red flags in our mind:
DONALD BARLETT: Well, Evergreen Security had been run for the most part by Patrick Thomson, a resident of the Bahamas, for a long time. And it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and in the end more than $200 million disappeared. Well, it was to Mr. Thomson that this very mysterious Thomas Howell in La Jolla, California, turned to create a company for him called NorthStar. And a few years later, lo and behold, NorthStar is retained by the Pentagon to make sure the money in Iraq, the $12 billion, and billions more, does not go missing, which, of course, it did go missing.Democracy Now! 09.Oct.07
JAMES STEELE: When we looked into the background of NorthStar, come to find out this is not your normal accounting or auditing operation. It operates out of a private house in a suburb of San Diego. All attempts to interview the individual, Thomas Howell, who apparently heads NorthStar, failed. He would talk to us a couple times, but said that his hands were tied. The Pentagon would have to give him approval to talk, and they did not. We looked into other aspects of the operation out of this house. Turns out some of it’s home improvement. One is supposedly international financial consulting, all very vague, all very, very mysterious.
