The wonders never cease:
As the Homeland Security Department was starting up, Secretary Tom Ridge twice stayed overnight at the Arizona home of a wealthy friend who ran a lobbying firm that was aggressively expanding its homeland security business.
The Blank Rome firm, whose chairman is former Ridge fund-raiser David Girard-diCarlo, later hired two of Ridge's aides to lobby the new department, and some of the firm's clients eventually landed lucrative contracts, according to documents and interviews.
BushCo is saying that the visit raises no questions because Ridge payed for his flight (did he pay for lodging?) and didn't discuss business. Does the notion that officials should not give the appearance of impropriety mean anything anymore?
More connections:
Ridge and Girard-diCarlo worked together in Pennsylvania, raising over $400,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 1999 and 2000. Before that, Girard-diCarlo had helped Ridge raise money as Pennsylvania governor.
The payoff:
At the time of Ridge's trips to Arizona, Girard-diCarlo's firm represented Raytheon, which is on a team of companies recently awarded border protection work by Ridge's department worth up to $10 billion over the next decade.
Girard-diCarlo's firm arranged two meetings in 2002 between Ridge's staff and Raytheon executives who outlined the firm's capabilities in border security and other areas, according to Raytheon. Ridge was present for part of the first of the two meetings and Holman in his role as a White House aide to Ridge participated in the second meeting, the company said. Holman later lobbied Ridge's department on behalf of Raytheon, according to Blank Rome's congressional reports.
Since early 2003, Blank Rome has lobbied Ridge's department on behalf of the technology services company BearingPoint. The department awarded a $229 million contract to the company in September.
The contracts for Raytheon and BearingPoint were competitively bid.
Boeing, another Blank Rome client, says it received help from Girard-diCarlo's firm in setting up a meeting early this year with the No. 2 official at Ridge's department, Adm. James Loy.
Boeing is performing over $1 billion worth of work for Ridge's department under a competitively bid contract awarded by the Transportation Department the year before Homeland Security was created.
Once again proving that in BushCo, even when it comes to defending the homeland against terror, it's not who does the best job or has the best product, it's who you know and how big their house is.