As Justin pointed out earlier, the defense contractor General Atomics has close ties to several figures under investigation by the FBI.
Not coincidentally, the company booked more trips for lawmakers and their staff than any other corporation the first half of this decade. $660,000 bought 86 trips. But what were those trips about?
Some of them were run of the mill trips to the company’s headquarters in San Diego.
But in at least two of those cases, the company sent staffers to meet with officials from foreign governments (Turkey, Italy and Australia) who were considering buying General Atomics’ Predator drone aircraft. According to General Atomics CEO Tom Cassidy, the staffers were there, essentially, as part of their sales team.
Cassidy is not at all shy about it. He told reporters from American RadioWorks that the purpose of a trip to Australia was “Trying to sell Predator Bs to Australia.” Eight staffers were on the trip. Cassidy apparently found them helpful:
“They are useful and very helpful in fact, when you go down and talk to the government officials, to have congressional people go along and discuss the capabilities of Predator B with them.”
Now, that sounds bad to me. But I’m continually surprised by what’s common and what’s not in Washington, and apparently this would fall into the “not” category. I spoke to Todd Bowers, Defense Investigator for the Project on Government Oversight and a former staffer for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who said “Iâve never heard of anything like this.”
The Australia trip was just one of a number sponsored by General Atomics as part of a big push to make more sales overseas, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
The trip, which lasted a week and cost approximately $12,000-$15,000 per head, included eight staffers from eight different Congressional offices – six Republicans and two Democrats (see the tally below).
They have provided differing explanations of what happened on the trip.
Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) spokesman told me that Reid staffer Robert Herbert “never discussed the Predator during his trip to Australia and only spoke generally about different types of military hardware used in the War on Terror.”
But others have been more equivocal.
Sen. John Warner’s (R-VA) former chief of staff Susan Magill told CPI that “There was some advocacy for the Predator program and the American program in general.” But she then she backtracked during a subsequent interview, saying “We did not push the Predator,” she said. “We were not asked to push the Predator.”
Her husband, who was an aide to Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) when he went on the trip, told CPI that “It was not a big heavy sell.”
But then there’s Robert Cochran, chief of staff to Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) who took numerous trips on General Atomics’ dime. He was candid about talking to officials in Italy, Turkey and Australia about the Predator:
“I was with Admiral Cassidy in Italy in 2004,” Cochran said. “We met with officials there to talk about the Predator and we also met with officials in Turkey. It was much like what happened in Australia.”
So which is it? The whole group pretty much stuck together on this Australia trip, and yet there seems to be some divergence in their memories.
American RadioWorks has provided links to the travel disclosure forms for the staffers’ trips paid for by General Atomics.
Below is the roster of staffers who visited Australia:
– Robert Cochran (with wife), staffer for Rep. Howard McKeon (R-CA)
– J. Scott Bensing (with wife), staffer for Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
– Robert Herbert, staffer for Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
– Nancy Lifset, staffer for Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-CA)
– John Magill, staffer for Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA)
– Susan Magill, staffer for Sen. John Warner
– Brian Stout, staffer for Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-VA)
– Jennifer Park, staffer for Rep. James P. Moran (D-VA)
