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On May 7, 2009 CACI Chairman Jack London spoke before the St. Andrew's Society of Washington, DC, a charitable and social lineage organization, at the Belle Haven Country Club in Alexandria, VA. After a thunderstorm that caused an hour-long power outage passed Dr. London told the audience of 60 members about the storm that CACI faced during the Abu Ghraib scandal. The following is a transcript of his remarks:

Good evening, everyone. Thank you. I am delighted to be here with you tonight. I have been a long-time member of Washington, DC St. Andrew's Society because I believe in its history and its mission. While the society does much to promote Scottish traditions and culture, I was drawn to its long standing commitment to charitable and educational assistance, particularly to widows and orphans. Most of all, I have always been impressed with our members, who put their good hearts and good faith efforts into achieving our society's goals.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on everyone to be so forthright and dependable. This is a lesson we learn early in life. But I believe this lack of integrity and accountability is a growing problem in our country. In our society, it seems lapses in judgment always have an excuse.

Do you remember when a spilt cup of coffee was just an accident? Or lost pants at dry cleaners was an honest mistake? Not multi-million dollar lawsuit spectacles. I also grew up believing you simply didn't buy what you couldn't afford. But I saw many home owners in the media blame everyone but themselves for their foreclosures.

On a corporate level, there have been too many executives who took far too many risks and took far too much for granted asking for billions of dollars from the federal government to cover for their mistakes.

And then, there has been the incredible banking and financial crisis of this past year. A real fiasco. With plenty of guilty parties. And they have asked for billions, and are still asking for billions. And the President and government will pay the tab with our tax payer dollars.

And, as I will soon describe, I have personally experienced that the media not only amplifies this trend of blame and lack of accountability… it is an active participant!

Now, some of you might be wondering why I hold the media so responsible. After all, some of the other examples I gave had bad consequences for our country, like job losses. And the media is just the news. Isn't it?

Do you remember a man by the name of Richard Jewell? He was accused of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic plaza bombings. It turned out, of course, that the FBI was hasty with its profiling and the media jumped on Jewell for the crime. Of course, none of it was true. He was later exonerated fully and publicly by the FBI. And Richard Jewell was still in litigation against an Atlanta paper to clear his name when he died in 2007.

How about the rape accusations against the Duke lacrosse players? It turned out, of course, that an overzealous DA (by the name of Mike Nifong) decided to make a name for himself, even though the alleged victim's fabricated story quickly fell apart. But the media thrived on the story. The team had to forfeit its season. Players had to transfer schools. The coach lost his job. None of it was true.

Do you remember the accusations of Korans being flushed down toilets at Guantanamo Bay? Newsweek magazine and the worldwide media had a field day taking the U.S. military to task. But, of course, none of it was true! And at least 17 people died in anti-American protests in Afghanistan as a result.

There is a reason why we have the saying, "the pen is mightier than the sword." Because the truth of that old adage became evident to us at CACI five years ago when who we are and everything we had accomplished was tested. And BIG TIME! Friends and colleagues… it doesn't come any BIGGER than Abu Ghraib!

In April 2004 CACI was thrust into the international spotlight. An illegally leaked army investigative report by MGEN Antonio M. Taguba, was given to Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine. And it cast "suspicion" on one of our employees for being "either directly or indirectly responsible" for the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. And that's a really big accusation!

At the same time, photos from that dismal and overcrowded prison, depicting the abuses, were shown on national television by CBS and tarnished anyone associated with Abu Ghraib – including CACI. And overnight the whole world knew about it – thanks to the 24/7 worldwide media coverage and the Internet!

What followed was a salacious feeding frenzy rarely seen by any company in recent decades. A rampaging media and a hodgepodge of pundits twisted the unsupported and unfounded allegations of torture and abuse into a guilty verdict without regard for the facts or the truth. The distorted (and exaggerated) reports created a damning public perception of CACI at the time. We faced wide ranging government investigations and scrutiny by our shareholders. Abu Ghraib also made CACI a target for misplaced anger and politically driven criticism that put our company's dedicated employees and excellent reputation – even our future – at risk.

First and foremost, our responsibility was to protect and sustain the livelihoods of our then 10,000 employees, the investments of our shareholders, and – most importantly – the vital work we performed for our valued military and government clients, including our Army customers in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

So, how does one cope with a crisis as huge and as salacious as this one? Well, it all goes back to culture, doesn't it? Just as the goals of the St. Andrew's Society have been based on solid values, at CACI we have always relied on our corporate values to guide us to "do the right thing." So what does this mean?

The first of CACI's Ten Business Values is to "Place integrity and honesty above all else." So, we quickly resolved to acknowledge the Abu Ghraib allegations, but we would not comment on anything that wasn't fact. We also made it very clear that we would not condone or tolerate illegal or inappropriate behavior by any employee engaged in any CACI business. Period! If someone was shown to have broken the law, we would respond accordingly to "do the right thing." (By the way: these corporate value statements were all in writing and published in the company in the mid-1980s… and have been part of our value system since the beginning.)

To cope with this awful tragedy and crisis of Abu Ghraib CACI needed a response mechanism. We developed an overall hyper-crisis management strategy that addressed the various challenges and stakeholders in the crisis.

As our initial crisis response guide, we used the lessons learned from the Tylenol poisoning crisis in 1982 to frame our actions. In this medicine bottle tampering crisis where seven people were killed, one of Johnson & Johnson's corporate guidelines was to "put people first" – to put their customers first. They cooperated with authorities and kept the public informed. And this is exactly what CACI did, too.

At the same time, we reached out to our employees and clients. Our employees needed to be reassured that we were working on the case. Moreover, CACI employees needed to be equipped with the facts so they could brief our clients when and where needed.

We also assigned key CACI executives to talk individually to some 100 clients with our major contracts. We wanted to keep them updated on our crisis response efforts, and to answer questions about any potential impact on their projects. It was also important to reach out to our Army clients in Iraq so we could get the facts from the people on the ground who were familiar with the events at Abu Ghraib.

Our strategy also included keeping our investors and industry analysts up to date, pushing back against the many errors, distortions and misinformation in the media. We launched an aggressive response campaign, and brought in crisis response specialists (consultants) to augment our efforts in areas where we did not have the experience. We put out many detailed news releases. We set up a FAQ section on our website. And we sent email clarifications to all the reporters who were getting their facts wrong.

CACI was included in nine probing government investigations in all. And the notice letter of suspension and debarment from the General Services Administration took my breath away when I got it! But our response policy was simple – cooperate, cooperate and cooperate. CACI had absolutely nothing whatsoever to hide and we were as eager to get to the truth about the allegations concerning our employee as were the government investigators. We also tasked our outside legal counsel with conducting a vigorous internal investigation. And we kept our Board of Directors fully informed.

In the end, none of these government investigations found CACI or any of its employees culpable for the terrible abuses that had occurred at Abu Ghraib. And this was supported over and over again with sworn testimony before Congress. Furthermore, CACI was never even implicated as a contributor during the courts-martial of the Army soldiers who were found guilty of committing the abuses. In fact, today – five years later, not one current or former CACI employee has ever been charged by the U.S. government with any wrongdoing.

We still have civil lawsuits pending that you may read about from time to time. They are from a radical left-wing group called the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and spearheaded by a Philadelphia attorney. They are after political publicity and our deep pockets. We reject their claims and will fight them to the end.

As for the business side, we lost one minor contract in the UK. Our stock price fell some at first, but soon rebounded. We continued with our strategic and technology initiatives and have become twice the size we were in 2004.

Today, CACI is a leading provider of information technology, network communications and related professional services to the U.S. government. We have 12,500 employees who work in over 120 offices around the world. Just yesterday, I attended the opening of CACI's new 60,000 sq. ft. R&D laboratory for the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. And we will close our fiscal year in June with about $2.5B in annual sales. Last year, CACI was named by the Ethisphere Institute as having one of the best government contractor ethics programs. And just last month Forbes magazine named CACI as the most admired company in Virginia!

I would make the claim – no doubt about it – that CACI's long standing, values-driven corporate culture provided the moral compass that guided us through this crisis. Our commitment to providing quality service to our clients… with honesty, accountability and reliability – and remembering our clients' trust in us – were always at the core of our decisions. And I am pleased to report that those same clients and industry colleagues later praised our work in Iraq and praised the company's response and fortitude throughout the scandal. Feedback like this let us know that we had "done the right thing."

This support also led me to conclude that CACI needed to speak out one more time. In April 2008 CACI published a book about our experiences. It's entitled Our Good Name, A Company's Fight to Defend its Honor and Get the Truth Told About Abu Ghraib. Using evidence from official investigations, sworn testimony and other thoroughly vetted facts, we detailed and documented every challenge the company had faced. And we proved how the allegations made against us were simply not true.

I'd like to think – as far as Abu Ghraib is concerned – that we prevailed at CACI because of our culture and our values. And because of our persistent, relentless and wide ranging push back efforts. We were simply not going to permit the lynch mobs, the kangaroo courts and the media witch hunts to take us down.

But we also learned a few things along the way.

The first lesson was that it can happen to you. I never would have thought that a small contract for intelligence services – one that accounted for less than 1% of our business at the time – would have led CACI into a worldwide scandal and have the potential to cause our demise.

But it did happen to us. And we quickly realized that we had to defend ourselves – precisely because no one else would. And if you don't stand up for yourself, you allow others to define who you are. This is aggravated when organizations look for scapegoats. And many people tried – and still try – to point to CACI as being completely to blame for Abu Ghraib. We also learned that since big problems can come your way, every organization needs a crisis response plan.

We also learned the value of a robust dose of skepticism. Again, the world of 24/7 media – broadcast, print and Internet – enables the creation of instant stories, facts and figures. It also enables instant access to a great scale and scope of information.

In this spectrum of information, there are verifiable facts, credible analyses and a variety of perspectives on one end. On the other, there is everything from simple misunderstanding and confusion, to exaggeration, distortion and even intentional fabrication – and outright lies!

The Internet and other interactive communications tools have exponentially increased the volume, speed and momentum of information. This capability can be beneficial and empowering. But it can also discourage accuracy, tolerance and candor. And avenues of recourse are limited. For example, corrections are never the same as the headlines, and that's if the media will accept that they got something wrong.

I am reminded of Mark Twain, a man who lived in the 19^th century – before TV and the Internet – who pointed out that, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." With Abu Ghraib we learned that the lie can steal the truth's shoes and do several laps around the world without any one knowing the truth was even in the race.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Abu Ghraib was one of the defining events of the Iraq War. In fact, you can pick up any newspaper now and there are articles and debates on interrogations – memos and policies – and other issues from that time.

Abu Ghraib was the biggest challenge in CACI's history. The spotlight we were put in, along with the criticism, ire, and scrutiny, was nearly overwhelming. I also know that others have experienced much worse. But our case did give me an idea of what it must have been like for those who were the victims of larger circumstances.

I want to end my talk tonight by asking for a favor. The next time you look at the paper, or watch the news, or browse the Internet, ask yourself – what would you do if your name was there? Associated with a simple error or even a worldwide scandal. Now imagine what a complete stranger would think of you, only knowing what they read or heard. And remember that the next time you glance at a headline or hear a sound bite, think twice before you assume that it's the truth. Because the next time, it just might be you.

Thank you.