THE REAL PAYLOAD
General Atomics isn’t publicly traded on Wall Street, so obtaining any specific information regarding its balances is a daunting task. I almost feel bad for the Public Relations Manager handling my request for comment. I assume she delivers these hollow replies all day long: “As a privately-held company, our executives are very selective about the media inquiries that they choose to respond to. My guess is that they will choose to decline your request, but I will go ahead and route it for review.” She was right – days later I got a formal denial.
But even if we can’t take a hard look at General Atomics’ books, we can examine their political contributions. A breakdown of their spending on the Hill quickly reveals that the company’s post-9/11 success wasn’t just a matter of possessing the right product at the right time. The company began grooming politicians early in the 1990s, spending over $1 million through their political action committee long before War on Terror entered our cultural lexicon.
Videos by VICE
From 2000-2005, General Atomics zeroed in on congressional staff members, spending around $660,000 on 86 trips for legislators, aides, and their spouses. As the Blue’s Predator drones gained popularity throughout the Bush administration’s war on terror, General Atomics increased their political contributions.
The company also began targeting staffers, rather than just politicians, in order to build a firm connection with the men and women who oversee the lawmakers’ decisions and provide them with relevant legislative information. “We approach them,” Gary Hopper, Vice President of General Atomics’ Washington operation, admitted in 2006. As a report by the Center for Public Integrity noted:
General Atomics’ recent success appears to be linked to its ability to influence key members of Congress — including those whose staffers traveled with the company abroad. The firm has tended to sponsor travel for the top aides to legislators serving on panels essential to its interests, rather than for the lawmakers themselves.
The CPI report goes on to quote Dennis Thompson, a professor of public policy at Harvard and founding director of the university’s Center for Ethics, who calls the setup a “corruption of the system.” There exist “legitimate reasons for members of Congress and staffers to travel,” Thompson explained. “But I find it almost impossible to find any justification of staffers participating in sales meetings.”
True, General Atomics only has about 4,000 employees worldwide, a meager force compared to a defense industry giant like Boeing, who has around 150,000 employees. But it’s General Atomics’ willingness to spend that has positioned the company shoulder-to-shoulder with the big dogs. Their catalog of political courting is lengthy, but some notable highlights emerge.
• From 2002-2006, General Atomics jetted Nancy Lifset, former legislative director for Randy “Duke” Cunningham, around the globe. Cunningham is arguably the most corrupt congressman in our nation’s history. He’s currently incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary Camp in Tucson, Ariz., for pleading guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion. When Donald Rumsfeld appeared before the Defense subcommittee in 2001, Cunningham questioned the then Defense Secretary about the Predator B, telling Rumsfeld that the military should devote more money to the aircraft. Why? General Atomics spent around $36,000 on trips for Lifset, presumably a small price to establish a connection with a man infamous for establishing unrequested Pentagon contracts through deceit and bribery.
According to congressional travel records, Lifset spent 10 days in Italy to visit NATO facilities and meet with defense contractors; 10 days in Germany to see General Atomics’ facilities in the country; eight days in Turkey (with a stop in Rome) to discuss defense issues with local officials; and a visit to Australia in which she charged the company an additional $38.35 for “sundry items, newspapers, etc.” Lifset fled the Hill shortly after Cunningham’s many scandals consumed him legally, taking a trip to South Africa to pen a book about wildlife. “It was the ultimate escape from my working world hell,” she later explained. “When I left the Hill, I was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and wanted nothing more than to decompress and find a sense of daily normalcy again.”
• Jerry Lewis, the U.S. Representative of California’s 41st district, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and all-around staple of defense industry lobby scandals, received over $65,000 from General Atomics’ PAC. He later claimed to be responsible for earmarking more than $100,000 for the Predator.
• Duncan D. Hunter (R – Calif.), who succeeded his father’s district in addition to inheriting his unfettered allegiance to General Atomics, immediately requested $26 million in earmarks for his biggest campaign donor. From 1989-2008, his father received $70,400 from the company. General Atomics employed Frank C. Collins (and his lobbying firm, NorthPoint Strategies), former district director for the original Rep. Hunter and former chief of staff to one Duke Cunningham.
• General Atomics is headquartered in the district of U.S. Representative Brian Bilbray, who once declared that drones were so popular that one could be elected President, regardless of party affiliation. The impetus behind Bilbray’s enthusiasm for drones can be easily tracked, as he sits atop the list of House members awash in General Atomics contributions. Since 1998 Bilbray has received nearly $60,000 from the company.
Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus co-chair Rep. Howard Phillip “Buck” McKeon (R – Calif.), right, chats with members of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the drone industry’s primary lobbying group (via Unmanned Systems Caucus)
Each one of these politicians, with the exception of the jailed Cunningham, is a member of the Unmanned Systems Caucus, a political faction formed in 2009 by Rep. Buck Mckeon (recipient of $29,000 from General Atomics’ last cycle) to “educate” Congress on the awe-inspiring abilities of drones. Since 2005 General Atomics has donated $1.6 million to members of the Unmanned Systems Caucus, and has subsequently received $248 million dollars worth of drone orders from the Department of Homeland Security alone.
Although there are some Democratic members of the caucus, notably the co-chairman Henry Cuellar, it is primarily stacked with conservatives from the far right. In addition to Bilbray, Hunter, and Lewis, the caucus is also represented by Daniel Issa, who convened a congressional hearing on contraception only to bar the lone woman scheduled to testify; Rob Bishop, who thinks oil companies should get more tax breaks and supports a plan aimed to completely defund the North American Wetlands Conservation Act; and Joe Wilson, who infamously pointed at the President and screamed “You lie!” during a joint session of Congress on healthcare.
Joe Wilson hates healthcare (and liars), really digs drones
This is an economic arrangement that conjures up the specter of that sickening ’90s buzzword, triangulation. While a sizable portion of these politicians’ respective bases may still believe that the President’s birth certificate is a forgery and that “Obamacare” is a conspiracy designed to increase their taxes, the administration’s love affair with unmanned vehicles can only do wonders for their funding.
A number of the individuals in the caucus also support draconian border control policy, notably Arizona’s infamous SB 1070, and have lobbied for more drones to be used to stymie immigration. Although immigration from Mexico is currently at a historic low, legislators have called on Predators to be used to patrol for illegal crossings, a choice that immediately generates economic questions.
According to a draft audit obtained by the Los Angeles Times, drones cost about $3,000 an hour to fly and require an hour of maintenance for each hour flown. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security currently possesses more drones than it knows what to do with even as older model planes, which are roughly 30 percent cheaper to fly, have a much better track record of success. Over the craggy tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border, at least, clunky manned planes seem to best their unmanned cousins, namely General Atomics’ Predator and Reaper models, which seem battered by an unfortunate falling drone syndrome.
‘NOT ONLY NECESSARY, BUT MORALLY JUSTIFIED’
(via)
The mutual satisfaction derived from this current setup took root during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when most Obama supporters viewed the Illinois senator as a welcomed alternative to the bellicose foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration. McCain, they argued, only represented a continuation of disaster.
A notable exception was the late Christopher Hitchens, the popular left-wing polemicist turned vociferous shill for the War on Terror. In an essay for Slate, he explained his support for Obama’s candidacy, specifically its stance on crushing the Middle East terror threat:
Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally…American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.
Hitchens’ words were prescient. Drone attacks in Pakistan began under the Bush administration in 2004 (the first attack killed the Pashtun military leader Nek Muhammad Wazir, along with two children) but, according to a New America Foundation analysis of newspaper articles, only eight occurred over the course of the next three years. In 2008 the number skyrocketed to 33, however, and in Obama’s first year he carried out more strikes than all of Bush’s combined: Pakistan was hit by drones 53 times in 2009, killing between 369 and 725 people.
At the end of the year President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he said: “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” In 2010, the Obama administration carried out 118 drone attacks in Pakistan.
