Rumsfeld vs Weldon: competitive bidding

don in the comments:

On the topic of competition for the CSAR-X helicopter competition, there was an interesting article on the '06 Quadrennial Defence Review in this month's Combat Aircraft (a UK publication, regrettably not available online). Noted aviation author Richard F. Dorr disects the QDR nicely, commenting on planned USAF fleet retirements to raise cash to pay for the overbudget and overdue F-22. Kiss half the B-52's and all the F-117s goodbye.

One paragraph stood out, particularly in light of recent conversations:

The fast-moving competition involves the AgustaWestland EH101, Sikorsky S-92, and Boeing MH-47G Chinook. Scuttlebutt inside the Pentagon holds that Rumsfeld has already decided upong the MH-47G and that the competition is a charade.

Doing a little digging, Boeing is actually in there twice: as the prime contractor on one proposal and as a subcontractor on the Sikorsky submission.

One interesting item on the Boeing page (emphasis mine):

If Boeing is selected, the HH-47 would be built at the Boeing Integrated Defense Systems' rotorcraft manufacturing facility in Ridley Park, Pa., home of Boeing's MH-47G Special Operations Chinook program

Which, like the US home offices of AgustaWestland, puts it in Pennsylvania's 7th district, home of Curt Weldon:
- of Able Danger fame
- chair of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the HASC ("Responsible for all Army and Air Force acquisition programs...")
- whose daughter Karen is a very busy lobbyist
- whose daughter Kim works for AgustaWestland/Finmeccanica, designers of the US-101 he had a major above board (ed - *cough*) hand in selling for the Marine One contract.

Can we just skip the arrest and just tar and feather them on the steps of the Capitol? Can we use fire ants, too?

Superb work Don! So both Boeing and Finmecc are offering competing bribes to Weldon, and Lockheed/Finmecc aren't offering Rumsfeld enough yet. Factions, factions.

Let me add this from ken silverstein (more here from ken):

"Weldon “family friend” and realtor-turned-lobbyist Cecelia Grimes was retained by Oto Melara, yet another subsidiary of Finmeccanica, and by several other firms with close ties to the congressman as well. "

and of course, Larisa has been on to Weldon forever:

"Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile (Ghorbanifar) with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.

The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot.
[]
During the spring and summer of 2003, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) made several visits to Paris to meet with a source believed to have important military intelligence information
[]
The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen."

and Larisa:

"LA: Well - this game is so complicated. For example, take a nobody like Curt Weldon - who by all accounts is a very nice man who I had respect for, once. He's a little bit eccentric and loopy but is generally a nice man - and then out of nowhere this nice, generally loopy, kinda goofy guy is somehow introduced to Ghorbanifar - an Iranian arms dealer who literally cannot come into this country, is exiled from his own country, who the CIA has burn notices against, and who was involved in Iran Contra. Now - how do these two people come together? Who woke up one morning and thought - ya know - those two people should meet? What jarred this? I mean, what was the reasoning behind this? ( I don’t think in Weldon's case he's being bribed or anything -I don't have anything on him doing anything illegal as far as I can tell he's an upstanding kinda guy but I do think he's being manipulated. )"

laura rozen has been trying to understand weldon and his dodgy involvement too.

I'm not sure about Ken, but Laura, Larisa and Sibel all seem to think that Weldon is an unwitting dupe somehow.

I'll never forgive him for his stupid Give-Them-Bombs-or-Give-Them-Death iran freedom walk or his stoopid book.

And to answer Don, no: first arrest, then tarring, then feathering, then fire-ants, then pillorying, then The Hague, and then wherever bad people go when they die.

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update from don in the comments:

A few additional notes:

- One of the linked pages mentions that the selection for the CSAR-X contract (141 aircraft+support) is supposed to be made in the second quarter '06, just in time for Weldon to use as a campaign point against Joe Sestak.

- The impression I got from the Combat Aircraft article was that Rumsfeld has already selected the Boeing submission (to be built conveniently in PA-07) and the competition's just for show.

- In light of that, the US-101 selection for Marine One could be read as a payoff to the Italians with a very prestigious contract for fewer machines that will be much more lavishly furnished than a CSAR aircraft.

One additional note from the CA article:

In both the CSAR-X and [Light Cargo Aircraft] programs, no-one [sic] in the defence establishment has a clue where the money is coming from.

In fact, it may not be coming at all.

Incidentally, in the aforementioned LCA procurement program, one of the competitors is the C-27J Spartan, built by Lockheed and Alenia of Italy, owned by (you guessed it) Finmeccanica.

mon dieu