Coast Guard's Purchasing Raises Conflict-of-Interest Flags

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

By Spencer S. Hsu and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 25, 2007; Page A09

Four of the seven top U.S. Coast Guard officers who retired since 1998 took positions with private firms involved in the Coast Guard's troubled $24 billion fleet replacement program, an effort that government investigators have criticized for putting contractors' interests ahead of taxpayers'.

They weren't the only officials to oversee one of the federal government's most complex experiments at privatization, known as Deepwater, who had past or subsequent business ties to the contract consortium led by industry giants Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

The secretary of transportation, Norman Y. Mineta, whose department included the Coast Guard when the contract was awarded in 2002, was a former Lockheed executive. Two deputy secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security, which the Coast Guard became part of in 2003, were former Lockheed executives, and a third later served on its board.

Washington's revolving-door laws have long allowed officials from industry giants such as Lockheed, the nation's largest defense contractor, to spend parts of their careers working for U.S. security agencies that make huge purchases from those companies, though there are limits.




Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032400946.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity

[Miss Chybil]

1. All this privatization of the people's business is really working out well for us, isn't it?

/sarcasm