Let's take a look at some of the corporations involved in this military industrial complex, and see what we can discover about their ties to government.
Lockheed Martin
CEO: Robert J. Stevens
Military contracts 2005: $19.4 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $2,212,836*
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=9
Bruce P. Jackson - Lockheed Martin Corp.: Vice President for Strategy and Planning, 1999-2002; Director of Global Development, 1997-1999; Director of Defense Planning and Analysis, 1995-1997
Martin Marietta Corp.: Director for Strategic Planning, Director for Corporate Development Projects, 1993-1995
Lehman Brothers (investment bank): 1990-1993
Not to mention :
Project for the New American Century: Board of Directors
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: Founder, Chairman of the Board
Republican National Convention: Chair of Platform Subcommittee on Foreign Policy, 2000 Presidential Campaign
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1233
Former Lockheed Martin Vice-President Bruce Jackson was a finance chair for the Bush for President campaign; Vice-Presidential spouse Lynne Cheney is a former board member of Lockheed Martin, and used to receive $120,000 per year from the company for attending a handful of semi-annual board meetings.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/081203.html
Jackson, a long-time proponent of NATO expansion, had considerable success lobbying Eastern European countries to support U.S. policy in Iraq. He helped draft a declaration for the so-called Vilnius 10 countries in February 2003 rebuking French President Jaques Chirac’s position on Iraq. He then convinced the Vilnius Ten countries to sign the declaration, saying that it would help win the U.S. Senate’s approval of their membership into NATO. Said the declaration, "The newest members of the European community agree that we must confront the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and that the United Nations must now act."
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1233
According to the Arms Trade Resource Center, Lockheed Martin gets $105 from each U.S. taxpayer and $228 from each U.S. household. In 2002 the company was effectively taxed at 7.7% compared to an average tax rate for individuals of 21-33%.
1995-2005 annual growth rate % 9.6
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/snapshots/799.html
Northrop Grumman
CEO: Ronald Sugar
Military contracts 2005: $13.5 billion
Campaign contributions in 2004: $1.68 million (defense related)
$1.77 million (total)
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=11
And the company is politically savvy as well, having given $8.5 million in federal campaign contributions from 1990-2002, which has paid off over the years in spades. In December 2003, Northrop Grumman and partner Raytheon won a contract potentially worth more than $10 billion with the Pentagon for a missile defense system. It’s now the third largest “defense” company in the US, after Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Former Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems chief James Roche served as George Bush's Secretary of the Air Force for two years.
Now based in Fairfax, Virginia, the company has been controlled in the past through a web of interlocking ownership by a partnership that included James A. Baker III and Frank Carlucci, former U.S. secretaries of state and defense under Presidents George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan respectively.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=11
Boeing
CEO: Jim McNerney
Military contracts 2005: $18.3 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $1,659,213*
The lobbying efforts of Boeing, and the revolving door between the US government and the Chicago-based giant, are legendary. But Boeing’s influence-peddling finally turned sour in December 2003 when Boeing CEO Philip M. Condit was forced to resign in the wake of revelations of that the company negotiated the hiring of top Air Force procurement official Darlene Druyun while Druyun was setting up a lucrative $27.6 billion leasing deal of Boeing’s 767 air-refueling aircrafts over a period of ten years. The deal, which went through despite controversy, will cost taxpayers up to $10 billion dollars more than if the Air Force has purchased the aircrafts outright.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has sharply limited the information he is willing to let Congress see on a controversial defense contract that is the focus of multiple investigations.
Rumsfeld took a hard line even with fellow Republicans who want information from him about a proposed $23 billion deal for the Air Force to buy and lease 100 Boeing 767 aerial refueling tankers. Rumsfeld's refusal to give senators all the materials they requested could provoke a rare congressional subpoena.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11366
But Boeing still has a lot of well-connected people looking out for its interests. John Shalikashvili, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the Boeing board. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rudy de Leon heads up Boeing's Washington office.
After September 11th Boeing beefed up its political connections by hiring former Senator Bennett Johnson (D-LA) and former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY).
Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Boeing's senior vice president for international relations, uses his forty years of experience to generate business for Boeing with foreign governments and corporations.
Richard Perle, former Chairman and current member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, is another important Boeing ally within the corridors of power. So it should come as no surprise that Boeing has provided Perle’s venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, with $20 million.
Two other Defense Policy Board members also work as consultants for Boeing: the Air Force’s General Ronald Fogelman and former Navy Admiral David Jeremiah.
Boeing ranks number sixty six in the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the 100 biggest political donors since 1989. Over the nineties, Boeing handed out $7.6 million in Political Action Committee (PAC) and soft money contributions. During the 2002 election year, Boeing gave $909,134 in PAC contributions and $700,482 in soft money donations and its contributions added up to more than $1.5 million during the 2000 elections.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=10
General Dynamics
CEO: Nicholas D. Chabraja
Military contracts 2005: $10.6 billion
Total contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $1,437,602*
The Secretary of the Navy, Gordon England, is a former General Dynamics executive. The Boston Globe noted at the time of his nomination that "Gordon England had no military experience, but he had just the right qualification to become President Bush’s pick for secretary of the Navy: Two decades in the corporate world."
Former Pentagon and military officials populate General Dynamic’s Board of Directors, including Jay L. Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations in the U.S. Navy, Paul G. Kaminski, Under Secretary of U.S. Department of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, and George A. Joulwan, former U.S. Army Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had an interest in the company as well. He received $1 million of stock in General Dynamics, as well as more than $20 million in other corporate investments, when he joined the board of America Online.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=12
General Electric
CEO: Jeffrey R. Immelt
Military contracts 2005: $2.2 billion
Defense-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $220,950*
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=16
General Electric has been involved in so many cases of fraud that in the 1990s the Pentagon's Defense Contract Management Agency created a special investigations office specifically for the company, which indicted GE on 22 criminal counts and recovered $221.7 million. In one case, in 1992, GE entered a guilty plea to criminal and civil charges for defrauding the Pentagon in a case where money was funneled to the Israeli military. GE was fined $69 million for violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
GE’s financial division has been another area ripe for fraud. GE was fined $100 million for trying to get bankrupt creditors to pay without informing the bankruptcy courts, in effect paying debts that they no longer legally owed. Not surprisingly, General Electric is the financial backer of WorldCom, the telecom company whose massive fraud and creative accounting led to the largest bankruptcy in US history.
The company has been involved in countless scandals, but strangely enough, they don’t seem to affect General Electric’s ability to win government contracts – but then, this is typical of all military contractors. According to a survey by the Center for Public Integrity, from 1990-2002, 30 of the US government’s top contractors were found guilty of fraud in 400 cases, leading to settlements and fines amounting to at least $3.4 billion. General Electric paid $982.9 million for 63 cases in this period.
Such repeated behavior and continued contracts wouldn’t be possible without friends in high places, of which General Electric. GE spent more than $31 million in 2001 and 2002 lobbying lawmakers; in 2000 it spent $16 million.
Reigning CEO Jack Welch had enormous influence and was consistently ranked CEO of the Year by the slavish business press; he was major Republican donor as well.
GE director Sam Nunn was senator for Georgia for 27 years, and also sits on the boards of ChevronTexaco.
GE’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel and Secretary, Benjamin W. Heineman, used to work for the US government’s Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
General Electric's defense sector gave $221,200 to political campaigns in the 2004 election cycle, with 50 percent going to Democrats and 50 percent to Republicans.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=16
Halliburton
CEO: David J. Lesar
Military contracts 2005: $5.8 billion
Oil and gas-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $221,249*
The biggest windfall in the invasion of Iraq has most certainly gone to the oil services and logistics company Halliburton . The company, which was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, had revenue of over $8 billion in contracts in Iraq in 2003 alone. And while Halliburton ’s dealings in Iraq have been dogged everywhere by scandal – including now a criminal investigation into overcharging by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root for gas shipped into Iraq – Vice President Cheney manages to be doing quite well from the deal. He owns $433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options worth more than $10 million dollars.
But Halliburton ’s history of benefiting from government largesse goes back a ways. From 1962 to 1972 the Pentagon paid the company tens of millions of dollars to work in South Vietnam, where they built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the demilitarized zone to the Mekong Delta. The company was one of the main contractors hired to construct the Diego Garcia air base in the Indian Ocean, according to Pentagon military histories.
In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions under then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney. When Cheney quit his Pentagon job, he landed the job of Halliburton 's CEO, bringing with him his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton 's government business until they quit in 2000, once Cheney was elected vice president. This included a $2.2 billion bill for a Brown and Root contract to support US soldiers in Operation Just Endeavor in the Balkans.
After Cheney and Gribbin departed, another confidante of Cheney, Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's old job of go-between for the government and the company, according to Brown and Root's own press releases.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=15
Science Applications International Corporation
CEO: Ken Dahlberg
Military contracts 2005: $2.8 billion
Campaign contributions in 2004: $781,410 (defense related)
SAIC, awarded control of the Iraqi Media Network, was not able to spin US propaganda in Iraq and ended up being forced to withdraw. But their financial prospects remain solid as supplier of surveillance technology to US spy agencies.
SAIC was given the contract to run the Occupational Authority’s Iraqi Media Network, including television stations, radio stations and newspapers. But even as propaganda goes, the network was such a flop – no Iraqis would watch it – that SAIC lost the contract this January.
But SAIC's biggest source of income is surveillance especially for the United States spy agencies: it is reportedly the largest recipient of contracts from the National Security Agency (NSA) and one of the top five contractors to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Some 5,000 employees (or one in eight employees) have security clearances. Beyster himself has one of the highest top-secret clearances of any civilian in the country. "We are a stealth company," Keith Nightingale, a former Army special ops officer, told a magazine named Business 2.0. "We're everywhere, but almost never seen."
Today two of SAIC's most valuable products are: TeraText and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) data-mining programs that are used by intelligence agencies to sift the immense volumes of data they now collect by monitoring phone calls, faxes, e-mails, and other types of electronic communications.
SAIC became home to former United Nations weapons inspector David Kay who went to SAIC as a vice president from 1993 to 2002. Last year he was hired by the CIA to return to Iraq and head the search for weapons of mass destruction.
Critics note that the company has a revolving door with the spy agencies: NSA veteran William B. Black Jr. retired from the intelligence agency in 1997, went to SAIC for three years and returned to the NSA as deputy director in 2000. Two years later, SAIC won the $282 million job of overseeing the latest phase of Trailblazer, the most thorough revamping in the agency's history of its eavesdropping systems.
SAIC has dozens of other government contracts: it trains air marshals for the Federal Aviation Administration, works with Bechtel to run the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada on Western Shoshone traditional lands (despite major protests from the Native Americans), The Army hired the company to destroy old chemical weapons at Aberdeen Proving Ground, the National Cancer Institute uses SAIC to help run its research facility in Frederick, the Transportation Security Administration asked it to dispose of scissors and pocket knives confiscated from air travelers and SAIC's unmanned Vigilante helicopters, equipped with Raytheon's low-cost, precision-kill rockets, are to undergo testing by the Army.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=17
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Bechtel Group Inc.
Because Bechtel is a private corporation, however, the total number of its branches and affiliated companies is not publicly disclosed. From 1990 to fiscal year 2002, the company received more than $11.7 billion in U.S. government contracts—the sixth largest amount received by any of the approximately 70 companies with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Along the way, company executives built strong relationships within the Arab world, including with Bin Laden Construction, owned by the Saudi family whose estranged son Osama became the symbol of international terrorism. The New Yorker magazine has reported that Bin Laden Construction holds a $10 million stake in the Fremont Group, formerly known as Bechtel Investments, a subsidiary of Bechtel until 1986.
By far the most influential hire, however, was George P. Shultz. After leaving the Nixon administration in 1974, where he served as Treasury secretary, Shultz joined Bechtel as its executive vice president. Shultz suspended his association with Bechtel when appointed secretary of state by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. In 1983, Shultz dispatched diplomatic envoy Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to advocate for construction of a pipeline running from Iraqi oilfields to Jordan's port of Aqaba. According to documents recently obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies, Hussein was afraid Israel would bomb the pipeline, so an investor in the project—whom Bechtel claimed was not on its payroll—reportedly tried to arrange a deal through the U.S. Attorney General's office by which Israel would receive some $70 million per year not to bomb the pipeline. Critics accused Shultz of intervening on behalf of Bechtel, which he denied. Shultz rejoined Bechtel in 1989 as a member of its board of directors after retiring from the State Department. Upon returning, he learned that the company had assumed a $2 billion contract for project management of an Iraqi petrochemicals complex that manufactured ethylene oxide, a chemical used in the production of plastics. U.S. chemical experts pointed out, however, that the chemical was also a precursor to mustard gas. On Shultz's recommendation, Bechtel pulled out of the project. Shultz currently serves as a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
In 1998, Bechtel hired former Marine four-star general Jack Sheehan as senior vice president in charge of project operations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Sheehan served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic and Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Command before his retirement in 1997. After leaving active duty, Sheehan served as Special Adviser for Central Asia for two U.S. defense secretaries. He also sits on the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon-appointed board that advises it on defense issues.
Other hires from the federal rolls include Charles "Chuck" Redman, who joined Bechtel in 1996 after a 22-year career in the State Department that included posts as ambassador to Sweden and Germany and special envoy to Haiti and Yugoslavia (he also worked as a spokesman for Schultz); Richard Helms, now deceased, who consulted on Iranian and Middle Eastern projects in 1978 after serving as CIA director and ambassador to Iran, becoming embroiled in the assassination attempt on Fidel Castro and overthrow of Chilean leader Salvador Allende; and J. Bennett Johnston, board member of Nexant Inc., the energy consultancy branch of Bechtel, who served as U.S. Senator from oil-rich Louisiana from 1972 to 1997, and authored the Energy Policy Act of 1992.
Bechtel's government influence has also worked in the other direction, where company officers have served or consulted in government capacities.
CEO Riley Bechtel was appointed in February 2003 to the President's Export Council, which advises the president on programs to improve trade.
Former Bechtel Energy Resources President Ross Connelly left the company in 1995 and in 2001 was appointed executive vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which provides financing and insurance for U.S. companies operating in other countries.
Daniel Chao, Vice President of Bechtel Enterprises Holdings Inc., was appointed a member of the Advisory Committee for the Export-Import Bank in August 2002. The Export-Import Bank provides loans, loan guarantees and other financial support for U.S. companies abroad, and has enjoyed a good relationship with Bechtel. In addition to awarding the company several loans, it was headed from 1977 to 1982 by former Bechtel vice president John L. Moore, and former Bechtel CEO Stephen D. Bechtel sat on its advisory committee from 1969 to 1972.
In addition, the Clinton administration appointed Bob Baxter, former president of Bechtel's Civil Global Industry Unit, to the Advisory Committee to the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection in 1998, and former Bechtel Technology & Consulting manager Larry Papay to the Panel on Energy R&D of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology in 1997.
http://www.public-i.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=6
This type of close connection, under both democratic and republican administrations, is troubling. This intermarriage of government and corporations can contaminate foreign policy decisions.
If the government and corporations begin to blur, and blend together, then there is a risk that decisions will be made based on financial motivations. Clearly, for many of these companies, war is good business. Unlike the private market, many times bids are done behind closed doors.
The record for many of these companies, in regards to integrity, is also not a good one. All too often you will find some of these names also listed in connection with scandals.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the world about the consequences of such a military industrial complex when he left office.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
What would he say now ?
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