Most of the media is dodging the question of the involvement of Lockheed Martin Corp (American military) in the Canadian census.  

Many thanks to Doug: 

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/too-big-to-fail-lockheed-martins-got-their-fingers-everywhere-says-author-yftt_535769.html 

This is an important interview with William Hartung, author of “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex“.   

Your assistance in getting wide distribution for this interview is appreciated.  

Too Big to Fail: Lockheed Martin’s “Got Their Fingers Everywhere”, Says Author

Posted Jan 04, 2011 09:05am EST by Stacy Curtin     Too big to fail?

That’s been the key question asked of Wall Street’s biggest banks since the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which sent shock waves through the global financial system and led to the worst recession this country has seen since the Great Depression.

But, there is another firm far from the circles of Wall Street for which that same question should be asked, says William Hartung, author of the new book Prophets of War. The subtitle of his book says it all: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

With $40 billion in annual revenue, Lockheed Martin is the single largest recipient of U.S. tax dollars. The company receives about $36 billion in government contracts per year.   In 2008, $29 billion of that was for U.S. military contracts – a dollar figure 25% higher than its competitors Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman.

What does that mean for you, the U.S. taxpayer? According to Hartung, each taxpaying household contributes $260 to Lockheed’s coffers each year!

All evidence enough that the company is “too big to fail”, as Hartung tells Aaron in the accompanying clip.

A prime example of Washington looking out for Lockheed happened just last year when debate ensued over whether to continue the company’s grossly expensive F-22 stealth fighter program, says Hartung, who has covered the defense industry for years and is also the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.

The Pentagon eventually did suspend funds terminating Lockheed’s development of the F-22 Raptor, which has been the most costly fighter plane ever.  But, at the same time the U.S. Defense Department cut off funds for the F-22, it added an additional $4 billion to the Lockheed’s F-35 fighter plane program. The government “basically took with one hand and gave back [to Lockheed] with the other,” says Hartung of a company that is the only major contractor of fighter planes for the U.S. Airforce.

Warning from the past

Two weeks from now marks the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s famous “military-industrial complex” speech cautioning against “undue influence” from large and politically powerful defense companies. According to Hartung, Lockheed Martin epitomizes the exact threat Eisenhower warned about.

By now you might be wondering where the defense contractor’s remaining $7 billion in government contract goes. “They have got their fingers everywhere now,” Hartung tells Aaron. As outlined in his book, Lockheed does way more than produce military aircraft and weaponry. From the U.S. Census Bureau to the U.S. Postal Service to the Internal Revenue Service, “pretty much name a government agency and they are involved,” he says.

Despite Lockheed sheer size, its stronghold on so many government agencies is evidence enough that the company is “too big to fail.” “If the government becomes so dependent on [Lockheed], for many different activities it will be hard to hold them accountable if they underperform or if there is some sort of whiff of scandal.”

Bigger may not be better, but it’s working

Hartung’s scathing criticism of Lockheed Martin comes from his belief that “they have not done the job well, often enough,” pointing to decades of cost overruns, a corporate history littered with corruption scandals and the fact that the company was one of the first ever to receive a federal bailout back in the 1970s.

When it comes down to it, Lockheed’s dominance – even with what some might call a checkered past – has much to do with the company’s ability to influence those in power, says Hartung.  In 2009, it spent nearly $15 million on campaign contributions and lobbying fees — the second highest amount for defense contractors.

Another key factor that has helped the defense contractor secure the most U.S. military contracts is the company’s ability to exploit the revolving door between Washington, the industry and itself, says Hartung.  Not only has this led to the company having strong influence over those who hold the U.S. government’s purse stings, many who are former Lockheed employees or board members, it has allowed the company to influence foreign policy decisions like pressing for war with Iraq.

In the publicity notes for the book, Hartung claims “Lockheed Martin has also funded right-wing think tanks that have done everything from press for war with Iraq to lobby for the “Star Wars” missile defense program.” He tells Aaron that they are using these think tanks to make the points that are “embarrassing to make themselves.”

Hartung acknowledges that “we need companies like Lockheed Martin to defend the country,” but he says that a lot more can be done to regulate the industry by setting “stricter accountability rules.”

I am shocked, the lawyer (Steve Seiferling) is shocked.   The Charter Right to Privacy of personal information is clearly articulated in the law. 

The date for sentencing may be next week. 

I will be meeting with Steve later today after he has reviewed the 40-page decision.   It is hard for me to imagine the circumstances under which I would not appeal the decision.  

I don’t have an electronic or scanned copy of the decision yet.  I’ll make it available on-line when I do. 

Will keep you posted on developments. 

And hey, what a world we live in!   It’s as though they want to give me lots more opportunities to talk about Lockheed Martin’s role in Canada!  Thank-you, thank-you, I will do my best to make good use. 

Do not hold me to this, because I don’t know if anyone would come out to a public meeting on the topic:  maybe I will need to do a speaking tour to explain things and to raise money for legal costs.   I expected not only to be found innocent;  I expected I would be awarded costs.   The guilty verdict is my comeuppance for being confident I guess! 

Cheers,

Sandra

“  Enthralling and explosive, “Prophets of War” is an exposé of America’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin … meticulously researched history…”

“  It should trouble Canadians that Pierre Lagueux is now a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.  As assistant deputy minister of defence in 1997 he was behind the original memorandum of understanding for Canada to join eight other countries in the development of the F-35s.”

“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”      Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Sublime orchestration:

January 2011

Week 1  –  a comprehensive book on Lockheed Martin, “Prophets of War” is launched.

Week 2  –  the outcome of my trial will be announced

It could not have been humanly orchestrated better than that!

Many thanks to Eduard, Herman, Chris, and Paul – I hope I haven’t missed anyone – – for sending in reports on “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex“.

I have been dealt the perfect hand.  . . .    But I don’t know how to play it.  I need help.

There will be a few media interviews tomorrow following the announcement of the Judge’s decision on the trial.

What is the short message I need to get across?

I want to tie in everything together but that’s too much.   I’ll get to work on a draft right away.  Input will be appreciated.

Thanks and Cheers!

Sandra

CONTENTS

(1)    COMMENTARY

(2)    NEW BOOK ON LOCKHEED MARTIN, “PROPHETS OF WAR”  BY WILLIAM HARTUNG

(3)    LOCKHEED MARTIN JET FIGHTERS A COSTLY MISTAKE FOR TAX-PAYERS

(4)    GRAND OPENING OF AVIATION CENTRE IN SASKATOON, LOCKHEED MARTIN INTEGRATED INTO OUR ECONOMY AND YOU GUESSED IT:  MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY

(5)   PRESIDENT OF U.S. DWIGHT EISENHOWER’S FAMOUS WARNING OF THE DANGERS OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX AND OTHER BITS OF WISDOM

(6)   LOCKHEED MARTIN’S MS2  — PART OF WHAT WILL BE AT SIIT, AS I UNDERSTAND

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JUDGE WHELAN’S DECISION ON MY GUILT OR INNOCENCE:

Thursday, January 13, 2011, at 9:30 in Provincial Courtroom #4 (on 19^th Street between 2^nd and 3^rd Ave).

(Charged under the Statistics Act for failure to comply with the 2006 census which I did not do because of Lockheed Martin’s involvement.)

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(1)   COMMENTARY

There will be at least some media reporting on the outcome of my trial.

The thing that makes me nervous about the court decision isn’t the outcome.

It’s whether I can find the words to convey

–        My extreme agitation at the thought of what Canadians have become part of, with Lockheed Martin

–        The magnitude of what Lockheed Martin Corporation does and is, in today’s world.

–        The threat that Lockheed Martin represents in a time when the Americans are close to running out of water in the southwest

–        The betrayal of Canadians by Canadian officialdom.

I want to use words that may not play well in the media like “horrified”.  And I only become more horrified the more I learn.

The new book, (item #2) “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex”  (William Hartung, $33)  is a timely, serendipitous gift!

I’d love to be able to take copies of “Prophets of War” to the Court House, one for the Judge, another for the Prosecutor and one to show journalists.  The Bookstore is expecting copies – I will know by 5:00 whether they arrive today, in time for tomorrow.

You may remember 2 emails about Lockheed Martin moving into the Saskatoon area:

–        2010-04-11   Lockheed Martin setting up near Saskatoon at Whitecap.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (unmanned drones).

–        2010-06-26   Aerospace Giant Lockheed Martin Donating  $3.5 Million  Training Package to the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology (SIIT) in Saskatoon    “The center is an expression of a successful public private partnership with Industrial and Regional Benefits related to military defence procurement at the core.”

I laugh when they call this the “defence” industry.  No one mentions Lockheed Martin’s “products”:  unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”), cluster munitions, weapons with Depleted Uranium (DU) (there is nothing “depleted about it at all.  DU is radioactive),  land mines and nuclear weapons.  The U.S. has “first strike” as a policy.  It is bully provocation, unintelligent offensive, assured of generating retaliation and continuing violence.   They have constructed an economy that is dependent upon the waging of war and now they are constructing the same in Canada.  With our complicity and money.

Item #4 is the November 1^st announcement of the FURTHER enlargement of the presence of the American military in Saskatoon:  “...  SIIT (Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology) secured investments from aerospace and defence companies Boeing, Rockwell Collins, and Lockheed Martin under Canada’s Industrial and Regional Benefits policy to support development of its aviation trades training programs.”

“Aviation trades”, a la Lockheed Martin, includes unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s), “an unmanned vehicle for military .. use”  as described in the April 2010 report of Lockheed coming to Whitecap.

Tax-payers are further “partnered” in all this through the Government of Canada (Western Economic Diversification and Industry Canada), the Province of Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon Airport Authority and SIAST.   We are the original funders through “offset agreements” in the various lucrative contracts Lockheed Martin has with the Federal Government.  Remember Lockheed’s extensive record of procurement fraud in the U.S. and the millions of dollars it spends on lobbying in the U.S. and now in Canada?   They are corrupt and corrupting.

Is anyone interested in this idea?

–         What if we bought copies of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, January 2011) and then distributed them to the leadership at SIIT, SIAST, the Saskatoon Airport Authority, Western Economic Diversification, the Minister (Lynn Yelich) who did the celebration thing, a copy to each of the public libraries, etc.   ?

–         If anyone is interested, you could write a note to one of the people, send it with a cheque for $35 to me.  I’ll buy the books and deliver them.  Email me for my address.

/Sandra

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(2)   NEW BOOK ON LOCKHEED MARTIN, “PROPHETS OF WAR” BY WILLIAM HARTUNG

http://www.prophetsofwar.com/     (The REVIEWS button on this website are worth reading.)

Enthralling and explosive, Prophets of War is an exposé of America’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous warning about the dangers of the military industrial complex, he never would have dreamed that a company could accumulate the kind of power and influence now wielded by this behemoth company.

As a full-service weapons maker, Lockheed Martin receives over $29 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. The company has produced spy satellites; helped the Pentagon collect personal data on U.S. citizens; provided interrogators for employment at Guantanamo Bay; manufactured our highest-tech aircraft; and more.  Lockheed Martin’s reach into all areas of US defense and American life is staggering. William Hartung’s meticulously researched history follows the company’s meteoric growth and explains how this arms industry giant has shaped US foreign policy for decades.

On Sale January 2011

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IS LOCKHEED MARTIN SHADOWING YOU?    Posted on “Truthout”  http://www.truth-out.org/is-lockheed-martin-shadowing-you66741

OR, if you would like the article along with an introductory note by the author (William Hartung),  and a video clip all from TomDispatch, continue  . . ..

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Sandra,

If you are not aware of this journalist, he is good!    Given some of your focuses, this one may be of interest with one of the sentences reporting none other than if you had written it: “If one giant outfit gives war profiteering its full modern meaning, though, it’s Lockheed Martin.”

Regards,

Eduard

 

TomDispatch.com

Tomgram: William Hartung, Lockheed Martin’s Shadow Government

Posted by William Hartung at 10:02am, January 11, 2011.

As a boy in the 1950s, I can remember my father, a World War II vet, becoming livid while insisting that our family not shop at a local grocery store.  Its owners, he swore, had been “war profiteers” and he would never forgive them.  He practically spat the phrase out.  I have no idea whether it was true.  All I know is that, for him, “war profiteer” was the worst of curses, the most horrifying of sins.  In 1947, Arthur Miller wrote a wrenching play on the subject of war profiteering, All My Sons, based on a news story about a woman who turned her father in for selling faulty parts to the U.S. military during my father’s war. It was a hit and, in 1948, was made into a movie starring Edward G. Robinson.

Now, skip 42 years.  In September 1990, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title “Privatize the Pentagon,” a distinctly tongue-in-cheek column suggesting that it was time for the U.S. to develop what I termed a “free-enterprise-oriented military.”  “Looking back,” I wrote then, “isn’t it odd that unlike the environment, the post office, the poor, and Eastern Europe, the military has experienced no privatizing pressures?”

No privatizing pressures?  Little did I know.  Today, if my dad were alive to fume about “war profiteers,” people would have no idea why he was so worked up.  Today, only a neocon could write a meaningful play with “war profiteering” as its theme, and my sarcastic column of 1990 now reads as if it were written in Klingon.  Don’t blame my dad, Arthur Miller, or me if we couldn’t imagine a future in which for-profit war would be the norm in our American world, in which a “free-enterprise-oriented military” would turn out to be the functional definition of “the U.S. military,” in which so many jobs from KP to mail delivery, guard duty to the training of foreign forces, have been outsourced to crony capitalist or rent-a-gun outfits like Halliburton, KBR, Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), and Dyncorp that think it’s just great to make a buck off war.  As they see it, permanent war couldn’t be a dandier or more profitable way to organize our world.

If one giant outfit gives war profiteering its full modern meaning, though, it’s Lockheed Martin.  You’ll know what I’m talking about when you read today’s post.  As much as any robber baron of the nineteenth century, that corporation has long deserved its own biography.  Now, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, has written Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, the definitive account of how that company came to lord it over our national security world.  It’s a staggering tale that would leave my father spinning in his grave.  (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Hartung discusses the unsettling reach of Lockheed Martin, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.)  Tom

Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?
How a Giant Weapons Maker Became the New Big Brother
By William D. Hartung

Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you?  No?  Then you haven’t been paying much attention.  Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it.

True, Lockheed Martin doesn’t actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well.  After all, it received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history.  It now does work for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.  It’s involved in surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, the Census Bureau, and the Postal Service.

Oh, and Lockheed Martin has even helped train those friendly Transportation Security Administration agents who pat you down at the airport. Naturally, the company produces cluster bombs, designs nuclear weapons, and makes the F-35 Lightning (an overpriced, behind-schedule, underperforming combat aircraft that is slated to be bought by customers in more than a dozen countries) — and when it comes to weaponry, that’s just the start of a long list. In recent times, though, it’s moved beyond anything usually associated with a weapons corporation and has been virtually running its own foreign policy, doing everything from hiring interrogators for U.S. overseas prisons (including at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq) to managing a private intelligence network in Pakistan and helping write the Afghan constitution.

A For-Profit Government-in-the-Making

If you want to feel a tad more intimidated, consider Lockheed Martin’s sheer size for a moment. After all, the company receives one of every 14 dollars doled out by the Pentagon. In fact, its government contracts, thought about another way, amount to a “Lockheed Martin tax” of $260 per taxpaying household in the United States, and no weapons contractor has more power or money to wield to defend its turf. It spent $12 million on congressional lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009 alone.  Not surprisingly, it’s the top contributor to the incoming House Armed Services Committee chairman, Republican Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, giving more than $50,000 in the most recent election cycle. It also tops the list of donors to Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the self-described “#1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress.”

Add to all that its 140,000 employees and its claim to have facilities in 46 states, and the scale of its clout starts to become clearer.  While the bulk of its influence-peddling activities may be perfectly legal, the company also has quite a track record when it comes to law-breaking: it ranks number one on the “contractor misconduct” database maintained by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-DC-based watchdog group.

How in the world did Lockheed Martin become more than just a military contractor?  Its first significant foray outside the world of weaponry came in the early 1990s when plain old Lockheed (not yet merged with Martin Marietta) bought Datacom Inc., a company specializing in providing services for state and city governments, and turned it into the foundation for a new business unit called Lockheed Information Management Services (IMS).  In turn, IMS managed to win contracts in 44 states and several foreign countries for tasks ranging from collecting parking fines and tolls to tracking down “deadbeat dads” and running “welfare to work” job-training programs. The result was a number of high profile failures, but hey, you can’t do everything right, can you?

Under pressure from Wall Street to concentrate on its core business — implements of destruction — Lockheed Martin sold IMS in 2001.  By then, however, it had developed a taste for non-weapons work, especially when it came to data collection and processing.  So it turned to the federal government where it promptly racked up deals with the IRS, the Census Bureau, and the U.S. Postal Service, among other agencies.

As a result, Lockheed Martin is now involved in nearly every interaction you have with the government.  Paying your taxes?  Lockheed Martin is all over it.  The company is even creating a system that provides comprehensive data on every contact taxpayers have with the IRS from phone calls to face-to-face meetings.

Want to stand up and be counted by the U.S. Census?  Lockheed Martin will take care of it.  The company runs three centers — in Baltimore, Phoenix, and Jeffersonville, Indiana — that processed up to 18 tractor-trailers full of mail per day at the height of the 2010 Census count.  For $500 million it is developing the Decennial Response Information Service (DRIS), which will collect and analyze information gathered from any source, from phone calls or the Internet to personal visits. According to Preston Waite, associate director of the Census, the DRIS will be a “big catch net, catching all the data that comes in no matter where it comes from.”

Need to get a package across the country?  Lockheed Martin cameras will scan bar codes and recognize addresses, so your package can be sorted “without human intervention,” as the company’s web site puts it.

Plan on committing a crime?  Think twice.  Lockheed Martin is in charge of the FBI’s Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), a database of 55 million sets of fingerprints.  The company also produces biometric identification devices that will know who you are by scanning your iris, recognizing your face, or coming up with novel ways of collecting your fingerprints or DNA.  As the company likes to say, it’s in the business of making everyone’s lives (and so personal data) an “open book,” which is, of course, of great benefit to us all. “Thanks to biometric technology,” the company proclaims, “people don’t have to worry about forgetting a password or bringing multiple forms of identification.  Things just got a little easier.”

Are you a New York City resident concerned about a “suspicious package” finding its way onto the subway platform?  Lockheed Martin tried to do something about that, too, thanks to a contract from the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to install 3,000 security cameras and motion sensors that would spot such packages, as well as the people carrying them, and notify the authorities.  Only problem: the cameras didn’t work as advertised and the MTA axed Lockheed Martin and cancelled the $212 million contract.

Collecting Intelligence on You

If it seems a little creepy to you that the same company making ballistic missiles is also processing your taxes, accessing your fingerprints, scanning your packages, ensuring that it’s easier than ever to collect your DNA, and counting you for the census, rest assured: Lockheed Martin’s interest in getting inside your private life via intelligence collection and surveillance has remained remarkably undiminished in the twenty-first century.

Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project.  A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program.

In the meantime, since at least 2004, Lockheed Martin has been involved in the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which collected personal data on American citizens for storage in a database known as “Threat and Local Observation Notice” (and far more dramatically by the acronym TALON). While Congress shut down the domestic spying aspect of the program in 2007 (assuming, that is, that the Pentagon followed orders), CIFA itself continues to operate. In 2005, Washington Post military and intelligence expert William Arkin revealed that, while the database was theoretically being used to track anyone suspected of terrorism, drug trafficking, or espionage, “some military gumshoe or overzealous commander just has to decide someone is a ‘threat to the military’” for it to be brought into play. Among the “threatening” citizens actually tracked by CIFA were members of antiwar groups.  As part of its role in CIFA, Lockheed Martin was not only monitoring intelligence, but also “estimating future threats.”  (Not exactly inconvenient for a giant weapons outfit that might see antiwar activism as a threat!)

Lockheed Martin is also intimately bound up in the workings of the National Security Agency, America’s largest spy outfit.  In addition to producing spy satellites for the NSA, the company is in charge of “Project Groundbreaker,” a $5 billion, 10-year effort to upgrade the agency’s internal telephone and computer networks.

While Lockheed Martin may well be watching you at home — it’s my personal nominee for twenty-first-century “Big Brother” — it has also been involved in questionable activities abroad that go well beyond supplying weapons to regions in conflict.  There were, of course, those interrogators it recruited for America’s offshore prison system from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan (and the charges of abuses that so naturally went with them), but the real scandal the company has been embroiled in involves overseeing an assassination program in Pakistan. Initially, it was billed as an information gathering operation using private companies to generate data the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies allegedly could not get on their own.  Instead, the companies turned out to be supplying targeting information used by U.S. Army Special Forces troops to locate and kill suspected Taliban leaders.

The private firms involved were managed by Lockheed Martin under a $22 million contract from the U.S. Army.  As Mark Mazetti of the New York Times has reported, there were just two small problems with the effort: “The American military is largely prohibited from operating in Pakistan.  And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.”  Much as in the Iran/Contra scandal of the 1980s, when Oliver North set up a network of shell companies to evade the laws against arming right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, the Army used Lockheed Martin to do an end run around rules limiting U.S. military and intelligence activities in Pakistan.  It should not, then, be too surprising that one of the people involved in the Lockheed-Martin-managed network was Duane “Dewey” Claridge, an ex-CIA man who had once been knee deep in the Iran/Contra affair.

A Twenty-First Century Big Brother

There has also been a softer side to Lockheed Martin’s foreign policy efforts.  It has involved contracts for services that range from recruiting election monitors for Bosnia and the Ukraine and attempting to reform Liberia’s justice system to providing personnel involved in drafting the Afghan constitution.  Most of these projects have been carried out by the company’s PAE unit, the successor to a formerly independent firm, Pacific Architects and Engineers, that made its fortune building and maintaining military bases during the Vietnam War.

However, the “soft power” side of Lockheed Martin’s operations (as described on its web site) may soon diminish substantially as the company has put PAE up for sale.  Still, the revenues garnered from these activities will undoubtedly be more than offset by a new $5 billion, multi-year contract awarded by the U.S. Army to provide logistics support for U.S. Special Forces in dozens of countries.

Consider all this but a Lockheed Martin précis.  A full accounting of its “shadow government” would fill volumes.  After all, it’s the number-one contractor not only for the Pentagon, but also for the Department of Energy. It ranks number two for the Department of State, number three for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and number four for the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development.  Even listing the government and quasi-governmental agencies the company has contracts with is a daunting task, but here’s just a partial run-down: the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Land Management, the Census Bureau, the Coast Guard, the Department of Defense (including the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency), the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Technology Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the General Services Administration, the Geological Survey,  the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of State, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Transportation, the Transportation Security Agency, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

When President Eisenhower warned 50 years ago this month of the dangers of “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed that one for-profit weapons outfit would so fully insinuate itself into so many aspects of American life.  Lockheed Martin has helped turn Eisenhower’s dismal mid-twentieth-century vision into a for-profit military-industrial-surveillance complex fit for the twenty-first century, one in which no governmental activity is now beyond its reach.

I feel safer already.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, January 2011).  To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Hartung discusses the unsettling reach of Lockheed Martin, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

Copyright 2011 William D. Hartung

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(3)   LOCKHEED MARTIN JET FIGHTERS A COSTLY MISTAKE FOR TAX-PAYERS

Thanks to Elaine:

See second article below… Jet fighters a costly mistake for taxpayers – connections to Lockheed… 

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No F-35 Stealth Fighters Campaign Update

http://community.intellicontact.com/p/rideauinistitute/newsletters/ceasefire/posts/no-f-35-stealth-fighters-campaign-update

December 20, 2010

The government and the defence lobby are spending millions of our dollars on a PR blitz to convince Canadians to support the $16 billion F-35 stealth fighter program.

But we have been mounting our own response with a media campaign, including this opinion article published in two major newspapers in the last week. It was co-authored by my good friend, Tamara Lorincz of Halifax. Please share it with friends and colleagues.

I also want to thank everyone for their generous financial support for the  campaign. Our special appeal this month has raised more than $20,000 for the campaign – the best response we’ve ever had.

We are moving into high gear for January, and I look forward to sharing our plans with you in the new year.
Best wishes to you and your family for this holiday season,
Steven Staples, Ceasefire.ca

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Jet fighters a costly mistake for taxpayers

http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/fighters+costly+mistake+taxpayers/3956836/story.html

By Tamara Lorincz and Steven Staples

Representatives from the Department of National Defence have recently crossed the country to promote the controversial purchase of stealth fighter jets.
Unfortunately, the DND representatives have not given a full and frank assessment of the F-35 stealth fighter program, the largest military equipment procurement in Canadian history.

Most significantly, they failed to disclose the serious risks, particularly financial, to the Canadian taxpayers.
In July, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the government’s plan to buy 65 F-35s for an anticipated $9 billion, through a sole-source, non-competitive contract.

The F-35 stealth fighter is marketed as a fifth-generation fighter-bomber by its maker, U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin.
Despite the fact that MacKay has announced the fighter purchase, the government has not signed a contract with Lockheed Martin spelling out exactly how much each plane is going to cost Canadian taxpayers.

Though Lockheed Martin might have given an estimate on the price, a final contact won’t be signed for another two or three years. Even worse, the cost to the Canadian government for the support and maintenance of the high-tech stealth fighters is not known and would be negotiated at a later date.

This program has troubled auditor general Sheila Fraser, who warned of the high risk of cost overruns and delays for the F-35 stealth fighters based on her audit of the Cyclone and sole-sourced Chinook helicopter purchases.

Earlier this year, the United States Government Accounting Office also found escalating costs and continuing technical problems with the F-35s in its congressional report entitled Joint Strike Fighter: Additional Costs and Delays Risk Not Meeting Warfighter Requirements on Time.

And in testimony before the standing committee on national defence in October, Alan Williams, a former DND deputy minister and author of the book Reinventing Defence Procurement, condemned the sole-sourcing of the stealth fighters and urged a competitive bidding process.

“An open, fair, and transparent process is critical,” Williams said. “Undertaking sole-source deals leaves the procurement process more vulnerable to fraud, bribery and behind-the-scenes deal-making and leaves the federal government more susceptible to such charges.

“There’s a moral obligation on the part of the leaders of this country to treat our citizens with a lot more respect and provide us really truthful, rigorous, detailed and appropriate answers, not be glibly trying to defend things that are frankly, from my view, indefensible,” he said.

It should trouble Canadians that Pierre Lagueux, who as assistant deputy minister of defence in 1997 was behind the original memorandum of understanding for Canada to join eight other countries in the development of the F-35s, is now a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.

As well, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, sat on the board of Hawker Beechcraft, a supplier to Lockheed Martin, before he became Harper’s right-hand man.

In a televised interview, Williams said it is the corporate lobbyists who do not want an open, fair and transparent procurement process.
However, Canadian taxpayers deserve such a public, competitive process that gives a  comprehensive analysis and an honest accounting of the stealth fighter program, especially when the federal government is running record annual deficits and adding to the national debt.

Canadians should also question if investing in next-generation fighter jets is a priority over investing in our next generation — our children, education, the environment and health care.

Do we want the federal government to spend $16 billion of our tax dollars on stealth fighters?
Moreover, Canadian citizens should be consulted on the future role for the air force and on the direction of the military, something that was denied to the public by the Canada First Defence Strategy of 2008.

Other countries, such as Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K. have postponed or reduced their commitment to purchase the F-35s because of citizens’ concerns and the uncertainty over life-cycle costs.

Winslow Wheeler, an American national security expert at the Center for Defense Information, has claimed “the F-35’s bloat – in cost, leaden weight and mindless complexity – guarantees failure.”

We agree and call on the federal government to permanently ground any plans to buy the stealth fighters.

Tamara Lorincz is with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and Steven Staples is president of the Rideau Institute, an independent research and advocacy group.

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(4)    GRAND OPENING OF AVIATION CENTRE IN SASKATOON, LOCKHEED MARTIN INTEGRATED INTO OUR ECONOMY AND YOU GUESSED IT:  MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY

2010-11-01 Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre Grand Opening at SIIT. Lockheed Martin’s “products” not itemized (UAVs, cluster munitions, DU weapons, land mines, nuclear weapons).

No one mentions Lockheed Martin’s “products”:  unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”), cluster munitions, weapons with Depleted Uranium (DU) (there is nothing “depleted about it at all.  DU is radioactive, the exploded weapons strew radioactive particles to the wind),  land mines and nuclear weapons.  The U.S. has “first strike” as a policy.  Lockheed Martin played a large role in the decision of the U.S. to launch an illegal war of aggression on Iraq, a war of horrible death and misery for the people of Iraq that sinks the U.S. further into debt bringing instability to the entire world economy.

Lockheed Martin believes in contributing to education and providing training opportunities for AME students to gain first-hand knowledge of support and maintenance for Lockheed Martin products.

http://www.siit.sk.ca/news_events/2010/november/01/salc-grand-opening-media-release

SALC Grand Opening Media Release

November 01, 2010

Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre (SALC) Grand Opening

On Friday, October 29, 2010 please join SIIT and their partners in the official Grand Opening of the SALC. The event is taking place at #19- 2725 Koyl Avenue in Saskatoon at 10:30 am.  

The Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre is a partnership of the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT), the Government of Canada (Western Economic Diversification and Industry Canada), the Province of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatoon Airport Authority. The new 25,000 sq.ft facility houses SIIT’s Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Program and the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology’s (SIAST) Commercial Pilot Program. SIIT secured investments from aerospace and defence companies Boeing, Rockwell Collins, and Lockheed Martin under Canada’s Industrial and Regional Benefits policy to support development of its aviation trades training programs.

“SIIT is very excited to announce the grand opening of the Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre.  We are pleased to see all the hard work and effort pay off.  All of the students are impressed with the new surroundings.  This is the first training program and facility of its kind in Saskatchewan. We have great partners and friends to thank and share in the success,” said President and CEO Randell Morris of Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies.

“The provincial government is proud to work with SIIT, the federal government and the aviation industry partners to bring aircraft maintenance engineering training to First Nations learners and others right here in Saskatchewan,” Minster of Advanced Education Employment and Immigration Rob Norris said. “This program will help meet the strong labour market demand for aviation maintenance training and, given the partnership between SIAST and SIIT, keeps our learners and employees in Saskatchewan.”

“These investments are further examples of our Industrial and Regional Benefits Policy at work,” said the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry. “Through the application of the IRB Policy, the Government is supporting aviation education and helping train pilots for the future.”

“Our Government was proud to have invested in the construction of the new Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre,” said MP Rob Clarke.  “The Centre will create skilled jobs right here in our community, while positioning Saskatoon as an aviation leader.”

“Lockheed Martin is proud to support a program such as the Aerospace Maintenance Engineering training program, one that will support the growing needs of the local and national aerospace industries for AME technicians,” said Steven Wylong, Director of Industrial Participation, Lockheed Martin Maritime Missions Systems and Sensors.  “Lockheed Martin believes in contributing to education and providing training opportunities for AME students to gain first-hand knowledge of support and maintenance for Lockheed Martin products.”

“Through the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer program and earlier investments Boeing made to help establish an SIIT computer lab, First Nations youth are gaining the required knowledge necessary to enter the aviation trades workforce,” said Gwen Kopsie, Director of International Strategic Partnerships for Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “Boeing continues to build on its 90-year partnership with Canada through Industrial & Regional Benefits programs that benefit Canadian workers, Canadian industry, as well as Universities and Post Secondary Institutions such as SIIT.”

“Rockwell Collins is pleased to contribute and support SIIT’s new Learning Centre that will provide educational opportunities for aerospace maintenance engineers – which are in great demand,” says LeAnn Ridgeway, Rockwell Collins Vice President and Managing Director for the Americas. “We welcome the opportunity to participate in this important initiative that will result in many more qualified engineers in Canada and ultimately will enhance the safety of aircraft throughout the industry.”

Janet Kiem, President of Saskatchewan Aviation Council says “this building, together with the AME and Commercial Pilot Program, is our legacy to Saskatchewan aviation and a very significant achievement in Canadian aviation training.  Everyone involved takes great pride in a job well done.

“The Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre is an outstanding example of the role the Saskatoon Airport Authority plays as an economic facilitator in our community,” comments Nancy Hopkins, Chairperson for the Saskatoon Airport Authority Board of Directors. “We are very pleased to be involved with such a worthwhile project and are confident it will be a significant contributor to the development and training of a workforce that will support the aviation industry of this province for many years to come.”

“Accommodations in SIIT’s new aviation centre offers SIAST’s Commercial Pilot students a number of benefits, not the least of which is being at the centre of aviation in Saskatoon,” says Dr. Robert (Bob) G. McCulloch, president and CEO of SIAST. “We appreciate the opportunity offered to us by SIIT. It gives our students greater exposure to industry, and it lets them learn alongside other students destined for careers in the aviation field.”

Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT) has been in operation since 1976, offering training and education programs to youth and adults in Saskatchewan. On July 1, 2000, provincial legislation in the Province of Saskatchewan recognized SIIT as a post-secondary institution by way of the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies Act. The SIIT Act has given the institution recognition from both the Indian and non- Indian communities.

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For more information please contact:

Robert Daniels, Director of Marketing and Communications

Direct:             (306) 477-9336

Cellular:          (306) 370-8198

Fax:                  (306) 373-4977

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(5)    PRESIDENT OF U.S. DWIGHT EISENHOWER’S FAMOUS WARNING OF THE DANGERS OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX  AND SOME OTHER BITS OF WISDOM

Scroll down to Eisenhower’s famous warning, in bold text.  Some shorter insights of his first.  This guy had it figured out!

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

Full text:  http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

EXCERPT:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

• and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.  . . .

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(6)     LOCKHEED MARTIN’S MS2  — PART OF WHAT WILL BE AT SIIT, AS I UNDERSTAND

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/ms2/features/moderndaymarine.html

Lockheed Martin MS2 at Modern Day Marine

Lockheed Martin’s Persistent Threat Detection System is a tethered aerostat-based system, capable of staying aloft for weeks at a time and providing round-the-clock surveillance of broad areas. The United States Army first began using PTDS in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004.At this week’s Modern Day Marine Conference, Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Sensors (MS2) business unit focus is on showcasing its products and capabilities that provide the U.S. Marine Corps with superior tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance while keeping them out of harm’s way. The Sept. 28-30 event in Quantico, Va. hosts U.S. Navy and  Marine Corps leadership, industry experts, academia and aerospace specialists from around the world.During the show, MS2 programs featured in the Lockheed Martin booth display include: K-MAX Unmanned Helicopter, Desert Hawk III, Persistent Threat Detection Systems (PTDS), AN/TPS-59 Tactical Missile Defense Radar, the 3-Dimensional Expeditionary Long Range Radar (3DELRR) and the Enhanced AN/TPQ-36 (EQ-36)  Counterfire Target Acquisition Radar. Subject matter experts from Lockheed Martin and other subcontractors will be available for discussion and one-on-one media interviews. Modern Day Marine is an annual conference and exposition co-sponsored and hosted by Marine Corps Base, Quantico. Quantico is home to Combat Development Command and the Marine Corps Systems Command, which is responsible for setting requirements, developing and purchasing equipment and systems. Besides MS2, other Lockheed Martin businesses represented at Modern Day Marine include Missiles and Fire Control and Aeronautics. For more information on Modern Day Marine activities, please click here.