Center reissues analysis of EADS contracts

Tomorrow, the Boeing Company reportedly will be briefed by the U.S. Air Force about that service’s controversial rejection of the American firm’s aerial refueling aircraft proposal in favor of that offered by a joint venture dominated by the European Aeronautic, Defense, and Space (EADS) consortium.  As public concern rises, it is already becoming clear that the Pentagon failed to give due attention to many worrisome concerns about EADS when it awarded the multi-billion dollar contract.

In April 2007, these issues were discussed at length in an Occasional Paper published by the Center for Security Policy entitled EADS is Welcome to Compete for U.S. Defense Contracts – But First It Must Clean Up Its Act.  Among the highlighted points:

• First, a would-be partner [in defense procurements] will be difficult to trust if, for example, its government-owner/sponsor and the locus of the corporate headquarters spies on this country, steals its secrets to the detriment of U.S. interests, and uses bribery and other chicanery to undermine this country around the world. While EADS may not be directly responsible for such behavior, numerous sources – including a former CIA director, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the European Parliament – indicate that France, one of the governments that has such ties to EADS, has been.

• Second, it would be dangerous for the United States to rely on the goods and services of a company that is part-owned by the Russian government, and in which Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin wants a say in the management.

• Third, Congress will be hard-pressed to justify sending the tax dollars of American workers abroad, to pay subsidized European workers who belong to militantly anti-U.S. labor unions that express hatred of our country and what it stands for, and who back politicians who work within NATO to undermine U.S. defense interests.

• Fourth, it is a challenge, at best, to trust a major foreign supplier who deliberately seeks to circumvent U.S. nonproliferation laws and thumbs its nose at Washington while selling military equipment, over the strongest U.S. objections, to America’s current and possibly future adversaries.