Thursday, August 24, 2006

Explo Systems, Inc. 3 Steps Away from Duke Cunningham, How Close to Carlyle Group?

An explosion occurred at a Louisiana military base today requiring the evacuation of nearby schools. The contractor charged with safely dismantling military ordinance is Explo Systems, Inc. Information on the company is not widely available as it’s privately held. However, a small town newspaper ran an article about the facility’s open house. Another site listed the square footage the company leases at 237,257 sq. ft.

Otherwise, not much information is available online. Which defense oriented investment house owns this corporation is not yet clear.

However, Explo Systems does license its bomb dismantling technology from a German company, wholly owned by General Atomics, based in San Diego.

The General Atomics donation record to Randy Duke Cunningham is clear.

2004 $10,000
2002 $10,000
2000 No record
1998 $10,000

Did you note Randy’s biggest contributor the 2002 election cycle? It was none other than The Carlyle Group at $23,300.

In 2000 Carlyle gave $5,500 to "Randy Randy". That same election year Carlyle donated nearly $500,000 with 85% going to Republican candidates.

What will come out about this company in light of the incident? If privately held management controls the media, then the public would see very little information.

For the unaware, the aforementioned Carlyle Group made several big forays into the world media market in June. Carlyle is part of a group that purchased VNU, a huge worldwide media company based in New York and the Netherlands. They just hired General Electric’s Vice Chair to work for the company. Carlyle also acquired a stake in Global Media, a web marketing company.

Would anyone like to bet, no bad news regarding any Carlyle Affiliate will hit the stands via VNU or Global Media? They managed to keep their 24 patient deaths in their LifeCare affiliate’s New Orlean's hospital out of the White House Lessons Learned report. That likely relates more to the nearly $500,000 in 2000 campaign donations and Bush Sr.’s past employment by Carlyle than to any media influence.

The question concerning Americans should be, how will the public get the real answers given the incestuous money/relationship ties between the Bush administration and scores of government contractors?

VNU, NV is a leading global marketing information and media company providing "must have" information and industry expertise daily to professionals across the world.

Given Carlyle’s description of VNU, I don’t believe such information would be considered “must have”.

Update 12-3-12:  The Carlyle Group has nothing to do with Explo Systems, however the secretive firm had 6 million pounds of explosives improperly stored.  The discovery caused local authorities to evacuate the town.  One has to wonder how the military conducted quality assurance on Explo's work.  The only word on Explo's ownership is that it is veteran owned.  History shows a series of explosions at Explo facilities 

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