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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 12 April 27 - May 3, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
Special
Report By
André Verlöy and Daniel Politi Back
to Alternative Reader Index
Of
the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that
advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more
than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are
registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense
contractors. Defense
Policy Board Advisory Committee members Corporate
Affiliations of Defense Policy Board Members The board’s chairman, Richard
Perle, resigned yesterday, March 27, 2003, amid allegations of conflicts of
interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense
Department, although he will remain a member of the board. Eight of Perle’s
colleagues on the board have ties to companies with significant contracts from
the Pentagon. Members of the board disclose their business interests annually to
the Pentagon, but the disclosures are not available to the public. “The
forms are filed with the Standards of Conduct Office which review the filings to
make sure they are in compliance with government ethics,” Pentagon spokesman
Maj. Ted Wadsworth told the Center for Public Integrity. The
companies with ties to Defense Policy Board members include prominent firms like
Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton and
smaller players like Symantec Corp., Technology Strategies and Alliance Corp.,
and Polycom Inc. Defense
companies are awarded contracts for numerous reasons; there is nothing to
indicate that serving on the Defense Policy Board confers a decisive advantage
to firms with which a member is associated. According
to its charter, the board was set up in 1985 to provide the Secretary of Defense
“with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of
defense policy.” The members are selected by and report to the Under Secretary
of Defense for Policy—currently Douglas Feith, a former Reagan administration
official. All members are approved by the Secretary of Defense. The board’s
quarterly meetings—normally held over a two-day period—are classified, and
each session’s proceedings are summarized for the Defense Secretary. The board
does not write reports or vote on issues. Feith, according to the charter, can
call additional meetings if required. Notices of the meetings are filed at least
15 days before they are held in the Federal Register. For
additional information, visit the Web site of PBS' "Now With Bill Moyers."
The
board, whose list of members reads like a who’s who of former high-level
government and military officials, focuses on long-term policy issues such as
the strategic implications of defense policies and tactical considerations,
including what types of weapons the military should develop. Michael
O’Hanlon, a military expert at The Brookings Institution, told Time magazine
in November 2002 that the board “is just another [public relations] shop for
Rumsfeld.” Former members said that the character of the board changed under
Rumsfeld. Previously the board was more bi-partisan; under Rumsfeld, it has
become more interested in policy changes. The board has no official role in
policy decisions. The
agendas for the last three meetings, which were obtained by the Center, show a
variety of issues were discussed. The Oct. 10-11, 2002 meeting was devoted to
intelligence briefings from the Defense Intelligence Agency and other
administration officials. One of the first items on the agenda was an ethics
brief by the Office of the General Counsel. In
December 2002, a two-hour intelligence briefing, strategy, North Korea, and the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were on the agenda. In February 2003,
the topics discussed on the first day included North Korea, Iran and Total
Information Awareness, the controversial Pentagon research program that aims to
gather and analyze a vast array of information on Americans. As the Center
previously reported, research for the program is being conducted by private
contractors. Richard
Perle, who has been a very public advocate of the war in Iraq, resigned the
chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board after being criticized in recent weeks
because of his involvement in companies that have significant business before
the Defense Department. He did not return the Center’s phone calls. In
a March 24 letter, Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House of
Representatives Judiciary Committee, asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to
investigate Perle’s role as a paid adviser to the bankrupt telecommunications
company Global Crossing Ltd. The Hamilton, Bermuda-based company sought approval
of its sale of overseas subsidiaries from the Committee on Foreign Investment in
the United States, a government panel that can block sales or mergers that
conflict with U.S. national security interests. Rumsfeld is a member of the
Committee. Perle
reportedly advised clients of Goldman Sachs on investment opportunities in
post-war Iraq, and is a director with stock options of the U.K.-based Autonomy
Corp., whose customers include the Defense Department. “Mr.
Perle is considered a ‘special government employee’ and is subject to
government ethics prohibition—both regulatory and criminal—on using public
office for private gain,” Rep. Conyers wrote in the letter obtained by the
Center. Potential
conflicts not limited to Perle Perle,
however, is not the only Defense Policy Board member with ties to companies that
do business with the Defense Department: Retired
Adm. David Jeremiah, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who
served over 38 years in the Navy, is a director or advisor of at least five
corporations that received more than $10 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2002.
Jeremiah also sat on the board of Getronics Government Solutions, a company that
was acquired by DigitalNet in December 2002 and is now known as DigitalNet
Government Solutions. According to a news report by Bloomberg, Richard Perle is
a director of DigitalNet Holdings Inc., which has filed for a $109 million stock
sale. Retired
Air Force Gen. Ronald Fogleman sits on the board of directors of companies which
received more than $900 million in contracts in 2002. The companies, which all
have longstanding business relationships with the Air Force and other Defense
Department branches, include Rolls-Royce North America, North American Airlines,
AAR Corporation and the Mitre Corp. In addition to being chief of staff for the
Air Force, Fogleman has served as a military advisor to the Secretary of
Defense, the National Security Council and the President. He also served as
commander-in-chief of the U.S. Transportation Command, commander of Air Mobility
Command, the 7th Air Force and the Air Component Command of the U.S./ROK
Combined Forces Command. Retired
Gen. Jack Sheehan joined Bechtel in 1998 after 35 years in the U.S. Marine Corp.
Bechtel,
one of the world's largest engineering-construction firms, is among the
companies bidding for contracts to rebuild Iraq. The company had defense
contracts worth close to $650 million in 2001 and more than $1 billion in 2002.
Sheehan is currently a senior vice president and partner and responsible for the
execution and strategy for the region that includes Europe, Africa, the Middle
East and Southwest Asia. The four-star general served as NATO’s Supreme Allied
Commander Atlantic and Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Command before his
retirement in 1997. After his leaving active duty, he served as Special Advisor
for Central Asia for two secretaries of Defense. Former
CIA director James Woolsey is a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a
venture-capital firm that like Perle’s Trireme Partners is soliciting
investment for homeland security firms. Woolsey
joined consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as vice president in July 2002. The
company had contracts worth more than $680 million in 2002. Woolsey told the
Wall Street Journal that he does no lobbying and that none of the companies he
has ties to have been discussed during a Defense Policy Board meeting.
Previously, Woolsey worked for law firm Shea & Gardner. He has held
high-level positions in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. William
Owens, another former high-level military officer, sits on boards of five
companies that received more than $60 million in defense contracts last year.
Previously, he was president, chief operating officer and vice chair of Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC), among the ten largest defense
contractors. One of the companies, Symantec Corp., increased its contracts from
$95,000 in 2001 to more than $1 million in 2002. Owens,
who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is widely recognized
for bringing commercial high technology into the U.S. Department of Defense. He
was the architect of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), an advanced
systems technology approach to military operations that represents a significant
change in the system of requirements, budgets and technology for the U.S.
military since World War II. Owens serves on the boards of directors for several
technology companies, including Nortel Networks, ViaSat and Polycom. Harold
Brown, a former Secretary of Defense under President Jimmy Carter, and James
Schlesinger, who has served as CIA director, defense secretary and energy
secretary in the Carter and Nixon administrations, are two others that have ties
to defense contractors. Brown, a partner of Warburg Pincus LLC, is a board
member of Philip Morris Companies and a trustee of the Rand Corporation, which
respectively had contracts worth $146 million and $83 million in 2002.
Schlesinger, a senior adviser at Lehman Brothers, chairs the board of trustees
of the Mitre Corp., a not-for-profit that provides research and development
support for the government. Mitre had defense contracts worth $440 million in
2001 and $474 million in 2002. Chris
Williams is one of four registered lobbyists to serve on the board, and the only
one to lobby for defense companies. Williams, who served as a special assistant
for policy matters to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after having been in a similar
capacity for Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), joined Johnston & Associates after
leaving the Pentagon. Although
the firm had represented Lockheed Martin prior to Williams’ arrival, the firm
picked up two large defense contractors as clients once Williams was on board:
Boeing, TRW and Northrop Grumman, for which the firm earned a total of more than
$220,000. The firm lobbied exclusively on defense appropriations and related
authorization bills for its new clients. Johnston & Associates is more often
employed by energy companies; its founder, J. Bennett Johnston, is a former
Democratic senator from Louisiana who chaired the Energy Committee. None
of the members with ties to defense contractors responded to requests for
comment. The
board’s membership also contains other well known Washington hands, including
some who are registered lobbyists. Richard V. Allen, a former Nixon and Reagan
administration official, who is now a senior counselor to APCO Worldwide,
registered as a lobbyist for Alliance Aircraft. Former
Congressional representative Tillie Fowler joined the law firm Holland &
Knight in 2001. She served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives
where she was a member of several committees including the House Armed Services
Committee and the Transportation Committee. In 2002 she lobbied for such clients
as the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the American Plastics Council.
Thomas
S. Foley is a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld law firm, which
he joined in 2001. He was the U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2001 and was
the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1989 to 1994, after being a
representative since 1965. Foley is a registered lobbyist, but has no defense
clients. April 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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