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May 27, 2010

Who to believe on F-35 JSF: nonpartisan GAO or paid Pratt & Whitney ally CAGW?

By CREW Staff

Corporate, Federal Agencies, Department of Defense, Melanie Sloan

Last week, CREW noted that the ABC News story reporting GE’s second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an example of government waste left out some crucial information: namely, that the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) had looked at the issue and concluded that competition between GE and Pratt & Whitney (the maker of the original engine) would make the second engine cost effective. Now, the conservative blog RedState.com has revealed that the non-profit Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which has long inveighed against the GE engine and was apparently the source of information for ABC’s piece – secretly has been paid by Pratt & Whitney for its efforts. This certainly calls both CAGW’s credibility and the reliability of the ABC story into question. As CREW said last week, the vast amounts of money spent to influence this debate – on lobbying, PR campaigns, campaign contributions and now to persuade allegedly objective third-parties to weigh in – make it virtually impossible to know who’s got the best argument. The only remotely independent voice chiming in is that of GAO, “the investigative arm of Congress,” charged with improving “the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.” So why doesn’t GAO’s opinion seem to matter? Melanie Sloan is CREW's Executive Director