{ "id": "2002-february-war-windfall", "slug": "2002-february-war-windfall", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2002-february-war-windfall.html", "year": 2002, "month": "February", "monthNum": 2, "headline": "War windfall", "kicker": "SPOTLIGHT: TERRORISM", "author_name": "David Wethe & Michael Whiteley", "author_title": "", "affiliation": "Dallas Business Journal", "summary": "After 9/11, a Dallas-Fort Worth newsroom used NICAR's federal contractor database to identify local defense companies that might benefit from increased military spending, finding over 6,500 contracts worth $7.7 billion in the region.", "keywords": [ "contractors", "database", "defense" ], "topics": [ "Data & Databases", "Investigative Methods", "Business & Economy" ], "technologies": [ "FoxPro" ], "full_text": "Within hours of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many started to wonder what - if anything - the nation would do to respond.\n\nTexans wondered if their loved ones would get the call to go to war. And the tech companies, machine shops and aviation subcontractors of the Dallas-Fort Worth area - businesses that had accounted for a dime of every dollar spent on Desert Storm - wondered if they could balance the losses to the airline industry with some profit from a new war.\n\nWe decided to use NICAR's database of federal contractors to identify and interview some of the companies on the early call lists for the Department of Defense or the Defense Logistics Agency.\n\nWe slated the story for a quick turnaround - to appear in next week's issue while the idea was still fresh on our readers' minds.\n\nOn Sept. 14, we ordered the Texas share of the database, which covered companies and their federal contract obligations for 2000. It arrived the following Monday morning, giving us time to write a story for the Sept. 21 paper.\n\nDefense contracts\n\nUsing Visual FoxPro 6.0, we ran a series of relatively simple queries that split out the defense contracts, finding contractors based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, summing their contract obligations and sorting in descending order.\n\nWe queried NICAR's data into successive tables, culminating with \"metrodef.dbf.\" The values \"DD\" and \"DT\" in the field \"prtagncy\" identified contracts issued by defense agencies, including the DOD, the DLA, the Air Force and the Army.\n\nWe queried the table \"Fedprc.dbf\" with: SELECT FROM fedprc; WHERE Fedprc.prtagncy = \"DD\"; OR (Fedprc.prtagncy = \"DT\") ORDER BY Fedprc.contractor; INTO TABLE :\\defense\\defquery.dbf\n\nWe renamed defquery.db to \"Texdef.dbf\" and queried it to isolate contractors' home cities using the query: SELECT DISTINCT Texdef.contcity; FROM texdef; ORDER BY Texdef.contcity; INTO TABLE city.dbf\n\nWe edited the results to include only cities in Dallas County, Tarrant County and the surrounding counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.\n\nWe then ran the new table, \"city.dbf\" against our \"Texdef\" table using: SELECT FROM texdef INNER JOIN city ; ON Texdef.contcity = City.contcity; INTO TABLE metrodef.dbf\n\nBig dollar amounts\n\nThe query yielded a table of Dallas-Fort Worth area defense contractors - or at least contractors who did defense work in the Dallas-Fort Worth area last year - with a total of 6,507 contracts worth $7.7 billion. By comparison, our crunch of Texdef produced 19,614 contracts worth $12.8 billion for 2000. That meant the Dallas-Fort Worth area companies handled contracts accounting for 60 cents of every dollar spent in Texas.\n\nThe next step was to identify the major players, such as Lockheed Martin Corp., and to sort out the smaller shops that might depend on a DOD call for survival and might add a human element to our story.\n\nWe isolated the names of the contractors and the dollar amount of each of their contracts using: SELECT Metrodef.contnmif1, Metrodef.dollaramt; FROM metrodef; ORDER BY Metrodef.dollaramt; INTO TABLE companytot.dbf\n\nAnd we tallied their combined contract values, in descending order, with: SELECT companytot.contnmcif1, SUM (dollaramt) FROM companytot; GROUP BY companytot.contnmcif1; ORDER BY 2 desc; INTO TABLE Metrosum.dbf\n\nWith the help of staff writers Hala Habal and Margaret Allen, we divided the companies and called a healthy mix of those who'd done a brisk business with DOD and DLA in 2000 and those who'd handled smaller contracts.\n\nEarly on, we found some irony. Luminator Holding L.L.C. of Plano was expecting heavy losses from a division that makes instrument lights for jet airliners. But those losses were somewhat offset by an emergency order for search lights phoned in from a military base overseas within days of the attack.\n\nIn Garland, we found beefed-up security at a company identified as the sole manufacturer of U.S.-certified bombs. In Fort Worth, a company that makes bomb fuses and parts for the Bradley fighting vehicles had received the call to speed up orders.\n\nAlso in Garland, a startup quickly received word from the Pentagon to be ready for delivery of its new Thermal Angel, a device that can be used for warming IV fluids in the battlefield.\n\nQuick, easy story\n\nThis story was done in a hurry. It was a quick and easy CAR story that can be done in just about any newsroom that has a database manager.\n\nAlthough no one really knew what kind of war we were talking about, we felt confident many companies in our database would get the call. And one of them offered some news - the possibility that the nation might not be ready for another war.\n\n\"I don't think their inventory was that great,\" said Kyle Blake, vice president of AGH in Fort Worth. \"After Desert Storm, the Department of Defense pretty much turned the spigot off. It got behind and never caught up again.\"\n\nMichael Whiteley can be reached by e-mail at mwhiteley@bizjournals.com\n\nDavid Wethe can be reached by e-mail at dwethe@bizjournals.com", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6", "extracted_at": "2026-07-05", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "2003-may-june-finding-backyard-military-contractors", "score": 0.386 }, { "slug": "2006-july-august-bits-and-bytes", "score": 0.254 }, { "slug": "2005-may-june-finding-overlap-in-public-private-interests", "score": 0.237 }, { "slug": "2003-marchapril-federal-spending-getting-a-handle-on-shuttle-contractors", "score": 0.208 }, { "slug": "2003-marchapril-key-data-resources-for-covering-conflict", "score": 0.202 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2002-february-war-windfall.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2002-february-war-windfall.json" }