In Illinois, we thought we knew all about the ‘Revolving Door,’ in which high-ranking officials and lawmakers take their government credentials and head off to benefit private interests.
But it turns out those going through the revolving door in the Land of Winkin’, er, Lincoln, could learn a thing or two from the U.S. military.
The Washington Post has identified more than 500 military personnel, including retired U.S. generals and admirals, who since 2015 have gone to do lucrative work mostly for nations that, shall we say, don’t necessarily share America’s ideals or a concern for human rights or political freedom.
Most, according to the Post, have taken plum jobs as civilian contractors helping to upgrade the militaries of Persian Gulf monarchies. And the hiring of former military personnel in those nations is accelerating.
That raises a lot of hard questions.
Military members with more than 20 years experience are permitted to work for foreign governments if they receive permission from the State Department and their branch of the military. But why were apparently 95% of the requests for foreign work approved? Obviously, oversight was, to put it mildly, somewhat lax.
Why were some members of the military allowed to negotiate these deals while still in uniform? If military members are negotiating these deals before they leave their service, the opportunity for conflict of interest and corruption is obvious, although there is no evidence that has happened.
Why were so many names in documents released to the Post redacted?
Why don’t those with less than 20 years in the military have to even ask for approval? Why does the law include no criminal penalties for breaking the rules? Are any of those retired military members who pop up on news shows on the payroll of other governments without disclosing it?
A case in point is retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, who tried to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and later palled around with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys as the supremacist groups prepared to try to overthrow a constitutionally elected government — ours. (Flynn, you will remember, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was later pardoned by Donald Trump, for whom he’d served a short tenure as national security advisor.)
Flynn collected $449,807 from Russian and Turkish interests in 2015, a year after he retired from the Army, but didn’t clear his work with U.S. officials.
It’s an unseemly way to cash in on military careers.
This isn’t a problem isolated to the United States. The United Kingdom, for example, is trying to stop China from recruiting former and current British air force pilots to train China’s military personnel and to help China “understand the capabilities” of Britain’s air force.
But that’s why the United States has every reason to be doing a better job of preventing similar goings-on with its own military.
At least 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked since 2016 as paid consultants for Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry, which is run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Is that a person the United States wants to empower?
At least in Illinois, those hopping through the revolving door are often only persuading the Legislature to dole out money for roads or other projects of more value to their clients than to the taxpayers. What’s happening with the military is far more worrisome.
The first step is to address transparency. The Washington Post should not have had to go to court to get the records showing how many retired military members are working for other governments. We’re told the revelations took not only the public, but also many in Congress, by surprise.
Illinois is far from perfect, but it has taken some steps to increase transparency and ethics. For example, the Illinois Ethics Act requires heads of state departments to wait a year before accepting positions with companies that hold contracts overseen by their departments or with companies their departments license or regulate.
Yet the ongoing revelations in the case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan show Illinois has a lot of work to do to clean up state government.
It looks like Congress and the U.S. military need to work a lot harder on transparency as well.
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