Lobbying rules strict enough, says controller.Despite inspector general investigations and allegations of unethical unethical said of conduct not conforming with professional ethics. behavior in the defense industry, it would be unwise for the Pentagon to change currant currant, northern shrub of the family Saxifragaceae (saxifrage family), of the same genus (Ribes) as the gooseberry bush. The tart berries of the currant may be black, white, or red; the white gooseberry becomes purple when mature. conflict-of-interest policies, said Dov Zakheim, controller and undersecretary of defense. The Pentagon is "pretty strict about this," Zakheim said in an interview with defense reporters. Responding to questions about the Boeing-related investigations and whether they should lead to tighter scrutiny of the industry, Zakheim cautioned that people may be overreacting to recent events and neglecting to see the big picture. Defense Department employees who are hired by defense contractors Noun 1. defense contractor - a contractor concerned with the development and manufacture of systems of defense armed forces, armed services, military, military machine, war machine - the military forces of a nation; "their military is the largest in the region"; are barred from dealing with the Pentagon for a year, and they cannot do business with the department for two years in any area they specifically oversaw o·ver·saw v. Past tense of oversee. . Zakheim believes this policy is stringent enough. If the policies were made tougher, they would have a chilling effect  This article or section may deal primarily with the U.S. and may not present a worldwide view. that may deter the most competent and ambitious people from
serving in the government, he said. "One of the difficulties that
increasing strictness raises is how you get good people."
If the Pentagon hired people who have no knowledge of the defense business and put them in charge, the press would be writing stories about the "ignoramuses running the Defense Department," Zakheim said. "You want to be taking people with expertise. "Once you take people with expertise, you have to ask, do they have something to go back to? If they do not, then you are only going to get two kinds of people: fabulously wealthy people or people about to retire. You will not get people who are on the way up, because they will say, 'if I go to the Defense Department, it will wreck WRECK, mar. law. A wreck (called in law Latin, wreccum maris, and in law French, wrec de mer,) signifies such goods, as after a shipwreck, are cast upon land by the sea, and left there within some county, so as not to belong to the jurisdiction of the admiralty, but to the common law. my career." As it is, he said, "we don't exactly get the equivalent pay or benefits or lifestyle of people with similar type of responsibility" in the private sector. "To add restrictions because something went wrong with one individual, on top of the restrictions that already exist and that are seen as onerous on·er·ous adj. 1. Troublesome or oppressive; burdensome. See Synonyms at burdensome. 2. Law Entailing obligations that exceed advantages. by many people, is going in the wrong direction." |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion