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Lockheed Martin pays $4.7 million to settle charges it lobbied for federal contract with federal
moneyFull story at this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/08/24/after-allegations-that-it-lobbied-with-federal-money-to-block-competition-lockheed-martin-agrees-to-pay-almost-5-million/?hpid=z17
The world’s largest defense contractor has agreed to pay $4.7 million to settle charges that it illegally used government money to lobby top federal officials to extend its contract to run one of the country’s premier nuclear weapons labs.
Over five years starting in 2009, top executives for Lockheed Martin — who were being paid by the federal government to run Sandia National Laboratories — ran a fierce campaign to lobby members of Congress and senior Obama administration officials for a seven-year extension of their contract, according to the settlement the Justice Department announced Friday.
Lockheed executives, who hired a former New Mexico congresswoman to help them, didn’t just press people with influence to re-hire them for a deal worth $2.4 billion a year, as Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman disclosed in an investigation last fall. They urged them to close the bidding to competition..... Friedman revealed how Sandia hired Wilson’s consulting firm and two unnamed former employees of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear labs. Wilson’s company, Heather Wilson LLC, gave explicit guidance to the Sandia team on how to influence the most important people in Washington who would decide whether Lockheed’s contract would be renewed.
“Lockheed Martin should aggressively lobby Congress, but keep a low profile,” she advised.
Lockheed, which also manufactures the $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has contracted with the Energy Department to run Sandia since 1993. The research lab is part of the government’s nuclear weapons complex, with facilities in Albuquerque and Livermore, Calif......
Over five years starting in 2009, top executives for Lockheed Martin — who were being paid by the federal government to run Sandia National Laboratories — ran a fierce campaign to lobby members of Congress and senior Obama administration officials for a seven-year extension of their contract, according to the settlement the Justice Department announced Friday.
Lockheed executives, who hired a former New Mexico congresswoman to help them, didn’t just press people with influence to re-hire them for a deal worth $2.4 billion a year, as Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman disclosed in an investigation last fall. They urged them to close the bidding to competition..... Friedman revealed how Sandia hired Wilson’s consulting firm and two unnamed former employees of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear labs. Wilson’s company, Heather Wilson LLC, gave explicit guidance to the Sandia team on how to influence the most important people in Washington who would decide whether Lockheed’s contract would be renewed.
“Lockheed Martin should aggressively lobby Congress, but keep a low profile,” she advised.
Lockheed, which also manufactures the $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has contracted with the Energy Department to run Sandia since 1993. The research lab is part of the government’s nuclear weapons complex, with facilities in Albuquerque and Livermore, Calif......
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