New Disclosures Highlight Ashton Carter's Ties to Investors - 0 views
www.pogo.org/...carters-ties-to-investors.html
war & peace DoD Secretary-nominee Ashton-Carter banksters conflicts-of-interest
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15
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Ashton Carter, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, received $20,000 last year from one of the top consulting firms offering political intelligence to investors. And his wife’s investments in the defense industry may at times require him to stay on the sidelines while he serves at the Pentagon. Those are among the tidbits revealed in new disclosure reports posted online by the Office of Government Ethics. Last week, the Project On Government Oversight wrote that Carter, “[w]hile working in the private sector...has held plum positions on government advisory boards that called for reforms with potential ramifications for his defense industry clients and other companies that receive [Department of Defense] dollars.” Like many members of Washington’s policy establishment, he has straddled the public and private sectors, keeping a foot in both worlds with the potential to gain inside information on, and influence over, government policy. Carter’s latest ethics disclosures show another way for former government officials to cash in: giving speeches sponsored by companies in the investment world. The new disclosures detail Carter’s consulting and speaking engagements since he stepped down as Deputy Secretary of Defense in late 2013.
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Several years ago, while serving as the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, he spoke to investors about mergers in the defense industry. “He told the assemblage that the Pentagon would frown on mergers among the five giant military contractors—the so-called primes: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and Boeing,” according to a 2011 article by New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera. “However, he added, the Defense Department was going to encourage mergers among smaller military contractors. And, he said, ‘we will be attentive’ to innovative smaller companies that provide services (as opposed to weapons systems) to the Pentagon.” “For the last few months, beginning with a secret meeting last October, Defense Department officials have been making the rounds of analysts and investors,” Nocera wrote. “Their main message, to put it bluntly, is that even in an era of tighter budgets, the Pentagon is going to make sure the military industry remains profitable. ‘Taxpayers and shareholders are aligned,’ Mr. Carter intoned” in his remarks.
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Carter, his wife, the Gerson Lehrman Group, and a Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to POGO’s requests for comment, but we will update this post with any comments they provide. Carter’s confirmation hearing is set to take place in early February, according to Politico.