Friday, June 12, 2009
Johnson and Johnson products
Who doesn’t have a potential conflict of interest these days in Washington, DC? If it’s not economic advisors in the White House, it’s lawmakers on Capitol Hill—or even Joe the Civil Servant at the Pentagon. The Center for Public Integrity, a government watchdog group, went through ten years worth of travel disclosure records from the Department of Defense and found that personnel have enjoyed thousands of trips paid for by industry or foreign governments doing business with the military.
More than 20,000 trips, costing $26 million, were financed from 1998-2007 for Pentagon employees by leading drug companies, retailers and governments of key U.S. allies. The biggest spender among domestic interests was the health care industry, which accounted for about 40% of the “business trips” for defense workers. Military doctors and pharmacists, who dispense more than $6 billion a year in pharmaceuticals to soldiers, took 8,700 industry-paid trips. Between 2000 and 2008, spurred partially by dual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pentagon spending on drugs quadrupled from $1.6 billion to $6.8 billion.
Among foreign governments, the most generous was Japan, followed by Australia, Singapore and Canada. Destinations visited by Defense Department personnel ranged from Las Vegas to Venice, Italy, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In March 2001, Admiral Dennis Blair, then commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, accepted a $3,600 trip to China that was paid for by the Chinese Communist government. Blair is currently President Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence.
In 2005, Richard Millies and his wife took a $24,000, eight-day trip to Saudi Arabia paid for by Saudi Prince Miteb bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. Millies, at the time, was the deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which oversees the sales of advanced weapons systems to foreign governments; Prince Miteb was an assistant deputy commander of the Saudi National Guard. Between 2003 and 2006, the DSCA approved sales of $4.4 billion worth of military equipment and training to Saudi Arabia, including the controversial 2008 agreement to provide the Saudi royal family with smart bombs.
The Center for Public Integrity notes that trips paid for by outside interests are allowed under federal regulations, as long as they’re disclosed. But Center officials ask if this kind of arrangement is really in the best interest of the nation’s defense.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Pentagon Travel: How Outside Interests Sponsor Thousands of Military Trips (The Center for Public Integrity)
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