corrente

It was Dwight Eisenhower who warned us of the danger of the "military-industrial complex" that was sucking the blood of the nation because there was just so much money to be had. Various and sundry efforts to Do Something about this problem have come to naught in the two score and four years since he spoke--but this one could stick.

Best to go read the long version, it's only two pages at NYT Business section (suggestion, could we switch this writer to the political beat?) so I'm cutting all but the good parts.

The Boeing Company is undoubtedly celebrating its victory this week over its archrival, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, snatching a multibillion-dollar contract to build a new generation of submarine-chasing aircraft, a role Lockheed has held for more than 40 years.

But as Boeing savors this bit of good news, a quieter drama is taking place behind closed doors in Washington that could dampen this joy.

Darleen A. Druyun, a former top Air Force official who later joined, and was fired, from Boeing, is meeting with federal prosecutors to tell them all she knows about possible misconduct at the company, the nation's second-largest military contractor behind Lockheed.

Once one of the toughest negotiators at the Pentagon, with a reputation so fierce she was nicknamed the Dragon Lady, Ms. Druyun had held sway for years over billions of dollars in contracts for fighter jets, cargo planes and other hardware. But after leaving the Air Force in 2002 to work at Boeing, she was found to have illegally negotiated her Boeing job contract while still working at the Pentagon.

Snip. They've got her on the Pentagon end and the Boeing guy who hired her, Michael M. Sears, on the other. Oh, and a Congressional committee is gearing up to look into some matters along this line too. Cases include:

--a $2.5 billion contract to build a new generation of bombs called small diameter bombs, one of the biggest munitions contracts in decades.

--the $1.32 billion contract awarded to Boeing to upgrade 18 NATO early-warning radar planes, which Ms. Druyun worked on a month before leaving the Pentagon.

--the $20 billion aerial refueling tanker contract, has been put on hold by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld until after the election.

--Boeing has already been barred from some $1 billion in rocket launches and other Air Force business after the Air Force discovered that Boeing had stolen over 25,000 proprietary documents belonging to Lockheed, which was bidding against Boeing. Three former Boeing employees have been charged, and others are being investigated by the Pentagon and by the United States attorney in Los Angeles over possible further thefts related to NASA contracts.

The name to watch here is Paul J. McNulty, the United States Attorney who prosecuted Ms. Druyun.

Is this going to bring down the military-industrial complex? Hell no. Only a saner foreign policy, which would require a saner electorate, will eventually do that, or else we'll "spend ourselves into oblivion" as a certain other superpower of late memory did. But it's a start.