Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere have an article up at HuffPo that is mind blowing in its exposure. They are claiming that the new fleet of helicopters commissioned and over budget for our President were illegally awarded to an Italian contractor (Finmeccanica) as a payoff for Italy providing forged documents showing Saddam had obtained uranium from Niger.
Not only are the aircraft supposed to be built by Americans, but this firm is also building helicopters for Iran, Libya and China. See any conflict of interest there?
This is truly a must read.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and others have alleged that the contract for 28 Marine One helicopters was awarded to the Italian firm Finmeccanica as a thank you for Italy's participation in the Iraq War. The evidence, however, indicates that the contract was more specifically a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger. President Bush famously used this fraudulent "yellowcake" intelligence to justify launching the war.
Officials up and down the chain who awarded the contract knew that they were doing something extraordinarily wrong. The rigged bidding process bypassed, for example, Marine One pilots who repeatedly sought to give input. They had many safety concerns. At the time of the bid, the helicopter chosen was not certified to fly in the U.S. It was an old model made of heavy materials; this flew in the face of why the President supposedly needed a new fleet: i.e., so many extra security devices had been added to Marine One after 9/11, it was struggling to lift off. In its losing bid, the Connecticut-based Sikorsky, which had manufactured virtually all presidential helicopters since Eisenhower first ordered one, proposed a new model made of much lighter, composite materials.
After the bid was awarded, John Pike, head of GlobalSecurity.org, told us: "Analyzing the defense industry for nearly 30 years, I try to stay calm and nonpartisan. But the Finmeccanica deal raised every hair on my neck. Apparently no one else sees the irony in a foreign military contractor building Marine One and Ayatollah One."
Thank god for the intertoobs and Huffpo. Can you imagine this breaking on CNN or NBC or any other MSM news outlet? Yeah me neither. Hopefully Keith or Rachel will pick it up but I'd be gobsmacked to see it anywhere else.
I also hope President Awesome is well aware of this and either kills the project or awards it to an American firm. Unbelievable.