Oxymoron — military ethics: Where do the Pentagon’s military officers go after their retirement from active service? Many go to work for big defense contractors as liaisons between the contractors and the people who sign the contracts on Capitol Hill.
For instance, one of the more notorious cases involved Darleen Druyun, a high-ranking Air Force procurement official who was in charge of overseeing Boeing Co. air tanker negotiations at the same time she was applying for a top Boeing job. Talk about padding your resume!
She pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and in 2004 was sentenced to nine months in prison.
The Senate unanimously passed a plan last November to officially identify former Pentagon officials who go to work for defense contractors as part of the $491.5 billion defense authorization bill. But somewhere in the House-Senate conferences of December, the provision disappeared, quietly, without a peep of conscience.
Congress Daily offered this insipid insight that’s one for the “Duh” file: “The removal of the provision from the defense bill that would have required the defense companies to report the names of former members and military officers to benefit from government contracts signals the problems likely ahead in changing ethics rules for both lawmakers and lobbyists.” (emphasis added)
The provision would have required companies with defense contracts over $10 million to name former defense officials or military officers who received compensation from the contractors in an annual report to the Pentagon. Now that doesn’t sound too egregious, does it?
Contractor disclosure apparently got scrubbed after the Pentagon raised objections, according to one top Senate staffer involved in the talks.
The department apparently felt “there were too many people covered” by the provision, and there also was resistance by the House during a short conference meeting prior to the lawmakers’ departure for the Christmas holidays.
In the fiscal free-for-all that characterizes the Bush administration, such week-kneed attempts to inject an iota of ethics into the self-enrichment process will undoubtedly continue to fail. All hail the Commander-In-Thief!
