Missile Defense And Money
In case you missed it, the New York Times' Eric Lipton plunged deep into the nastiness and corruption that apparently enveloped some of the contracting at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala.
At the center of his examination is Michael Cantrell, a government engineer, and a colleague, who decided that it was time for them to start getting a cut of the seemingly endless federal spending on missile defense research and development. So far, since its inception in the Reagan administration, the program has cost $110 billion.
The men pleaded guilty earlier this year to corruption charges. But Lipton goes well beyond the pleas, showing yet again how the mechanisms of the ailing federal procurement systems can be torqued.
"Mr. Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it," the story says. "Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures."
More from the story:
"Mr. Cantrell worked in a division that was a small part of the national missile defense program. Determined to save his job, he often bypassed his bosses and broke department rules to make his case on Capitol Hill. He enlisted contractors to pitch projects that would keep the dollars flowing and paid lobbyists to ease them through. He cultivated lawmakers, who were eager to send money back home or to favored contractors and did not ask many questions. And when he ran into trouble, he could count on his powerful friends for protection from Pentagon officials who provided little oversight and were afraid of alienating lawmakers.
"Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, for example, chewed out Pentagon officials who opposed a missile range Mr. Cantrell and his contractor allies were seeking to build in Alaska, prompting them to back off, while a staffer for former Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, intervened when the Pentagon threatened to discipline Mr. Cantrell for lobbying, a banned activity for civil servants.
"'I could go over to the Hill and put pressure on people above me and get something done,' Mr. Cantrell explained about his success in Washington. 'With the Army, as long as the senator is not calling over and complaining, everything is O.K. And the senator will not call over and complain unless the contractor you're working with does not get his money. So you just have to keep the players happy and it works.'"
This is good stuff to know. I know that some of you dear readers agree.
By Robert O'Harrow |
October 17, 2008; 10:44 PM ET
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Posted by: RHSchumann | October 20, 2008 10:29 AM
It's interesting to note that defense spending, which amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars every year, easily matches the proposed bail out plan for Wall Street that many people are so worried about right now. Shouldn't we be more concerned about these absurd defense contracts that waste such great quantities of tax payers' money? Mr. Cantrell is symptomatic of many others like himself who help the government to squander huge amounts of money with little or no benefit to the American people except for jobs. In that case, we would do just as well investing that money in health care, or energy development or just about anything else, because the money won't do anything for anyone if it's wasted. One way way to reduce deficit spending is to redirect tax money into other areas instead of defense. Less would come out of people's pockets to be wasted on nothing at all.
Posted by: Michael McCurley | October 22, 2008 8:47 PM
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What Mr. Cantrell siphoned off is small stuff compared to the 110 Billion this harebrained scheme has cost the tax payers to date. The saintly President Reagan started this nonsense and Presidents Bush Sr. and Clinton were unable to kill it, even though they put it on the back burner. Of course this scheme fit right into Bush Jr's agenda and many have benefited greatly from it without up[ to date showing any tangible results. Truth be told, there never can be a 100% defense against incoming intercontinental missiles. Even a 1% failure rate is too much. The only defense is a global ban on nuclear weapons. Would that protect us from a nuclear device smuggled in by ship or car? Of course not, but neither would an anti-missile shield. But international controls should be able to verify that no country has warheads than can be mated to a missile.