Lockheed Martin goes to bat for oppressive regime
A top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place an Op-Ed defending the nations embattled regime in the Washington Times but the newspaper did not reveal the role of the regimes lobbyists to its readers. Hence they did not know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of
Bahrain, an oil-rich kingdom of 1.2 million people that has been rocked by popular protests since early 2011.
The episode is a glimpse into the usually hidden world of how Washingtons Op-Ed pages, which are prized real estate for those with interests before the U.S. government, are shaped. It also shows how Lockheed gave an assist to a major client Bahrain has bought hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons from the company over the years as it faces widespread criticism for human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/lockheed_martin_goes_to_bat_for_oppressive_regime/singleton
More at the link.