Titan Corp.

Titan Corporation was a United States based company founded in 1981, with its headquartered in San Diego, California. It was acquired by L-3 Communications on June 3, 2004 and is currently operating as the "Titan Group" of L-3 Communications. In early 2007, divisions using the Titan Group name were internally told to stop using it and were given new names.

Titan has specialized in providing information and communications products, solutions and services for intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security. Titan provides information systems solutions, support services and communications products to the federal government, especially to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

In recent years, like many other defense companies, Titan has diversified through a series of acquisitions, 10 since 2000 alone. The firm got into the linguistic business in the wake of 9/11 by acquiring Fairfax, Va.-based BTG Inc., which had a $10 million military contract dating back to 1999. When the demand for linguists grew after the United States launched the war on terror, so did the size of Titan's contracts.

Contracts received

Titan was hired by the US military in 2003 to provide translation services, receiving $112.1 million. This accounted for 96 percent of its total revenue for 2003, according to its annual report. [ [http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=159 Center for Public Integrity] ] The company had 12,000 employees worldwide, with annual revenues in the neighborhood of $2 billion and was traded on the NYSE as TTN.

Titan has a $54.8 million contract with the Airborne Warning and Control System to support the development of spy planes. They also have an $18 million contract to design war games for the US Navy.

Titan received a competitive contract with a potential value of $163.9 million from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command on behalf of the U.S. Northern Command for the US Joint Task Force Civil Support on January 12, 2005. The contract is "to provide a full range of planning, analysis, exercise, and information technology services for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosive (CBRNE) Consequence Management operations," a Titan press release announced.

Titan announced on February 14, 2006, they had received a "$350 million, five-year, multiple award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) task-based contract" from the Department of Homeland Security to support the National Exercise Program. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?

Legal situations

As a public military contractor the company employed some of the personnel who were implicated in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Involving mostly Titan and CACI International employees, the U.S. Army "found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of the [Abu Ghraib] proven incidents and identified 6 employees as individually culpable", P. W. Singer (March/April 2005) "Outsourcing War". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. New York City, NY] although none have faced prosecution unlike US military personal.

In May 2004, a civilian contractor and Titan employee Adel Nakhla, an Egyptian-born American citizen, was "terminated" from the job, after he admitted he held down inmates that were "nude, handcuffed to each other and placed in sexual positions." (as described by the Taguba Report)

The company was in the process of being acquired by the Lockheed Martin Corporation but the attempted merger fell through on June 26, 2004:

Lockheed Martin Corporation announced that it has terminated the merger agreement with The Titan Corporation because Titan did not satisfy all the closing conditions on or before June 25, 2004. Under the terms of the amended merger agreement, either party could terminate the merger agreement if Titan either (i) had not obtained written confirmation from the Department of Justice that the investigation of alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations was resolved as to Titan and the Department did not intend to pursue any claims against Titan; or (ii) Titan had not entered into a plea agreement on or prior to June 25, 2004, provided that the terminating party had not contributed to the failure to consummate the merger through a breach of its obligations in any material respect. Titan did not satisfy either requirement.

On March 2 2005, the company admitted to illegally providing $2 million to the 2001 re-election campaign of President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, and agreed to pay $28 million in penalties. Titan pled guilty and paid the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history for bribery and filing false tax returns. [http://www.scoop.co.nz:80/stories/HL0707/S00243.htm]

Titan Corp briefly partnered with SkyWay Communications [http://www.bbwexchange.com/publications/newswires/page546-851114.asp] and owned stock in several other corporations related to SkyWay, whose former DC9 aircraft, N900SA, was captured in April 2006 with 5.5 tons of cocaine on board. Investigation of the cocaine bust by Mad Cow Morning News [http://www.madcowprod.com/05172006.html] has led to the discovery that Titan had employed Makram Chams, a Lebanese national, who owned a Kwik-Check convenience store in Venice, Florida, where the biggest overseas money transfer to the terrorists, $70,000 from the UAE, was sent, according to the testimony of FBI agents during the 9/11 Commission hearings.

References

External links

* [http://www.titan.com/about/ Company history]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4310331.stm BBC news article on the fine]