The indictment of four-star Navy Admiral Robert Burke on bribery charges late last month raised eyebrows about the extent of corruption in the Navy and beyond. The scheme was simple. Burke allegedly steered a $355,000 Pentagon contract to a small workforce training firm — described unhelpfully in the Justice Department’s description as “Company A." Less than a year later he took a job at Company A in exchange for a $500,000 annual salary and 100,000 stock options.
The Burke indictment comes on the heels of Washington Post writer Craig Whitlock’s illuminating book on the Fat Leonard Scandal, the biggest, most embarrassing corruption scheme in the history of the U.S. Navy. In the words of his publisher, Simon Schuster, Whitlock’s book reveals “how a charismatic Malaysian defense contractor bribed scores of high-ranking military officers, defrauded the US Navy of tens of millions of dollars, and jeopardized our nation’s security.”
Obviously, the Navy needs to clean up its act
But this is just part of a pernicious system of corrupt dealings and profiteering in Pentagon procurement practices, and much of it is completely legal. It involves campaign contributions from major weapons contractors to key members of Congress with the most power to determine the size and shape of the Pentagon budget, and job blackmail, in which companies place facilities in as many congressional districts as possible and then stand ready to accuse members of cutting local jobs if they vote against a weapons program, no matter how misguided or dysfunctional it may be.
It also involves the revolving door, in which arms industry executives often do stints in top national security posts, even serving as secretary of defense, or, on the other side of the revolving door, when high ranking Pentagon and military officials go to work for weapons makers when they leave government service.
In 1995 the Boston Globe exposed that 80-90% flag officers go on the work for defense industry corporations.
The US defense department is about money and jobs, not crafting an effective defense strategy or buying weapons systems that are appropriate for carrying out that strategy.
Yet the hue and cry from Congress is to throw more money into the defense budget from which Congress benefits financially. And to encourage foreign adventures throughout the world.
It is long past time to revamp how our department of defense and Congress operates. The question is how to do it. Most congressional members are in cahoots with the defense industry.
And the cleaning up of this mess still leaves another big problem. The pharmaceutical industry and Congressional co-conspirators.
The United States government is not much different from other third world corrupt governments just the means to control their respective citizenry. The third world uses jail and murder. The United States uses conspicuous consumption to detract the citizenry from the government & corporate looting and offering up political candidates that will not reform the existing system.
