As Soldiers Come Back in Coffins, CorpoGovernment Operatives Just Spin the Revolving Door

The Project on Government Oversight wrote (in 2004)

The revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recentyears that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the privatesector begins. The practice of senior federal employees going to work for the federal contractorsover which they had authority creates...critical problems: 

(1) It provides a vehicle for public servants to use their office for personal or private gain at theexpense of the American taxpayer; 

(2) It creates an opportunity for government officials to be lenient toward or to favor prospectivefuture employers;

(3) It creates an opportunity for government officials to be lenient toward or to favor former private sector employers, which the government official now regulates or oversees;

(4) It sometimes provides the contractor with an unfair advantage over its competitors due toinsider knowledge that can be used to the benefit of the contractor, but to the detriment of the public;

(5) It has resulted in a highly complex framework of ethics and conflict of interest regulations.Enforcing these regulations has become a virtual industry within the government, costing significant resources, but rarely, as the record shows, resulting in sanctions or convictions of those accused of violating the rules;

According to POGO, in 2002, these were the biggest government contractors:

1. Lockheed Martin

2. Boeing

3. Northrop Grumman (includes TRW)

4. Raytheon5. General Dynamics6. University of California

7. United Technologies

8. Computer Sciences Corporation - CSC

9. Bechtel

10. Science Applications International Corporation - SAIC

11. Carlyle Group

12. TRW (merged with Northrop Grumman in 2002)

13. AmerisourceBergen

14. Honeywell International

15. Health Net, Inc.

16. British Nuclear Fuels - BNFL

17. General Electric

18. L-3 Communications

19. California Institute of Technology

20. BAE Systems

(htBobEnglish)