MADDOW: Tonight, more into our continuing investigation into the witch-hunt against the community activist group ACORN, the corporate groups of that witch-hunt, its boldly dishonest tactics and its ultimate dislocation from the warranted facts. The ongoing effort to destroy and demonize ACORN has been for the most part by conservative media outlets. And its biggest accomplishment so far has been the decision by Congress last week to strip ACORN of all federal funding. The Defund ACORN Act of 2009 passed through both houses of Congress with big bipartisan support.
That said, one problem with the Defund ACORN Act is that it appears to be really, really unconstitutional. In constitutional terms, the Defund ACORN Act has what`s called a bill of attainder problem. Don`t worry if you don`t know what that is. It`s one of those things from constitutional law that sounds really obscure and impenetrable like the commerce clause or the privacy penumbra. But it`s actually sort of easy.
In Article One of the Constitution, it says bills of attainder are banned. And that just means that you can`t pass legislation that directly targets one individual or one specific group of people. In this case, the Congressional Research Service looked into the Defund ACORN Act of 2009 to see if it specifically targets anyone. And, of course, they found probable cause that it does.
So, there`s a good possibility that this legislation which Republicans are so excited to be touting, which they`ve even got all this Democratic support for, there`s a good chance that it is really Article One-styly unconstitutional. It`s embarrassing. They`re going to run on the anti-ACORN platform all the way to 2010 if past is any prologue.
So, what to do, how to save, how to salvage the Defund ACORN Act? Well, they`re going to need to make sure that it doesn`t violate the Constitution as boldly as it seems to now. So, where the Defund ACORN Act says it`s going to cut off funding for an organization that`s ever been indicted for breaking campaign finance laws or that`s ever filed fraudulent paperwork with any state or federal agency, if this is going to be constitutional, that can`t only be enforced against this one group, can`t only be enforced against ACORN. It`s got to be for everyone.
So giant government defense contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, it looks like you`re out of luck. Lockheed Martin has been forced to pay at least $68 million for getting caught 11 separate times committing government contract fraud. Northrop Grumman has had to pay around $500 million for getting caught nine times for contract fraud. Sorry, guys, but if we`re going to nail ACORN here, you`ve got to go.
And if -- and if fraud is going to be the new issue in our newfound enthusiasm for defunding people, then Blackwater is going to have a problem, too. In just one of Blackwater`s many government contracts, they were recently found to have defrauded the government to the tune of $55 million. And that`s just one Blackwater contractor, and they`ve got lots of contracts.
But if fraud is not bad enough for you, how about murder? Because five Blackwater employees have been charged with murder during the course of their government contracted duties in Iraq. Is murder enough to defund Blackwater?
How about if people they`re killing, the contractors killing aren`t just Iraqi civilians or somebody else we don`t know, how about if they`re U.S. troops? Because KBR, with its government contracts, is under investigation for killing 16 American troops who were electrocuted through KBR shoddy works supposedly building and maintaining living quarters for our troops in Iraq.
I mean, to be fair, I will admit that if we are talking about behavior by contractors that warrants them being defunded by an outrage Congress, none of those things I just described from those other contractors are prostitution specific, like the Republican and conservative media ACORN case has been. Ever since two activists dressed up in pimp and hooker costumes and then went from ACORN office to ACORN office with a hidden camera until they got a reaction out of ACORN employees that would play well on FOX News.
If the hidden camera stunt induced prostitution angle is what it takes to get a government contract defunded, then I guess we`re going to have to talk about prostitution broadly and the government contractor known as ArmorGroup, part of Wackenhut, in Afghanistan. Their employees, you`ll recall, were made famous earlier this month after the release of these pictures that show the contractors barely clothed and shooting vodka out of places you wouldn`t expect.
The same ArmorGroup personnel who, again, were being paid by you and me were also allegedly engaged in a prostitution ring in Kabul. That`s according to an ArmorGroup whistleblower. The State Department is investigating ArmorGroup now.
But if we`re going to talk contractors and prostitution, we`re also going to have to talk about DynCorp, which is always been one of those horror movie U.S. contractor cases. In the year 2000, at least 13 DynCorp employees were sent home from a U.S. government contract in Bosnia after they were found to be taking part in a Bosnian sex slave ring involving underage girls, not a fake prostitution ring that never actually existed like the one in the activist hidden camera costumes stunt, but an actual forced child prostitution ring, an actual U.S. government contractors from DynCorp.
In the absence of any defund DynCorp uprising, DynCorp still gets a lot of government money. In fact, today, DynCorp landed a brand new $230 million contract with the U.S. Air Force. That`s on top of the $915 million contract they got from the State Department in June.
ArmorGroup, the prostitution/vodka-shooting contract in Afghanistan at the Kabul embassy, they still got that nearly $200 million contract in Afghanistan with the State Department. But that is currently under review.
Blackwater still has multimillion dollar contracts with the State Department, the Defense Department, as well as the CIA, even as five of their employees face murder charges.
KBR was just awarded a new $19 million army contract in February, despite being investigated in the deaths of those 16 U.S. troops.
Not only have these contractors not been defunded by outraged members of Congress, they all continue to get spectacularly lucrative government contracts even after all of these things have been exposed. I`m not reporting any of these things for the first time. They`re all known.
So, sure, if you want to defund ACORN, go for it. ACORN has definitely done some indefensible stuff over the years. They are an imperfect organization, to be sure. But if this isn`t just a witch-hunt against ACORN, if Congress is actually just going after government contractors who commit fraud and worse, then we can all look forward to the explanation from the fake outrage Republicans and the cowering Democrats about why nothing ever inspired them to defund anyone before ACORN. After that, by all mean, cut them all loose.
Joining us now is Jeremy Scahill, correspondent from "The Nation" and author of "New York Times" bestseller, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World`s Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
Mr. Scahill, thanks for joining us.
JEREMY SCAHILL, THE NATION: Great to be with you.
MADDOW: I apologize for being a little hot under the collar about this. I`m riled up by this story.
SCAHILL: Everyone should be.
MADDOW: Yes. If, miraculously, the "defund ACORN" survives as it is, are defense contractors at all worried about Congress actually cutting them off?
SCAHILL: Absolutely not. I mean, look, the fact of the matter is this, the Democrats and there a lot of them that voted with the Republicans on this, in fact, only 75 Democrats voted against this Defund ACORN Act in the House and only a handful of senators voted against it on the other side. The fact is, that some of the best congresspeople on the issue of war contractors have never come forward and introduced a "Defund Blackwater Act" or a "Defund DynCorp Act."
Claire McCaskill, who actually has been a pit bull in the contracting issue, she voted in favor of defunding ACORN, and yet hasn`t proposed legislation to go after any of these war contractors.
Look, Rachel, as you know, this is political. This isn`t really about upholding the law. On the one hand, you have an organization that registered 1.3 million people to vote, 400,000 members, works with the poor and working class people of this nation. They don`t have lobbying power in the form of massive campaign contributions.
On the other side, you have 600 war corporations right now on the U.S. government payroll. You want to know what an actual election scandal, 25 cents to 40 cents on every dollar we spend on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $2.5 billion a week, that money goes directly to these war corporations who in turn contribute campaign dollars to the Republicans and Democrats who continue to fund their operations. That`s the real scandal here.
MADDOW: The thing that is, I think, frustrating about ACORN story and that`s -- I think part of the reason that I do have this sort of unexpected emotion about it, I mean, we talk about a lot of outrageous things all the time, but I`m really -- the story really grabs me. It`s the reason we`re going to be doing it for a few days, it`s because there`s -- ACORN doesn`t have to be a sainted organization. They don`t have to be perfect in order for what`s being done to them to be an outrage. And I guess I`m trying to contextualize them against other contractors in order to understand whether or not they`re sins ought to be being discussed before the sins of organizations like Blackwater.
SCAHILL: OK. Let`s look at this. If there ever was a moment where there should have been a standard where individuals should have been held accountable for the crimes of others, it would have been the Bush folks with it came to the torture program. It would have been Eric Prince when it came to the operations of Blackwater. What we`re talking about here in the case of ACORN is $53 million in federal funding over 15 years that largely went for low-income housing, poor people housing.
And on the other hand, you`re talking about an equivalent amount of money that Halliburton got every single day for its operations in Iraq, that Blackwater may have to repay the government for not living up to the terms of just one contract. The fact of the matter is that ACORN got pennies compared to what these massive war contracting firms got.
And as you point out rightly, we are talking about murder. We`re talking about child prostitution. We`re talking about all sorts of misconduct against American personnel and against innocent civilians. The crimes compare to the crimes of ACORN if there are those that are litigated in the court of law pale in comparison to the crimes of the war contractors that go un-confronted by Democrats and Republicans.
MADDOW: Do you see Democrats changing their minds on this? We saw such huge Democratic votes in favor of this Republican defund ACORN bills. Do you see that -- do you think that sentiment is reversible among Democrats?
SCAHILL: Well, look, if Representative Alan Grayson of Florida is the only person that`s going to come forward and say, "Yes, let`s go after -- let`s defund all these criminal organizations," and the rest of the Democrats, like Claire McCaskill, did it as part of a witch-hunt against ACORN, then it`s a sad day in this country, because what it means is there is no spine in that Congress when it comes to standing up against the real crooks and criminal in this society. It`s an outrage.
MADDOW: Jeremy Scahill, correspondent for "The Nation," author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World`s Most Powerful Mercenary Army," of course, "New York Times" bestseller -- Jeremy, it`s great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
SCAHILL: It`s an honor to be with you, Rachel.
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