nederlands, with offices in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, and projects throughout Europe. According to the TCN website, they work in partnership with HBG. And TCN built the Netherlands National Congress at the Hague. According to TCN, ex-president Clinton has spoken there.
On April 25, 2000 Trammell Crow joined forces with Jones Lang Lasalle in London and Chicago and CB Richard Ellis of Los Angeles to form an alliance for e-business intiatives. The latter is the world's largest real estate company.
Also interestingly, according to the Crow Family Holdings website, one of their investment funds bought 50% of an island in Charleston from the Guggenheim family, which is affiliated with the Committee of 300. Another point worth noting is that one of their European websites lists a paper entitled "On Change and Flux: Ancient Greeks and the New World Order."
An examination of Trammell Crow's campaign donations reveals that, while they gave more to Republicans than Democrats, they gave significant campaign contributions to the latter as well, such as the DNC, Jay Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers and other high-ranking Democrats. Interestingly, Mr. Trammell Crow himself gave money to the Log Cabin Republicans, who support homosexuality. This just further proves that there is no such thing as party distinctions and that America has become a corporate dictatorship.
It's a Small World in the Highway Construction Field
Flatiron's Pat Stricklin won, along with Sherwood Liles, the Outstanding Achievement in Construction award in 2000 by Engineering News Record. Liles spent 30 years with Tidewater Construction of Virginia, which was one of HBG's subcontractors on the Carolina Bays Parkway. Tidewater is now owned by Skanska of Stockholm, Sweden, and also got the contract for the Richmond-San Rafael Seismic Retrofit project in California, which at the time was the largest contract ever awarded by Caltrans, along with the contract for S.C.'s Cooper River Bridge.
And in another incident illustrating this coziness, Stricklin and SCDOT's director Elizabeth Mabry both served on a panel discussion along with Tom Norton, Executive Director of Colorado DOT at the 2000 Professional Design-Build Conference. The title of the talk, held on October 5, 2000, was "Sticky Issues: Reasonable Risk Transfer." And in another coincidence, the next day Mabry spoke with Colleen Clark, Chief Financial Officer of TCA of California; their session was entitled: "From California to South Carolina - Innovative Uses of Design-Build Transportation. What are the chances that two top-level government officials from the opposite coasts of the U.S., which together gave billions of dollars worth of contracts to the same European construction firms, would "coincidentally" give a joint speech at a conference?
Carolina Bay Beams Found Defective
In prophetic-like fulfillment, similar to the Conway Bypass "sinkhole," while I was preparing this report, eight defective concrete girders on the Carolina Bays Parkway had to be replaced (Sun News, 4/16/02). The girders were made by Bayshore Concrete, HBG's subcontractor. The girders were purposely used by the contractor who admitted knowing that they were defective. The news account said that when they were made, the girders had weak spots at the ends, where the concrete around the rebar crumbled. This crucial spot is where the girders rest on support pilings. The project manager said that the girders were patched before emplacement and were never a safety concern because "[t]hings like this happen in casting yards quite often."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coleman, J. 1997. The Committee of 300.
Veon, J. Prince Charles: the Sustainable Prince. Hearthstone Publishing, Ltd. 1998.
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