The frozen, northernmost reaches of the United States are home to the Inupiat people, more commonly known as Ekimos. They subsist on fishing and the hunting of seals, walrus and whales. They also run a successful defense contracting firm providing services to the U.S. intelligence community. To that, they owe a debt to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

TKC Communications LLC of Anchorage, Alaska, does work for the Department of Justice, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Center, the Counterintelligence Field Activity, and the National Security Agency, according to its Website. The company also contracts with all four branches of the military, including for work in Iraq, as well as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State (which is sometimes a wink-wink way of saying the CIA).

TKC Communications is one of more than 150 Alaskan native-owned companies doing government work. Others include Alutiiq Management Services LLC which is renovating State Department offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ahtna Technical Services Inc. is hiring cooks for a federal jail in Texas.

Government contractors like these companies because they are a quick, easy and legal method of awarding contracts of any value, and in 2004, the Alaskan native companies received more than $1 billion worth of government work, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Profits from these ventures are returned in the form of shares to the Inupiat.

Their special status allows them to receive contracts without any competition, so-called “sole source” contracts. There have been numerous problems with some of these sole-source contracts, which is how I came across this subject. TKC Communications’ $100 million, 10-year contract to provide office space for CIFA in Arlington, Va., not only cost too much but also may have violated the law. But that’s more the fault of the boobs at CIFA, who when told the contracts might violate the law, refused to halt them.

The Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 created the Alaskan native companies as a way of settling the Inupiat’s aboriginal land claims. The act divided nearly $1 billion and 44 million acres amongst Alaskan native peoples, and allowed construction of the Alaskan pipeline. The bill was introduced by Ted Stevens, then in his first term, and was subsequently ratified by the Inupiat. Stevens, now one of the Senate’s old bulls, had his home searched earlier this week in a widening criminal bribery probe.

In 2003, shortly before his 80th birthday, Stevens told a gathering of Alaskan natives:

“I have long been concerned about what will happen when I can no longer deliver the funds you need. I want to ensure, to the best of my ability, that we have built programs for the Native community that are sustainable well into the future. I have been working toward that end. “

That’s a worthy goal. Stevens may or may not be corrupt. He may be out-of-touch likening the Internet to “a series of tubes.” But he deserves our praise for giving the Inupiat a seat at the rich government contracting feast. There is no way that a group of walrus-hunters could have gotten there without help from the man who represents them. Compare that to Duke Cunningham, who gave favors away to people like Mitch Wade who couldn’t even vote for him.

Instead of ruining their Native lands by plopping a casino-resort in the middle of it (casinos aren’t allowed in Alaska), the Inupiat are creating a business venture and acquiring the skills that come with to the benefit of future generations. There’s the old saw about teaching a man to fish vs. giving him one. I suspect the Inupiat know all about that.

To the CIFA trough, comes John Murtha. The Hill reports that the chairman of the supremely powerful Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is continuing in the proud tradition of his former colleague, Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

A decorated Marine colonel, the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, Murtha is one of the House’s great porkers. He passed on a $50,000 bribe during the FBI’s undercover ABSCAM investigation, but signaled that he might warm to the offer somewhere down the road.

Earmark foe Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., calls our attention to a murky, $3 million earmark Murtha is shepherding through the 2008 intelligence funding bill. It’s for something called “Joint Intelligence Training & Education with Advanced Distributed Learning Technologies Phase II.”

A Murtha flak described the JITEADLTP2 as a continuation of “efforts to enhance the training capabilities of the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA). With the massive hiring over the past few years within U.S. intelligence agencies, this program will provide advanced training for military and civilian personnel on human intelligence practices (in effect getting years of experience in a year of training).”

Fifty-one words; nothing said.

The Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy is off Route 100 in Elkridge, Maryland. Since October 1999, it has offered introductory and advanced training to civilian spooks and military intelligence personnel in classes like Counterintelligence Fundamentals, Research and Technology Protection and Joint Terrorism Task Force Seminar. People who attend generally have good things to say.

JCITA is an arm of CIFA. You’ll recall that CIFA is a new intelligence agency that Cunningham attatched himself to, ramora-like, to suck out appropriations for a defense contractor who was bribing him with a mansion, boats, antiques, etc.

Enter Murtha. The real beneficiary of his earmark isn’t JCITA of course, but a favorite defense contractor in his district, the Concurrent Technology Corporation (CTC) in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Murtha created CTC in 1987 with the help of earmarks years ago, and the company and its employees are among biggest campaign contributors.

CTC was the recipient of the $1 million “mystery” earmark for the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure, which may or may not even exist.

Murtha’s JCITA earmark involves “advanced distributed learning,” which is DoD gibberish for learning over the Internet. So the congressman is earmarking $3 million to teach counterintelligence classes over a network.

We could all have a good laugh if this were $550,000 to the Skirball Cultural Center in LA for development and construction of Noah’s Ark, but look at what’s going on here: Murtha’s friend is getting a contract to teach our spies how to detect enemy spies and terrorists over the Internet. Putting earmarks in the intelligence bill isn’t just wasteful. It’s dangerous.

I’ll be appearing today (Monday) on the Dan Gresham Show on 1340 AM radio station KOLE in southeast Texas.

On Tuesday, I’m speaking at Borders in San Diego’s Mission Valley at 7 p.m. The event is being filmed for future broadcast on C-SPAN.

Hi! I’m guest blogging today at Voice of San Diego, an Internet newspaper that is doing some terrific work and winning all kinds of awards. You can follow the discussion at Cafe San Diego.