Boeing Corporation to Run Pentagon

If he is confirmed by the US Senate, Patrick Shanahan, formerly of Boeing Corporation, will become Secretary of Defense although he has no military or foreign policy experience. Shanahan was Deputy Defense Secretary under General James “Mad Dog” Mattis when President Trump appointed him Acting Secretary January 1st. Shanahan worked for Boeing—the giant weapons contractor with $93 billion in sales in 2017, and 153,000 employees in 65 countries—for over 30 years, before joining the Pentagon. Boeing makes tanker aircraft for the Air Force, fighter jets, helicopters, satellites, missiles, missile defense systems, and laser weapons, as well as civilian airplanes. Shanahan was at Boeing when a notorious “kickback” scheme won the company a $23 billion Air Force contract, but resulted in both the procurement officer and the CFO being fired, fined and jailed, and the firm paying a $600 million fine. Boeing was also caught “vastly overcharging the Pentagon for its work on cruise missiles,” the New York Times reported. A Boeing man being appointed to run the Pentagon, by the man whose personal attorney, Michael Cohen, called him “a racist, a con man and a cheat,” seems to be in step with the president’s own history of corporate corruption, for which Shanahan has now been rewarded. — BBC, Feb. 23; New York Times, Feb. 20, 2019, & Boeing.com