Obama's Nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense is a Defense Industry Lobbyist

[funnel101]

The nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, the chief operating officer of the Pentagon, is a lobbyist for Raytheon. William Lynn is due $1.5 million in payouts for his work lobbying for the defense industry

Comments

[greytweed]

Done...and thank you!

[calli_thaala]

I want to know why more people aren't complaining about all these waivers he's signing. He signs a ban or whatever it was to prevent the hiring of lobbyists in related positions etc etc...... and then signs at least two (some websites say three) waivers within a month to let himself and his people hire them anyway? Why sign the ban in the first place if you're just going to keep allowing yourself to get around it? And here I was this administration would be a little less hypocritical than the last.

[engelhardtlm1]

That was my thought. When I read this, I thought "Huh... I thought he had just created ethics rules that would ban this..."

[calli_thaala]

He did! but I guess it's just too easy to tell everyone else they have to follow the rules and let yourself do as you please.

[dragonxbait]

Tom is a defense contractor (essentially) and there are high ranking military officials in and out of his work all the time. His work is on an airforce base, and there are other employees whose entire job is basically to work directly with the military to flesh out ideas for new programs. I am not sure keeping lobbyists out of Washington is going to do much to sever the close ties between the pentagon and the defense industry. It's an admirable start, I suppose.