But company problems continued to be disclosed. Tim McLaughlin of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that when the deal with DRS was arranged, Engineered Support Systems approved the payment of a "success fee" of $5 million to its chairman, Michael Shanahan, but did not disclose the fee to DRS until after the merger, according to SEC filings. Shanahan's son, Michael Shanahan, Jr., was a member of the insurance brokerage company that sold ESSI insurance for two years, resulting in commissions for the younger Shanahanand an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the company. According to the Post-Dispatch, ESSI commissions to Shanahan's son's insurance brokerage rose 90 percent, to $1.5 million, in fiscal 2005. In December 2004 the SEC launched a formal investigation of insider trading by the company and of the insurance commissions it was paying.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis have also begun investigating the delayed stop-work order announcement. In the insider trades after the stop order but before the announcement, ESSI directors and executives sold more than $30 million worth of stock; only some of the trades were for transactions necessary to prevent options from expiring.

SUSPICIONS AROUSED—Further difficulties have arisen. The state attorney general's office in Missouri is also investigating ESSI's doings. The company is being sued in the state of Maryland over matters connected to its acquisition of a Maryland company three years ago. The Inspector General of the Air Force has recommended that the Air Force suspend a major contract with the company because of problems connected with fallout from the Darleen Druyun case. Druyun, a former Pentagon official who was imprisoned for inappropriate assistance to Boeing, also supervised some ESSI's contracts, including "sole source," or no-bid, contracts.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has submitted two letters about ESSI to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, requesting documents pertaining to its dealings with the armed services. In March 2005, Waxman requested unredacted copies of all Engineered Support Systems contracts with the Pentagon or Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, along with "any justification and approval documentation for sole source contracts" with ESSI. Noting that the president's uncle sat on the board of the company and that $158 million of company contracts had been referred to the Air Force Inspector General's office for investigation, Waxman also requested a DOD briefing regarding the process by which the contracts had been awarded and managed, and the rationale for the investigation. No reply.

A second letter to Rumsfeld from Waxman, dated April 6, 2006, notes that the Air Force IG found that Darleen Druyun pushed Engineered Support Systems from the beginning, recommending that the company receive a 33-year, $1.7 billion contract instead of the $158 million contract it received. Waxman also notes that the company received a $42 million contract for vehicle overhaul, even though the Marines could do the repairs for $19 million less. Using ESSI increased transportation costs by $641,000. In an effort to investigate why Druyun was so determined to assist this company in the first place, Waxman is also requesting all e-mail correspondence between the company and Druyun. The requests for documents and information have not been honored thus far.

Over seven days in April 2006, DRS Technologies announced a $142 million contract for infrared systems for the Canadian and Dutch navies, a $34 million contract for diagnostic systems for U.S. Army vehicles, a $222 million contract to provide communications services for multi-national forces in Iraq, an $18 million contract to refurbish military trailers deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, a $21 million contract for driver vision enhancers for U.S. Army vehicles, and a $20 million contract for electronics test support for Army ground vehicles. Media outlets in the Washington, D.C., region have largely disregarded the company's contracts and its problems.

It is reasonable to conclude that the interaction of federal policy and corporate profit that is a pattern for the Bush administration has not been oriented toward national security. Consider the incongruity between the administration's fabrications about nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, on the one hand, and its negligence and dereliction of duty, on the other hand, that allowed caches of actual munitions to be stolen and then used against our troops.

It is also only too reasonable to predict that similar destabilizations are in store for the foreseeable future, under administration policy. Without much fanfare, the world's single biggest American embassy is currently being constructed in Baghdad, to be staffed by 900 Americans and several hundred Iraqis. The U.S. is erecting several permanent military bases in the region, to be guarded for years to come by service personnel and privately hired security squads. Every such project becomes, first, a cachepot for contractors; then, a target for anti-American feeling intensified by these projects; and then, a locus for more contracting in the military-security sector, with a corresponding drain on resources for all other needs.

Thus, Washington's famous "revolving door" is now revolving in a bloody geopolitical vicious circle.