Military Industrial Warriors In The Bush Administration and Space Dollars

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Lockheed and possibly Raytheon stands to receive the lion's share of future space contracts because of Boeing's suspension for spying on Lockheed.

With the new money appropriated for homeland defense ($38 billion for FY 2003), virtually all of the big defense contractors ? Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon have started hawking their products for use in domestic security.

With a share of 24% of U.S. arms exports, Lockheed-Martin is the world's largest arms exporting company. Lockheed leads the pack of defense contractors who do business with the U.S. with valuable Pentagon contracts worth a total of nearly $30 billion and an advertised $70 billion backlog.

A World Policy Institute review found that 32 major policy makers in the current administration have significant ties to the arms industry now, and prior to joining the administration.

-Rumsfeld was chosen as defense chief to usher in the next cash cow for the military industry: Space-Based Weaponry. He chaired the Rumsfeld Commission a.k.a.: "Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States" Wolfowitz was on the board, and Iraq reconstruction's Gen. Jay Garner was there too.

-Peter B. Teets, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, is the former president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin who retired from the company in late 1999.

Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO, Undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying.

To date it is believed that the NRO has provided more than $500 million each to Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. "A key player in supplying revolutionary breakthrough technology has been, and will continue to be, the National Reconnaissance Office," Teets said February in a Pentagon briefing.

As reported by Karl Grossman of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Stephen Hadley told an Air Force Association Convention in a speech September 11, 2000, "Space is going to be important. It has a great feature in the military."

-Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of DOD, and former assistant to Dick Cheney, was a Northrop-Grumman consultant.
Wolfowitz, along with Condi Rice and Richard Perle, and others, formed the Bush campaign foreign policy and national security team with others, which Ms. Rice named "The Vulcans," after a statue of the Roman god in Rice's hometown.

Wolfowitz is a longtime member of the PNAC, and a veteran of both the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

-Colin Powell, owned more than $1 million in General Dynamics stock before joining the administration.

-Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy was a General Dynamics contractor and a former president of Lockheed.

- Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne, was Senior Vice President for International Planning and Development at General Dynamics before joining the administration.

- Richard Perle, White House Defense Policy Advisor, worked for Trireme, a company of which he is a managing partner, involved in security and military technologies, and agreed to work as a paid lobbyist for Global Crossing, a telecommunications giant seeking a major Pentagon contract.

Perle accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, which is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country's strategic defense policies.

-Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President is a Boeing shareholder.

-Michael Jackson, Deputy Secretary of Transportation is the former Vice President, Former CEO of Lockheed Information and Management Services and a shareholder.

-Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation is a former Vice President, shareholder of Lockheed, who fell out of Congress and into Lockheed's financial cradle.

-Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America was a paid consultant for Lockheed when the company was seeking a reversal of the U.S. ban on the sale of high tech weapons to Latin America.

-James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force is a former president of Northrop-Grumman, a subsidiary of Lockheed. "We have encouraged and exploited the rapid advancement and employment of innovative technologies and have taken significant action to implement the findings of the Space Commission in our new role as the executive agent for space," he said to a Senate committee in 2002.

-Dov Zakheim - Under Secretary for Comptroller of Defense was a paid advisory board member of Northrup-Grumman.

-Nelson F. Gibbs, Air Force; Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment and Logistics is a former corporate comptroller for Northrop-Grumman.

-Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator was on a paid advisory board of Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.

-I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs was a Northrup-Grumman consultant.

-Retired general Jay Garner, who served briefly as the administrator for postwar Iraq, is the President of SYColeman Corp., which is owned by L-3, one of Lockheed-Martin's communications technology units.

In their new positions, these military industrial warriors are well-positioned to make decisions on procurement and research programs that will directly or indirectly benefit their former employer (Lockheed),which has major portfolios in nuclear weapons, missile defense, and military space systems.

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1. poke

This is how we got to the moon (proposal).

[montanacowboy]

2. Maybe you should fax these facts

to the dumb dora democrats so they don't all fall over themselves being patriotic to vote for a *Moondoggle.

[cthrumatrix]

3. also this would focus on two states : calif and florida (2004 election)

this is about the election...first