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AlterNet recently posted the following article by Nick Turse about the
Defense Science Board members' links to various corporations and
institutions that profit from their receipt of Pentagon contracts.
Included in the article is a reference to two institutions that are
located, coincidentally, in Cambridge, Massachusetts ("The Cradle of
University War & Weapons Research")
The Defense Science Board Racket: Pentagon Advisers Rake In Billions
Off Their Own Advice
By Nick Turse, AlterNet
Posted on February 26, 2010, Printed on March 2, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145757/
On January 5, 2010 the U.S. Department of Defense announced the
appointment of 39 new members, and 12 senior fellows, to the Defense
Science Board (DSB) -- a federal panel that provides "independent,
informed advice and opinion on scientific, technical, manufacturing,
acquisition process, and other matters of special interest to the
Department of Defense."
In a handout accompanying the Pentagon's press release, new members --
who serve one- to four-year terms -- were identified mostly by their
former government jobs and past employers, with only a few current
affiliations given.
At a quick glance, the new roster of Defense Science Board consultants
looks to be a select group of eminent former federal officials, top
academics and a handful of industry executives. On further
investigation, a more troubling picture emerges. While it often isn't
apparent in their short biographies, the people overseeing top defense
contractors that sell the Pentagon billions of dollars in scientific
and technical innovations each year, are, in fact, the very people
advising the Pentagon on what scientific and technical matters to
focus on in the years ahead.
Founded in 1956, the Defense Science Board was designed to provide the
Pentagon with general guidance based on cutting-edge scientific and
technical expertise, not specific suggestions on which weapons
systems, vehicles or other materiel to purchase. However, the board
produces numerous influential reports each year and wields more power
than most DoD study groups since it reports directly to the Defense
Secretary and the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics -- the person who controls the Pentagon's purse strings.
That man, Ashton Carter, who, upon taking office last year, was
expected to shake up the culture of the military-corporate complex,
stated on the announcement of the new appointees, "Secretary of
Defense [Robert] Gates believes the DSB needs to be a professional
board representing the best scientific and expert advice available to
the Department of Defense." A glimpse at the current resumes of new
DSB members and fellows raises questions about just who these powerful
men and women are really “representing” and whether anything much has
changed at the Pentagon.
Even in the military-corporate complex world of Pentagon-paid
propagandists and lavish lobbying, the DSB members whose current
affiliations are listed in the handout should raise eyebrows. One,
Wanda Austin is the president and chief executive officer of the
Aerospace Corporation, a top-tier defense contractor that received
more than $800 million in contracts from the Pentagon in 2009.
Another, Maureen Baginski, is a former executive assistant director of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation who, only days before being named
to the DSB, was appointed vice president of intelligence business, and
also national security adviser, at Serco, a defense contractor that
received more than $290 million in DoD contracts in 2009.
Also among those disclosing their present affiliations are former DoD
general counsel, Judith Miller, now the general counsel, senior vice
president and member of the board of directors of Bechtel (which
received DoD contracts worth more than $2 billion in 2009) and Lewis
Von Thaer, the president of General Dynamics Advanced Information
Systems, a division of the fourth largest U.S. defense contractor (and
the beneficiary of $16 billion in contracts from the Pentagon in
2009).
Less apparently tied to the military-corporate complex are a number of
the seemingly innocuous academics on the panel. Many of these
individuals, however, actually hail from major defense contractors,
perhaps none more so than those affiliated with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) and its Lincoln Laboratory. For
decades, Lincoln Labs has been aiding the Pentagon with high-tech
solutions to problems encountered in its war-making efforts abroad.
Not surprisingly, Lincoln Laboratory's advisory board is a who's-who
of DSB members. There's Eric Evans, director of Lincoln Labs and
chairman of its steering committee. He is joined on the board by
Donald Kerr, who the DSB bills only as a "former principal deputy
director [of] national intelligence, and [professor at] George Mason
University." Kerr also served as an executive vice president and
director at mega-defense contractor Science Applications International
Corporation (now SAIC) and currently sits on the board of trustees of
the MIT-created, quasi-governmental defense contractor MITRE (which
received $797 million from the Pentagon in 2009).
Also on the Lincoln Labs advisory board is John Stenbit, a former
assistant secretary of defense for Networks and Information
Integration, who is billed by the DSB as an "independent consultant."
What's left unacknowledged in the DoD press release is that he too
sits on the board of trustees of MITRE and serves on the board of
directors of defense contractors ViaSat Inc. and Loral Space &
Communications. Still another member of Lincoln Laboratory's advisory
board is Miriam John. Billed by the DSB simply as a "vice president
emeritus, Sandia National Laboratories, and independent consultant,"
she has also, since 2007, sat on the board of directors of SAIC, which
took home more than $3 billion in contracts from the DoD in 2009.
MIT isn’t alone among colleges. In late January, new Defense Science
Board-member Stephen Cross, the vice president of the Georgia
Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and director of the Georgia
Tech Research Institute, told a student newspaper, "There are people
from everywhere from very high-level people in the Department of
Defense to one person who used to be the CIA director" on the DSB. For
his part, Cross said he would likely act as "a technical expert on
software and architecture of systems and systems engineering and
application of systems engineering principles…." He continued, "Any
large organization is slow to change. So sometimes these studies are
to try to help show that there is a better way to do things." Change,
of course, means research and development and, in 2009, Georgia Tech
received more than $130 million in contracts from the Pentagon -- much
of it for R&D.
In its press announcement, the Defense Science Board notes John Deutch
is a "former deputy secretary of defense" and that he currently works
for MIT. What isn't mentioned is that Deutch is a former CIA director
(and was also, as Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner writes,
"stripped of his security clearance after it was discovered he
downloaded classified information on his home computer"). Also notable
by its absence in his bio is the fact that Deutch, in addition to
serving on the board of directors of Citigroup, the mammoth bank that
got a sweetheart bailout deal from the federal government in 2008,
also sits on the board of directors at defense giant Raytheon, the
fifth largest DoD contractor of 2009 (with more than $15 billion in
contracts). And he isn't alone. Fellow DSB member Taylor W. Lawrence
(PDF) is not only a former staff director of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, but today serves as a vice president at
Raytheon and heads its Missile Systems division.
The list and the omissions go on and on. Michael W. Hagee (PDF) is,
indeed, as his DSB bio says, a former commandant of the Marine Corps
and the president and CEO of the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, which runs
the Texas-based National Museum of the Pacific War. Hagee is also,
however, on the Board of Directors of Cobham plc, a defense contractor
that received hundreds of millions of dollars in deals from the
Pentagon in 2009.
The DSB bills Paul J. Kern as a "former Commanding General, Army
Materiel Command," but he's really so much more. Kern is a revolving-
door general extraordinaire who parlayed his 40 years in the Army into
a retirement filled with fingers in an exceptional number of
contractors' pies. For example, Kern sits on the board of directors of
multi-billion dollar defense contractor ITT, military robot-maker
iRobot and military contractor CoVant; serves as the president and
chief operating officer of defense contractor Am General; is adviser
at the Battelle Memorial Institute, another defense contractor; and
serves as a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, a consulting firm
headed by former defense secretary William Cohen that boasts it "knows
that getting to 'yes' in the aerospace and defense market -- whether
in the United States or abroad -- requires that companies have a
thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government
decision makers."
Kern isn't alone at iRobot. Jacques Gansler is not only a former Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and on
faculty at defense contractor, the University of Maryland, as his DSB
biography states, but also sits on iRobot's board of directors.
In its press hand-out, the Defense Science Board hailed George
Schneiter as both the former director of strategic and tactical
systems in Office of the Secretary of Defense and an "independent
consultant," without listing the firms he had worked for. In fact,
Schneiter has served as a consultant to defense contractors like
Boeing, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and Aero Thermo
Technology, in addition to working for the Aerospace Corporation. IDA,
a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded
research and development centers, is also home to new Defense Science
Board-member David S. C. Chu who took over as its president and CEO
after serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness at the Pentagon.
In its press materials, the DSB also noted that James Shields works
for Draper Laboratory. Once the Instrumentation Laboratory at MIT, the
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. formally separated from the
university during the Vietnam War, while still maintaining close
associations with MIT researchers. Today, Shields serves as president
and CEO of Draper, whose stated mission is to "pioneer in the
application of science and technology in the national interest." What
this really meant, in 2009, was over $400 million in contracts from
the U.S. Navy, with lesser sums from the Army and Air Force.
New Defense Science Board senior fellow Ruth David is indeed a former
deputy director for science and technology at the Central Intelligence
Agency. She also, however, serves as president and CEO of Analytic
Services Inc, a defense contractor that did tens of millions worth of
business with the Department of Defense (as well as the Department of
Homeland Security) in 2009. Alongside her is new DSB member Robert
Lucky, who is billed only as a "former corporate vice president,
research -- Telcordia Technologies, and independent consultant," but
now serves as Analytic Services' chairman of the board of trustees.
Similarly, Ronald Kerber, whom the DSB refers to as a "former deputy
under secretary of defense for research and advanced technology and
former executive vice president, Whirlpool Corp," was also formerly a
vice president at defense giant McDonnell Douglas and currently also
sits on Analytic Services' board of trustees.
It remains to be seen if the many defense contractors represented on
the Defense Science Board end up doing more business with the Pentagon
in the future. Until greater scrutiny is given by the mainstream media
and government watchdogs, we're unlikely to know whether top industry
insiders from companies with many millions, or even billions, to gain
annually, can truly provide "independent, informed advice and opinion"
on how the Pentagon will spend American tax dollars in the years to
come.
Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of
Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades
Our Everyday Lives, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His
Web site is Nick Turse.com.
2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145757/
Defense Science Board members' links to various corporations and
institutions that profit from their receipt of Pentagon contracts.
Included in the article is a reference to two institutions that are
located, coincidentally, in Cambridge, Massachusetts ("The Cradle of
University War & Weapons Research")
The Defense Science Board Racket: Pentagon Advisers Rake In Billions
Off Their Own Advice
By Nick Turse, AlterNet
Posted on February 26, 2010, Printed on March 2, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145757/
On January 5, 2010 the U.S. Department of Defense announced the
appointment of 39 new members, and 12 senior fellows, to the Defense
Science Board (DSB) -- a federal panel that provides "independent,
informed advice and opinion on scientific, technical, manufacturing,
acquisition process, and other matters of special interest to the
Department of Defense."
In a handout accompanying the Pentagon's press release, new members --
who serve one- to four-year terms -- were identified mostly by their
former government jobs and past employers, with only a few current
affiliations given.
At a quick glance, the new roster of Defense Science Board consultants
looks to be a select group of eminent former federal officials, top
academics and a handful of industry executives. On further
investigation, a more troubling picture emerges. While it often isn't
apparent in their short biographies, the people overseeing top defense
contractors that sell the Pentagon billions of dollars in scientific
and technical innovations each year, are, in fact, the very people
advising the Pentagon on what scientific and technical matters to
focus on in the years ahead.
Founded in 1956, the Defense Science Board was designed to provide the
Pentagon with general guidance based on cutting-edge scientific and
technical expertise, not specific suggestions on which weapons
systems, vehicles or other materiel to purchase. However, the board
produces numerous influential reports each year and wields more power
than most DoD study groups since it reports directly to the Defense
Secretary and the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics -- the person who controls the Pentagon's purse strings.
That man, Ashton Carter, who, upon taking office last year, was
expected to shake up the culture of the military-corporate complex,
stated on the announcement of the new appointees, "Secretary of
Defense [Robert] Gates believes the DSB needs to be a professional
board representing the best scientific and expert advice available to
the Department of Defense." A glimpse at the current resumes of new
DSB members and fellows raises questions about just who these powerful
men and women are really “representing” and whether anything much has
changed at the Pentagon.
Even in the military-corporate complex world of Pentagon-paid
propagandists and lavish lobbying, the DSB members whose current
affiliations are listed in the handout should raise eyebrows. One,
Wanda Austin is the president and chief executive officer of the
Aerospace Corporation, a top-tier defense contractor that received
more than $800 million in contracts from the Pentagon in 2009.
Another, Maureen Baginski, is a former executive assistant director of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation who, only days before being named
to the DSB, was appointed vice president of intelligence business, and
also national security adviser, at Serco, a defense contractor that
received more than $290 million in DoD contracts in 2009.
Also among those disclosing their present affiliations are former DoD
general counsel, Judith Miller, now the general counsel, senior vice
president and member of the board of directors of Bechtel (which
received DoD contracts worth more than $2 billion in 2009) and Lewis
Von Thaer, the president of General Dynamics Advanced Information
Systems, a division of the fourth largest U.S. defense contractor (and
the beneficiary of $16 billion in contracts from the Pentagon in
2009).
Less apparently tied to the military-corporate complex are a number of
the seemingly innocuous academics on the panel. Many of these
individuals, however, actually hail from major defense contractors,
perhaps none more so than those affiliated with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) and its Lincoln Laboratory. For
decades, Lincoln Labs has been aiding the Pentagon with high-tech
solutions to problems encountered in its war-making efforts abroad.
Not surprisingly, Lincoln Laboratory's advisory board is a who's-who
of DSB members. There's Eric Evans, director of Lincoln Labs and
chairman of its steering committee. He is joined on the board by
Donald Kerr, who the DSB bills only as a "former principal deputy
director [of] national intelligence, and [professor at] George Mason
University." Kerr also served as an executive vice president and
director at mega-defense contractor Science Applications International
Corporation (now SAIC) and currently sits on the board of trustees of
the MIT-created, quasi-governmental defense contractor MITRE (which
received $797 million from the Pentagon in 2009).
Also on the Lincoln Labs advisory board is John Stenbit, a former
assistant secretary of defense for Networks and Information
Integration, who is billed by the DSB as an "independent consultant."
What's left unacknowledged in the DoD press release is that he too
sits on the board of trustees of MITRE and serves on the board of
directors of defense contractors ViaSat Inc. and Loral Space &
Communications. Still another member of Lincoln Laboratory's advisory
board is Miriam John. Billed by the DSB simply as a "vice president
emeritus, Sandia National Laboratories, and independent consultant,"
she has also, since 2007, sat on the board of directors of SAIC, which
took home more than $3 billion in contracts from the DoD in 2009.
MIT isn’t alone among colleges. In late January, new Defense Science
Board-member Stephen Cross, the vice president of the Georgia
Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and director of the Georgia
Tech Research Institute, told a student newspaper, "There are people
from everywhere from very high-level people in the Department of
Defense to one person who used to be the CIA director" on the DSB. For
his part, Cross said he would likely act as "a technical expert on
software and architecture of systems and systems engineering and
application of systems engineering principles…." He continued, "Any
large organization is slow to change. So sometimes these studies are
to try to help show that there is a better way to do things." Change,
of course, means research and development and, in 2009, Georgia Tech
received more than $130 million in contracts from the Pentagon -- much
of it for R&D.
In its press announcement, the Defense Science Board notes John Deutch
is a "former deputy secretary of defense" and that he currently works
for MIT. What isn't mentioned is that Deutch is a former CIA director
(and was also, as Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner writes,
"stripped of his security clearance after it was discovered he
downloaded classified information on his home computer"). Also notable
by its absence in his bio is the fact that Deutch, in addition to
serving on the board of directors of Citigroup, the mammoth bank that
got a sweetheart bailout deal from the federal government in 2008,
also sits on the board of directors at defense giant Raytheon, the
fifth largest DoD contractor of 2009 (with more than $15 billion in
contracts). And he isn't alone. Fellow DSB member Taylor W. Lawrence
(PDF) is not only a former staff director of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, but today serves as a vice president at
Raytheon and heads its Missile Systems division.
The list and the omissions go on and on. Michael W. Hagee (PDF) is,
indeed, as his DSB bio says, a former commandant of the Marine Corps
and the president and CEO of the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, which runs
the Texas-based National Museum of the Pacific War. Hagee is also,
however, on the Board of Directors of Cobham plc, a defense contractor
that received hundreds of millions of dollars in deals from the
Pentagon in 2009.
The DSB bills Paul J. Kern as a "former Commanding General, Army
Materiel Command," but he's really so much more. Kern is a revolving-
door general extraordinaire who parlayed his 40 years in the Army into
a retirement filled with fingers in an exceptional number of
contractors' pies. For example, Kern sits on the board of directors of
multi-billion dollar defense contractor ITT, military robot-maker
iRobot and military contractor CoVant; serves as the president and
chief operating officer of defense contractor Am General; is adviser
at the Battelle Memorial Institute, another defense contractor; and
serves as a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, a consulting firm
headed by former defense secretary William Cohen that boasts it "knows
that getting to 'yes' in the aerospace and defense market -- whether
in the United States or abroad -- requires that companies have a
thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government
decision makers."
Kern isn't alone at iRobot. Jacques Gansler is not only a former Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and on
faculty at defense contractor, the University of Maryland, as his DSB
biography states, but also sits on iRobot's board of directors.
In its press hand-out, the Defense Science Board hailed George
Schneiter as both the former director of strategic and tactical
systems in Office of the Secretary of Defense and an "independent
consultant," without listing the firms he had worked for. In fact,
Schneiter has served as a consultant to defense contractors like
Boeing, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and Aero Thermo
Technology, in addition to working for the Aerospace Corporation. IDA,
a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded
research and development centers, is also home to new Defense Science
Board-member David S. C. Chu who took over as its president and CEO
after serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness at the Pentagon.
In its press materials, the DSB also noted that James Shields works
for Draper Laboratory. Once the Instrumentation Laboratory at MIT, the
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. formally separated from the
university during the Vietnam War, while still maintaining close
associations with MIT researchers. Today, Shields serves as president
and CEO of Draper, whose stated mission is to "pioneer in the
application of science and technology in the national interest." What
this really meant, in 2009, was over $400 million in contracts from
the U.S. Navy, with lesser sums from the Army and Air Force.
New Defense Science Board senior fellow Ruth David is indeed a former
deputy director for science and technology at the Central Intelligence
Agency. She also, however, serves as president and CEO of Analytic
Services Inc, a defense contractor that did tens of millions worth of
business with the Department of Defense (as well as the Department of
Homeland Security) in 2009. Alongside her is new DSB member Robert
Lucky, who is billed only as a "former corporate vice president,
research -- Telcordia Technologies, and independent consultant," but
now serves as Analytic Services' chairman of the board of trustees.
Similarly, Ronald Kerber, whom the DSB refers to as a "former deputy
under secretary of defense for research and advanced technology and
former executive vice president, Whirlpool Corp," was also formerly a
vice president at defense giant McDonnell Douglas and currently also
sits on Analytic Services' board of trustees.
It remains to be seen if the many defense contractors represented on
the Defense Science Board end up doing more business with the Pentagon
in the future. Until greater scrutiny is given by the mainstream media
and government watchdogs, we're unlikely to know whether top industry
insiders from companies with many millions, or even billions, to gain
annually, can truly provide "independent, informed advice and opinion"
on how the Pentagon will spend American tax dollars in the years to
come.
Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of
Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades
Our Everyday Lives, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His
Web site is Nick Turse.com.
2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145757/
