Private, Public Roles Overlap in Washington

Soon afterward, Fluor and a joint venture partner won about $1.6 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

Her husband, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a leading advocate for the war, is serving as a government policy advisor. He too works for a firm with war-related interests.

The Woolseys' overlapping affiliations are part of a growing pattern in Washington in which individuals play key roles in quasi-governmental organizations advising officials on major policy issues but also are involved with private businesses in related fields.

Such activities generally are not covered by conflict of interest laws or ethics rules. But they underscore an insiders network in which contacts and relationships developed inside the government can meld with individual financial interests.

Suzanne Woolsey, 62, is a former executive with the National Academies, the institution that advises the government on science, engineering and medicine. In October 2000, she was named a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation paid by the government to do research for the Pentagon.

James Woolsey, 62, who headed the CIA from 1993 to 1995, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, an unpaid advisory panel serving Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials. Woolsey is also on CIA and Navy advisory boards and was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a private advocacy group set up in 2002 at the instigation of the White House to build public support for the war.

He is also a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that co-sponsored a May 1, 2003, conference on business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq. Woolsey was one of the keynote speakers for the event.

Booz Allen is a subcontractor on a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The firm does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. It was recently awarded $14 million in contracts by the Navy. The former CIA director said in an interview that he had not been involved in Booz Allen's Iraq contracts.