The project was passed on to Obama from the Bush administration. Originally, the $6.1 billion contract (now up to $11.2 billion) was awarded in 2005 to a group of firms, including Lockheed Martin and Finmeccanica of Italy. The question at the root of this potential controversy is “Why was this large, high-priority and high-security contract awarded to a foreign company instead of the usual supplier, Connecticut-based Sikorsky, which had manufactured virtually all presidential helicopters since President Eisenhower first ordered one in 1957?”

 

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and others have alleged that the contract was awarded to the Italian firm as a thank you for Italy’s support in the Iraq War. However, according to Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, the evidence shows “that the contract was more specifically a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger.” President Bush notoriously used this fraudulent “yellowcake” intelligence to justify launching the war.

 

A number of Marine pilots and officials raised great concerns about the helicopter project, specifically with regards to national security. Finmeccanica was doing business with Iran, China and Libya. At the time of the bid, “the security clearance necessary to manufacture and maintain Marine One required U.S. citizenship and prohibited Marine One team members from being married to citizens of another country.” Why then was such a sensitive project partially outsourced? Other concerns were brought up regarding the adequacy of the new helicopters that are being designed using an older model as a starting point for modification, instead of creating a new aircraft from scratch.

 

With the contract now at $11.2 billion, the Pentagon had over-shot the budget by so much that it notified Congress last month that the law required a review. According to The New York Times, President Obama faces a choice that “encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship.” However, Klein and Pontoniere outline three different options: “President Obama can either be actively complicit by continuing with Finmeccanica; he can duck and cover by simply switching to the proper supplier, Sikorsky; or he can use the mandated review of this purchase decision to root out those in military, the aerospace industry and Congress who were willing to compromise the security of all subsequent American presidents so that Bush could cover up his core war crime.”

 

Obama Confronts a Choice on Copters (by Peter Baker, New York Times)

Helicopters, Cover-ups and War Crimes (by Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, Huffington Post)