WOW! would you look at that? A liberal senator caught in a scandal
with defense contracts! I guess this will get passed over while Cheney
and Haliburton will get raked over the coals!

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This article was written by Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com Staff Writer

Government watchdog groups want more answers as to why Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., stepped down from a military appropriations
subcommittee at a time questions were being asked billions of dollars
in federal defense contracts going to her husband's companies.

Feinstein resigned her post as chairwoman of the Senate Subcommittee
on Military Construction Appropriations last week.

The decision came less than two months after Metro Newspapers, a group
of alternative weekly papers in northern California, detailed the
number of defense contracts awarded to Perini Corp. and URS Corp.,
both of which her husband, Richard C. Blum, has ownership, according
to the newspapers.

The investigation was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of
The Nation Institute, a non-profit organization affiliated with the
liberal magazine The Nation.

"This was a critique from the left," Tom Fitton, president of Judicial
Watch, a conservative public interest group, told Cybercast News
Service. "These were left-leaning papers. The fact that she stepped
down from the committee lends credibility to the charges."

Fitton said this is something Judicial Watch wanted to further
investigate, possibly by seeking public documents on the matter and by
asking the Senate Ethics Committee to look into the matter for a
possible conflict of interest on Feinstein's part.

"On the face of it, it seems she at least had influence on how
contracts were awarded," Fitton said. "There should be an
investigation."

Feinstein's press office was contacted several times Friday by
Cybercast News Service, but her office did not provide a statement on
the matter at the end of the day.

The California weeklies detailed examples that included a subcommittee
hearing in which Feinstein asked Pentagon officials about increasing
anti-terrorism protection for Army bases.

The next year, in March 2003, Feinstein asked why the funds for anti-
terror protection had not been spent. Just over a month later, URS
announced a $600 million contract to provide services for U.S. Army
bases that included anti-terrorism force protection.

In another instance, Feinstein asked another military official when
money would be spent on a maintenance facility for the C-17 Hickam Air
Base in Hawaii. URS later announced a $42 million contract to build
it.

Also, Feinstein's subcommittee in mid-2005 approved funds to reinforce
roofs at military stations in Iraq, and in October of that year,
Perini got a $185 million federal contract for that purpose, the
papers reported.

The matter should be probed further, said Kenneth Boehm, chairman of
the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government
watchdog group. However, he isn't that confident in the Senate's
ability to police itself.

"The real problem is there is too little objectivity," Boehm told
Cybercast News Service. "Congress needs an independent watchdog. The
ethics committees are partisan. They have an equal number of
Republicans and Democrats, but the reality is that things don't get
looked at that should get looked at."

Meanwhile, Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal watchdog
group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, reportedly said
the Feinstein matter could eclipse other congressional scandals.

"There are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of
interest," Sloan told Metro Newspapers. "But because of the amount of
money involved, Feinstein's conflict of interest is an order of
magnitude greater than those conflicts."

The paper proudly reported Feinstein's exit from the Senate panel on
its website last week, as reporter Peter Byrne stressed that
Feinstein's subcommittee had jurisdiction over medical treatment for
veterans long before the poor conditions were exposed at the Walter
Reed Army Hospital.

"You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein's family
has pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of
wounded American soldiers, she would show a smidgeon of shame and
resign from the entire Senate, not just a subcommittee," Byrne wrote.

"Conversely, you'd think she might stick around (the subcommittee) to
try to fix the medical-care disaster she helped engineer for the vets
who were suckered into fighting her and (President) Bush's panoply of
unjust wars," Byrne added

WOW! would you look at that? A liberal senator caught in a scandal
with defense contracts! I guess this will get passed over while Cheney
and Haliburton will get raked over the coals!