After
reading this article, I recalled details of the allegations I raised in my June
2009 Qui Tam lawsuit, filed with the Dept of Justice. Call me naive.
But after reading this article, I questioned... "Who within public service is
left to trust that will honestly protect the interest of our tax dollars?"
By blogging about government corruption, I feel like I'm fighting a lost cause. As a former military budget
officer and whistle blower, I was punished in the worse way for for reporting military fraud. My allegations also included evidence of illegal
military revolving door practices. Like the story goes, these allegations were
never investigated.
As a tax
paying citizen, I would like to know which federal agency determines what
allegations of fraud to investigate and which ones to ignore. Is there a
certain dollar threshold, or lost to the tax payers, before the Dept. of Justice Anti-Trust division would consider investigating Qui Tam claims of illegal military or defense contractor revolving door practices?
I'm just
saying....
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Last week POGO posted the following article, written
by BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D.,
--- A former executive
and lobbyist for defense
contractor Lockheed Martin has been appointed to one of the most powerful posts
on Capitol Hill overseeing the defense industry.
Ann Elise Sauer, who
left Lockheed last year, is now the Republican staff director at the Senate
Armed Services Committee. The Committee oversees military spending, including
major weapons systems that are central to Lockheed’s business.
Sauer received more than $1.66 million from Lockheed
during a reporting period that encompasses this year and last year, according
to a financial disclosure form she filed in April. The $1.66 million included
salary, bonus, deferred compensation and a
lump sum described in the filing as “RETIRED
PAY.”
Sauer was appointed to the Senate staff position in
February. Her financial disclosure form, recently noted by Legistorm, called attention to her
appointment.
Lockheed Martin, the Department of Defense’s top
contractor (in terms of total contract dollars awarded yearly), receivestens of billions of dollars annually from
the Pentagon. Last year alone, the firm was awarded Department of Defense
contracts valued at more than $33 billion. The company is responsible for some
of the Pentagon's most expensive and troubled weapon systems, including the
F-22 and F-35 fighter jets.
As minority staff director, Sauer reports to Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
McCain has a history as a vocal
critic of Lockheed Martin programs. Before Sauer’s appointment, McCain referred
to the beleaguered F-22 as an “expensive corroding hangar queen” and labeled
the F-35 program “a scandal and a tragedy.”
More recently, McCain announced that he will be joining
Lockheed Martin and other Pentagon contractors in their fight to avoid defense
sequestration -– a potential consequence of last year’s Budget Control
Act that could reduce defense spending to approximately 2007 levels.
“I have to admit I was shocked when we learned this,”
Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director, said of Sauer’s appointment.
“For at least a decade, McCain has had no peers in the
Congress when it comes to oversight of major defense contractors,” Brian said.
“I don't see how he can possibly continue this legacy given this staffing
decision, and that is terribly disappointing,” she added.
McCain has called attention to what he has described as
potential pitfalls of the revolving door between the defense industry and the
government. In a December 15 Senate speech,
McCain said:
“To be clear, the military-industrial-congressional
complex does not cause programs to fail. But, it does help create
poorly-conceived programs -- programs that are so fundamentally unsound that
they are doomed to be poorly executed. And, it does help keep them alive -- long after they
should have been ended or restructured.”
Sauer and a spokesman for McCain did not respond to
requests for comment. A Lockheed spokesman declined to comment.
Among the questions the McCain spokesman left unanswered:
Whether Sauer will recuse herself from any matters involving Lockheed.
Because the Armed Services Committee helps set the
Pentagon’s budget, it is unclear how the Republican staff director could avoid
matters that affect the company.
Sauer is one of the more vivid examples of the revolving
door between the defense industry and its overseers in government.
Before her career of more than 10 years at Lockheed, she
worked in the Senate for more than two decades, ultimately as a senior aide to
McCain, according to a Sauer biography on a web site associated
with the National Defense Industrial Association.
When she left Lockheed in January 2011, she was “Vice
President, Acquisition Policy, Logistics, and Budget,” according to the
biography.
Lobbying Disclosure Act records show that Sauer was a registered
Lockheed lobbyist during most of her time with the firm.
“At various times, she was responsible for managing the
corporation’s senior-evel [sic] interfaces with senior Executive and
Legislative Branch officials on a wide array of programs and policy issues,”
the Sauer biography says.
A LinkedIn profile for Sauer says: “I
held several senior positions in the Government Relations office, including
management of marketing and lobbying teams covering a broad array of the
corporation's areas of interest.”
After leaving Lockheed, Sauer ran her own consulting
business, which “provided advisory services to major defense corporations,” the
biography says. Sauer’s financial disclosure form lists BAE Systems paying her
$55,000 in consulting fees. A BAE Systems spokesman could not be reached for
comment.
Sauer’s story marks the second time in as many months that
POGO has reported on a Congressional armed services committee staffer having
financial ties to a major defense contractor. Last month POGO's Dana Liebelson reported that,
before joining the House Armed Services Committee, Thomas MacKenzie was a
Northrop Grumman lobbyist and held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of the
company’s stock.