A new report has uncovered the disgusting pipeline between the Pentagon and defense contractors – where the Pentagon sends TRILLIONS of dollars worth of contracts to these companies in exchange for getting lucrative jobs for themselves. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A new report has uncovered the disgusting pipeline between the Pentagon and defense contractors, where the Pentagon sends trillions of dollars worth of contracts to these companies in exchange for getting lucrative jobs for themselves. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins to talk to me about that. Wow. This is like lobbying on steroids. You take a top general in the country, maybe in the world, and you give them to this little contractor over here, and they’re supposed to be schooled up by that little contractor. Well, the little contractor is Raytheon, it’s all the huge, it’s all of the huge weapons manufacturers. And then that guy that you’ve sent over goes to the Department of Defense and gets trillions of dollars for those contractors. I mean, really? This is something that was put in place by Bill Clinton of all people.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s really funny because a lot of times we talk about this revolving door between industry and government agencies, but this isn’t even a revolving door. It’s not something secretive. This is literally a government program. Okay. This is called the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows Program. It is a documented thing that they do every year where they send about 20 of the top generals, the majors, the high ranking folks, and they send them off to the Boeings and Raytheons and Lockheed Martins for a year. And then those people come back and they tell the Pentagon what the contractor needs or what the contractor sees as the problems with the Pentagon itself. And every time, and this is a wonderful report by the Lever, which is by the way, just the best outlet out there right now.
Mike Papantonio: No question about it. If you’re not reading the Lever, you’re just not getting news. If you think you’re turning on MSNBC or CNN or ABC and getting the news there, you’re kidding yourself. Lever has got the news.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so what they do is these people come back after spending a year at Raytheon and they say, well, Raytheon wants us, because now I work back at the Department of Defense, Raytheon wants us to contract them more. They want us to outsource all of our jobs over to Raytheon, and I think we should do it. Oh, and by the way, Raytheon needs more money. They’re not getting enough from you, even though we have sent over the last 20, 30 years, $7 trillion to these contractors.
Mike Papantonio: To contractors, yeah. Now it’s not just weapons contractors. It’s information contractors.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, tech companies.
Mike Papantonio: Tech companies, all kinds of subcontractors, contractors that the Department of Defense sends these trillions of dollars to. I mean, it is so obvious. The general goes over there. He does the bidding for that little company, and then everybody sits when he’s making his presentation like, oh, wow. That sounds objective. Hell, there’s nothing objective about it. That general ends up getting a job at the end of the day for Raytheon. It’s the worst system. And look, not only that, but they’re dealing with companies like, well, what is it? L3Harris Technologies. That’s one of the big ones. $22 million they had to pay because of false claims to the Department of Defense. They, arms trafficking in 2021. And so, Lockheed Martin, $18 million to resolve multiple allegations of fraudulent government contracts. These are the people that these generals are going to be sent to by the, they’re working through the Pentagon. Pratt & Whitney, $52 million for defective jet engines, that are still getting money from the government. Enron, how about that one? How about Enron? We sent one of our generals to Enron, and we all know the story about Enron.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But the point is, it still is happening. It’s something that came up, what was it, under Bill Clinton.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. 1995 I think is when it began.
Mike Papantonio: 1995.
Farron Cousins: And this is comical, right? This is something you would see in a bad movie, lazy plot. Oh, okay, we’re sending our people over there. That’s not creative. But it’s real life. This is actually happening. And these generals and military brass that go to these companies and come back, every time the report says, every time they say, my guys over here need more money. We’ve really gotta come through for them. So half of the Pentagon budget every year, the $900 billion we’re at now, half of it goes straight to defense contractors. And that’s still not enough for them. They want more than $450 billion a year and they’re gonna keep getting it. This program is not stopping. We’re gonna keep feeding them. They love all these global conflicts we’ve got right now. They’re making money hand over fist and this is what’s driving it. This right here.
Mike Papantonio: There are more multi, multimillion dollar mansions around the DC area that are built by weapons contractors than any time in American history, right now.
Farron Cousins: Ring of Fire founder and host of America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio has a new book came out this week called, “Suspicious Activity.” Like his other books before it, this book actually deals with real legal cases that Mike Papantonio has handled, but in a fictionalized way. The book follows the character of Nick Deketomis that Papantonio first introduced in his book, “Law and Disorder,” and it carries on the story that began in “Law and Disorder” through “Law and Vengeance,” “Law and Addiction,” “Inhuman Trafficking,” and now “Suspicious Activity.” This book, in particular, deals with the financial institutions that have helped launder money for terrorist organizations, which of course is a topic we have covered extensively here on Ring of Fire. So if you’re a follower of Mike Papantonio’s books, or if this is your first one, you can get your copy of “Suspicious Activity” now. Just go to MikePapantonio.com and place your order. And if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s other books, also available on MikePapantonio.com.
