Cantrell [2nd from L], contractors, Congressional aides go fishing

Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress for defense companies. In 2000, Cantrell decided, it was time to take a cut.

“The contractors are making a killing,” Cantrell said he recalled thinking at the meeting, in 2000. “The lobbyists are getting their fees, and the contractors and lobbyists are writing out campaign checks to the politicians. Everybody is making money here — except us.”

Within months, Cantrell began getting personal checks from contractors and later returned to Ronald Reagan airport with Ennis to pick up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000. The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, prompting them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges.

Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures.

He enlisted contractors to pitch projects that would keep the dollars flowing and paid lobbyists to ease them through. He cultivated lawmakers, who were eager to send money back home or to favored contractors and did not ask many questions. And when he ran into trouble, he could count on his powerful friends for protection from Pentagon officials who provided little oversight and were afraid of alienating lawmakers.

Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, for example, chewed out Pentagon officials who opposed a missile range Cantrell and his contractor allies were seeking to build in Alaska, prompting them to back off, while a staffer for former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., intervened when the Pentagon threatened to discipline Cantrell for lobbying, a banned activity for civil servants.

The Army declined to discuss the Cantrell case, other than to say it had taken steps to try to prevent similar crimes from happening again.

Some of the news articles about this case refer to the incestuous relationship between officials, contractors and politicians. But, first and foremost, we taxpayers are the ones being screwed.