Workmen at Sandia National Laboratories test for energy irregularities in a machine. (photo: Sandia National Laboratories)
Lisa Rein | The Washington Post | Reader Supported News | August 24, 2015
he world’s largest defense contractor has agreed to pay $4.7 million to settle charges that it illegally used government money to lobby top federal officials to extend its contract to run one of the country’s premier nuclear weapons labs.
Over five years starting in 2009, top executives for Lockheed Martin — who were being paid by the federal government to run Sandia National Laboratories — ran a fierce campaign to lobby members of Congress and senior Obama administration officials for a seven-year extension of their contract, according to the settlement the Justice Department announced Friday.
Lockheed executives, who hired a former New Mexico congresswoman to help them, didn’t just press people with influence to re-hire them for a deal worth $2.4 billion a year, as Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman disclosed in an investigation last fall. They urged them to close the bidding to competition.
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