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Merchant
of Death of the Month By Frida Berrigan
Nuclear
Monopolies The company is currently bidding on a $60 million contract to manage Los Alamos Laboratory, where nuclear bombs are designed. (Los Alamos and Livermore scientists have designed 71 different warheads for 116 nuclear-weapons systems.) Additionally, Lockheed Martin and Bechtel Corporation are partners in Bechtel Nevada, which manages the 1,375-square-mile Nevada Test Site for the Energy Department. More than 1,000 Lockheed employees in Sunnyvale, CA, design, assemble and test elements of National Missile Defense. But they’re not in it for the money. Rather, as Linda Reiners, Vice President of Missile Defense Program says, National Missile Defense is “a passion, if you will.” The company is the prime contractor for at least five missile defense components, including the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system and the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. With missile defense funding running about $9 billion for 2005, Lockheed Martin is sitting pretty for more contracts, despite the fact that the missile defense system has never been proven to work. Lockheed Martin also makes delivery systems for nuclear weapons like the Trident D-5 missile, ten of which are on every Trident submarine. The D-5 missile carries eight 300-475 kilotons of weapons, each the equivalent of 29 Hiroshimas. But it is not all roses in Lockheed Martin’s nuclear monopoly. In November 2004, the company was fined $110 million for failing to clean up a one-acre nuclear wasteland in Idaho Falls. In a 100-page ruling closing a six-year battle, the presiding judge remarked that Lockheed Martin “failed to progress with the work, failed to give adequate assurances that it would perform in the future, and failed to adequately explain its failure to progress.” In many ways, Lockheed Martin, a collection of 17 Cold War-era companies like the Glenn L. Martin Company, American-Marietta and Loral, continues to reap the benefits of the nuclear age while simultaneously prospering from the 21st-century “Global War on Terrorism.” F-117 stealth attack fighters, built by the company in Forth Worth, TX, launched the dramatic opening salvo of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in Baghdad in March 2003. The company’s Paveway II bomb saw its first widespread use in this war. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin shared a $280 million order to produce hundreds more Paveways right before the war started. In March 2003, the Army granted Lockheed Martin a $100 million contract for 212 PAC-3 Patriot missiles for use in Iraq. The company boasted a 27 percent jump in first-quarter earnings for 2005. Lockheed Martin also benefits from increased spending on “homeland security.” The 2006 budget for the Department is $34.2 billion, an almost 7 percent increase over 2005. Already, the company has won billions in Homeland Security contracts, including:
Who You
Know Perry helped the company secure coveted liability insurance after September 11, 2001, to protect itself from lawsuits stemming from the attacks (only eight companies got such insurance). Perry was also a partner at Latham and Watkins, a law firm that represented Lockheed Martin in dealings with the Department. To top it off, Perry is married to Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president’s daughter. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette called the appointment “a pure form of nepotism not usually seen in American government.” Finally, in case nepotism doesn’t achieve enough for the company, it also buys influence for cash. It has spent $12.6 million in campaign contributions since 1990 and similar amounts—$11 million-plus in 2000, for example—in fees to lobbying firms.
Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York City. |
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ockheed
Martin, the world’s largest weapons contractor, profits spectacularly
from Washington’s killer preoccupation with nuclear hegemony. The company
received $20.7 billion in contracts from the Pentagon in fiscal year 2004.
While the Bethesda, MD-based company’s position as the United States’
preeminent Merchant of Death is well-known, its role in every phase of
the nuclear chain is less familiar.