Word: pentagon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Navy's role in the Grumman affair points to another problem in controlling foreign bribery: the Pentagon's relentless push to increase exports of U.S.-made weapons. U.S. military-assistance groups are constantly touting the benefits of American arms in almost every non-Communist country where the U.S. has an embassy. Once military officers determine that a foreign government is interested, they will put it in touch with U.S. companies that can supply the weapons required, and try to help clinch a deal...
...Pentagon has reasons for this policy. Strengthening the military muscle of friendly nations helps the U.S., and the economies of scale that result when a company manufactures weapons for foreign as well as American markets help to keep down the prices that the Pentagon itself pays. But military officers cannot help knowing that in some of the countries in which they are pushing American weapons, bribery is routine. There is no evidence that the Pentagon has actually encouraged payment of bribes to expand exports of arms, but it has been tolerant of agents' fees...
Whatever excuses might be offered for bribery?Pentagon pressure, foreign extortion, "Everybody does it"?the practice has become intolerable. Tips to customs officials to perform duties that they ought to carry out anyway might be unremarkable ethically, but payments to Cabinet ministers to put a U.S. company's interests ahead of those of their own country are totally immoral and strike at the very basis of democratic government...
Nesson said yesterday Halperin asked him to help with the case because the two had been closely associated during the Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg...
...Government connections too, and it got denser last week. Deputy Defense Secretary William P. Clements Jr. told a joint House-Senate committee that Northrop has paid back to the Air Force $564,013 for "improper costs" on contracts-apparently representing political contributions for which Northrop had quietly charged the Pentagon. But Clements was embarrassed by the subcommittee's disclosure of the names of 55 more Pentagon personnel who had been guests of military contractors on duck and geese hunts in Maryland...