EDO Corporation
Encyclopedia
EDO Corporation was an American
company, which was acquired by ITT Corporation
in 2007. EDO designed and manufactured products for defense
, intelligence
, and commercial markets
, and provided related engineering
and professional services. It employed 4,000 people worldwide and had revenues of $715 million in 2006. EDO's assets went to ITT Defense Electronics and Services. As of October 2011, these assets are now part of ITT Exelis.
in 1925. The company's first successful product line was pontoons for floatplanes. With the outbreak of World War II
, the company's focus shifted, and EDO began to provide subassemblies for military aircraft
. This shift in emphasis led to the company being renamed the EDO Corporation in November 1947.
EDO became a public company
in 1956 with its listing on the American Stock Exchange
, and moved to the New York Stock Exchange
in 1983. An agreement was reached September 18, 2007 for ITT Corporation
to buy EDO for $1.7 billion. After EDO shareholders' approval, the deal was closed and finalized on December 20, 2007.
) sector includes two business units: the Antenna Products & Technologies and the Communications & Networking Systems.
EDO’s antenna business custom designs antennas for military platforms and satellites. This includes military airborne, military shipboard, military ground, commercial wireless, commercial aviation, and advanced technology integrated/custom antennas.
The Communications & Networking Systems business unit designs and integrates voice and data communications equipment into end-to-end network solutions.
sector includes three business units: Communications and Countermeasures Systems, Defense Systems, and Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems.
The Communications and Countermeasures Systems (CCS) business unit develops electronic protection technology. Products developed by CCS include the Shortstop Electronic Protection System (SEPS) for both military and civilian applications, the Data Link Validation System (DLVS) for validating and testing military data links, and the Wideband Secure Voice Equipment (WSVE) for secure voice radio transmission.
The Defense Systems business unit designs and manufactures high-performance electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and develops and produces electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The primary product areas include electronic warfare systems, radar systems, embedded systems, RF/Microwave products, air quality monitoring, nuclear detection, and manufacturing services.
The Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems business unit designs and manufactures Electronic Warfare (EW) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) systems and products. It manufactures integrated systems, antennas, receivers, digitizers, signal processors, and signal analysis software packages for ELINT, ESM, ECM, and SIGINT applications.
The Defense Systems business unit is a designer and manufacturer of electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and the development and production of electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The area of interest that falls within this sector includes the Aircraft and Armament Systems unit.
EDO (UK) Ltd includes EDO MBM Technology Ltd in Brighton UK, and designs, develops and manufactures weapon interfacing (carriage and release) systems, cable assemblies and electrodynamic products for the aerospace and defense industries. The UK firm makes the EDO MBM Zero Retention Force Arming Unit
.
The Fiber Innovations business unit develops and manufactures composite structures for the aerospace, defense and commercial industries. This includes net shaped preform assemblies using braiding and woven fabrics, resin transfer molding (RTM) and vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VaRTM).
Fiber Science designs and manufactures lightweight advanced fiber-reinforced composite products. This includes designing and producing composite structures using the latest in filament winding, laminating, resin-transfer-molding (RTM), and autoclave cure processing.
The MTech product line consists of controller electronics for MIL-STD-1760 multiple carriage weapon suspension and release equipment, controller electronics for other weapon systems, related electronic subsystems, customized simulators and test sets. EDO Artisan advertised products include, zero retention force arming units, helicopter blade crack indicators, and programmable DC power supplies, but the first of these products (the arming unit) is actually manufactured in the UK by EDO MBM Technology Ltd.
Specialty Plastics is a supplier of advanced composite piping systems for marine and offshore oil platform applications.
and Information Warfare
sector includes three business units: NexGen, EVI, and Impact Science & Technology.
EDO NexGen develops, deploys, and supports custom end-to-end solutions for U.S. government organizations. Core competencies include systems engineering, systems integration, design and development of custom hardware and software, and operational support.
EDO-EVI focuses on mission-driven research and development of custom communication systems for the U.S. Government. EVI specializes in rapid development and prototyping of hardware and software systems.
EDO-IST (Impact Science & Technology) provides Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) systems and analysis support to the intelligence community, and advanced countermeasures and electronic systems to government agencies.
The Acquisition and Logistics Management Operations business unit provides advanced technology solutions, training and performance aids, acquisition logistics, strategic business solutions, warfare experimentation and analysis and engineering services.
The EDO-CAS business unit provides engineering services, logistics support and weapons-systems analysis to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Technical Services Operations business unit provides Electronic Warfare engineering, systems maintenance, and flight test support services to the United States Air Force.
sector includes three business units: Defense Systems, Electro-Ceramics, and Naval Communications and Sonar System.
Defense Systems is a designer and manufacturer of electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and the development and production of electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The area of interest that falls within this sector includes the Shallow Water Influence Minesweep System (SWIMS).
The Electro-Ceramics business unit provides ceramic based products for defense and aerospace applications including underwater acoustic transducers and arrays for navigation and communication sonars for the United States Navy and its prime contractors, seismic and offshore oil exploration, industrial positioning and actuation, and medical devices.
The Naval Communications and Sonar Systems product line includes Underwater Acoustic Products, Surface Ship Command and Control and Combat Systems Integration, Data Link Products, Shore-Based Command and Control Systems, Information Management Systems (IMS).
has adopted corporate governance
guidelines and charters for each of its board committees. These documents, together with the Company's Ethical Business Guide, are the foundation of EDO's corporate governance and business conduct practices
, and they are accessible for viewing on EDO's website. The Board reviews its governance guidelines and committee charters at least annually to ensure that EDO maintains and improves on its practices.
EDO Director Dennis C. Blair
Dennis C. Blair's membership on the board of directors of EDO Corporation, a subcontractor for the F-22 Raptor fighter program, and ownership of its stock was raised as a potential conflict of interest after the Institute for Defense Analyses issued a study that endorsed a three-year contract for the program. Blair told the Washington Post, "My review was not affected at all by my association with EDO Corp., and the report was a good one." He originally chose not to recuse himself because his link to EDO was not of sufficient "scale" to require it, but subsequently resigned from the EDO board to avoid any misperceptions.
However on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 the Washington Post reported that the US Department of Defense Inspector General's investigation into the affair found Blair had certainly violated the Conflict of Interest rules. The DoD report is available here: http://www.dodig.mil/fo/Foia/ERR/Blairreport113006.pdf
, to the political funds of both Republican
and Democratic Party
candidates, but these have tended to be to politicians who are on important government military defence and procurement committees. Controversy has arisen over contributions, to Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer
and Congressman Steven Israel, who have then backed 'earmarked
' government military contracts for EDO Corporation, soon afterwards.
On December 27, 2005, the New York Sun
reported that:
On 20 September 2006, the New York Sun reported EDO had gained further government defense contacts after giving financial donations to Washington insiders.
and United for a Fair Economy
, entitled 'Executive Excess'. Smith was reported as having received one of the highest percentage pay raises of any CEO in America, as a direct result of the 'War on Terror
' since 2001. His total compensation in 2006 was $1.8 million per year, up from $893,200 in 2001. In July 2006 Smith filed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) data showing he had sacked 400 workers at a factory in California after his management team had failed to secure a lucrative contract for anti-IED devices. In September 2003 EDO was listed by Fortune magazine as number 10 in the top 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S. EDO have failed to make the top 100 at all in recent years because of financial troubles. and are now owned by ITT Corporation
.
Dennis C. Blair was until 2006 a Director of EDO Corp. He has also been a U.S. military commander and the Associate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
for Military Support. He is on record as having knowledge of covert CIA operations within allied countries that were intended to influence political affairs for the benefit of US interests.
On 25 July 2006, the Washington Post published an article by Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist R. Jeffrey Smith
and Renae Merlethat. This detailed links between a think tank
, the Institute for Defense Analyses
(IDA) that had been commissioned as an independent advisor to the Pentagon, and EDO Corporation. The article exposed serious issues arising out of Blair's joint positions as president of IDA and as a director of EDO Corp.
The article was based on evidence gathered by a non-profit corruption watchdog, called the Project on Government Oversight
(POGO) that had published a detailed report on the same day, entitled "Preying on The Taxpayer: The F22 Raptor." This report details evidence of a conflict of interest
between IDA and EDO Corporation.
The POGO report describes how IDA had produced an independent study for the Pentagon, entitled F-22 A Multiyear Procurement Business Case Analysis, that advised the U.S. Congress that a multiyear procurement (MYP) of the Lockheed Martin
F-22 Raptor
could result in a cost savings, which is one of six requirements for issuing a multiyear procurement contract. The report did note, however, that this estimated cost savings was less than for other historical MYPs. Congress then approved the MYP, through a legislative amendment, proposed by Senator Saxby Chambliss
(GA), partly on the basis of the report's findings. The IDA report was the only one at the time that backed an F-22 program extension, in contrast with two other previous reports that had advised against it. A separate study by RAND
, however, commissioned in the wake of the IDA-EDO scandal, also estimated a cost savings associated with an F-22 MYP contract, which was actually larger than the estimated cost savings that IDA reported. The Chambliss amendment extended the production life of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor by three years, overturning a previous decision to phase out the fighter plane because of safety and performance problems, as well as its huge expense. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee, on 25 July 2006, POGO's Danielle Brian said:
We do not know if Admiral Blair recused himself, or in any way affected the outcome of the IDA report. I would submit, however, that there is an appearance of a conflict of interest — given his substantial personal financial interest and his fiduciary responsibility to EDO—in the continued funding of the F-22A. This raises reasonable questions about the independence of IDA’s analysis. EDO is an important sub contractor on the F22 program, being the sole supplier for the F22 AMRAAM vertical ejection launcher. As a director who owned shares in the company, Dennis Blair arguably stood to gain from any decision by Congress to extend the F22 program.
On 27 July 2006, the Washington Post reported that Dennis Blair had revealed that he would resign from the board of EDO Corporation, 'as soon as possible,' because of the revelations. Dennis Blair then submitted his letter of resignation on 31 July 2006.
On 13 September 2006, the Washington Post reported that Dennis Blair had resigned his position as president of the Institute of Defense Analyses after its trustees had found that a conflict of interest had occurred. Blair was asked to give up his other paid positions with military contractors, but he refused and instead chose to give up his position of president of IDA.
On 20 September 2006, Rolling Stone magazine published an article on the story entitled "Another Tale of Waste and Fraud Unpunished".
On 28 September 2006, the New York Times reported that the F-22 multiyear contract had been approved by Congress despite opposition from Donald Rumsfeld
, George W. Bush
and the present and future chairmen of top U.S. Government military procurement committees. The New York Times suggested that the military industrial lobby that pushed the F-22 multiyear programme was more powerful than the elected officials who oversee government military spending including the President of the United States
himself.
On 1 December 2006, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Inspector General had found that although Blair had indeed violated IDA's conflict of interest policy by working for both EDO and IDA at the same time, his actions had not affected IDA's results on the F-22. It also found that Blair's involvement in the IDA F-22 MYP study was "minimal," with no involvement in conducting the analysis or preparing or reviewing the report before it was finalized.
Dennis C. Blair was replaced as an EDO director by General John A. Gordon
(ret), who is closely linked to Blair. In 1996 Gordon replaced Blair as Associate Director for Military Affairs at the CIA, and in 2007 Blair and Gordon sit together on the council of SAFE, a corporate-military think tank tasked with finding solutions to the approaching energy crisis.
In January 2009 Blair became Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama
making him the highest ranking intelligence official in the US Government. He resigned this position in May 2010.
Kenne resigned from the USAF in September 2003 and shortly afterwards joined the board of directors of EDO Corporation.
While still serving in the U.S. military General Paul Kern was appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
to report on an internal investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
. In August 2004 he presented the Fay Report
largely absolving the military hierarchy of blame for the torture and sexual abuse. Kern blamed the torture in part on the civilian contractors working with military intelligence
services in the prison. One of the companies involved was identified as Titan Corporation, a contractor that supplies technology and 'civilian interrogators' to military intelligence. (The company has close links to the US intelligence community. Former CIA director James Woolsey has served on its board of directors.) However Kern did not advise that Titan Corporation should be charged with any criminal offence. Kern had been picked by Rumsfeld to investigate the Military Intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib after an earlier report which had implicated them in the torture. This earlier report was called the Taguba Report
and because of its controversial reference to 'systematic abuse' was kept secret until it was leaked to Seymour Hersch of The New Yorker
. In June 2007 Hersch published an article on Taguba who was forced to resign after submitting the report to Rumsfeld.
A few enlisted U.S. soldiers were eventually convicted, and imprisoned as a result of the investigations. Titan Corporation sacked one of their employees Adel Nakhla who had admitted holding down prisoners who were being tortured. Another Titan employee John Israel, a 'civilian interrogator/interpreter' identified by the Taguba Report as one of the four main people believed to have been responsible for the torture
is suspected by some journalists including Robert Fisk
of being an Israeli agent.
In April 2008 the Bush Administration were ordered to release a memo under the Freedom of Information Act that showed it had approved torture techniques in 2003 and given legal argument support for the use of torture techniques.
Kern retired shortly after the report came out and in January 2005 joined EDO Corporation as a director. Two of the other ten EDO Corporation directors who helped to elect him, James Roth and Robert M. Hanisee, were, and remain directors of Titan Corporation and as directors are open to charges of collusion and direct involvement in war crimes according to international law, but they have not been prosecuted by the United States legal system. Despite a lack of political will by the US Government to prosecute, Titan Corporation and CACI
were nonetheless defendants in a civil action brought by victims of the
torture in Abu Ghraib Prison
.
The U.S. Military Commissions Act of 2006
effectively brought an end to such legal actions in the US.
In 2005, Titan Corp. admitted bribery charges after it paid $2 million into the re-election fund of the President of Benin, Mathieu Kérékou
.
Kern is also a member of the Cohen Group which has as its CEO yet another EDO Corp director, Robert S. Tyrer.
bombing in which 16 Lebanese children were killed. On 19 July 2006 protesters staged a 'Horrors of War' demonstration outside the Brighton factory recreating scenes of violence and mutilation that result from aerial bombardment. On the morning of 17 July 2006, three activists completely blockaded EDO's Brighton
, United Kingdom
subsidiary EDO MBM Technology Ltd in protest at EDO’s supply of weapons technology to the Israeli military being used to attack Gaza
and in the then ongoing 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
. These are just a few actions in an ongoing campaign of protest, civil disobedience and non-violent direct action against EDO in Brighton that began in 2004 and has come to be known as the Smash EDO campaign. There has been at least one demonstration a week outside the factory since 2004, and the number of protests against the EDO MBM since 2004 now numbers in the hundreds.
The units are used in U.S. Navy BRU-32,BRU-41,BRU-42, BRU-45, the US Air Force BRU-46 & BRU-47, the Royal Australian Air Force MAU-12, the European Tornado HMERU & LMERU bomb racks. The ZRFAU is also used in the Israeli Military Industries (IMI) VER-2 Bomb Rack, a bomb rack also owned by EDO MBM Technology Ltd, and currently advertised for sale by a subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd
in Israel
., for the Israeli air force F-16.
Following investigations by campaigners into EDO MBM's links with Israel, and the submission of documents showing these links in court as part of a defence of Palestine Solidarity protesters, EDO MBM removed from their website a reference stating it was 'actively manufacturing' ZRFAUs , claiming this statement had been 'an error'. Directors of EDO(UK)Ltd, the parent company of EDO MBM admitted that a US subsidiary, Artisan Technologies, in New Jersey, did manufacture the component supplied to Israel. This subsidiary was owned by EDO UK from 2000 until it was sold in 2008. Despite the sale of the company officially manufacturing the ZRFAU, EDO MBM continue to be the sole point of contact for sales and technical support for the component from 2000 to the present day.
In November 2009 the Information Tribunal
looking at EDO MBM's export licence applications held by the Dept for Business (BIS) found “There was no dispute that the ERU151 and the ZRFAU are components which can be incorporated into VER-2 bomb racks for use with F-16 combat aircraft, that those aircraft are used by the Israeli air force, and that from 1998 EDO owned the right to manufacture the ERU151 and the ZRFAU.'" But "After examining the documents, it concluded the information did not confirm claims that EDO supplied Israel, and therefore the documents should remain confidential. It was then established that EDO MBM's involvement with the design, development, technical support and supply of the ZRFAU had been taking place without any apparent UK export controls, in an apparent breach of UK legislation.
In June 2010 in the EDO Decomissioners case
a jury of twelve members of the UK public acquitted seven people of conspiracy to cause £180,000 criminal damage to the EDO MBM factory, on the grounds that their belief that EDO MBM had been supplying Israel with the ZRFAU at the time of Operation Cast Lead and by extension their belief that EDO MBM were complicit in war crimes carried out by Israel against the people of Gaza was a reasonable belief.It followed that it also reasonable to damage the factory to the tune of £180,000 in order to try and in some small way stop these Israeli war crimes and protect Palestinian property. Even Paul Hills, the Director of EDO MBM, had accepted during the trial that the activists belief was 'not unreasonable,' in light of all the documents that appeared to establish the fact, although as in previous sworn testimony over five years, he continued to deny any such involvement.
In 2005 the managing director of EDO MBM admitted that the company had acquired all the rights to the VER-2 from Lucas Western in 1998 and had since been 'jointly marketing it for a third party country'. He stated under oath that he had removed references to the VER-2 from the EDO MBM website, after protests began in Brighton in 2004, to avoid controversy [42]
In May 2009 managing director Paul Hills told The Argus: “I would and have stood up in court and sworn under oath that we don’t supply to Israel, which is one of the things Smash EDO accuse us of.“
EDO MBM provided essential arming and release components for the Raytheon
Paveway
'smart munitions' used extensively in the shock and awe bombing by US/UK forces at the outset of the Iraq war. This led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. EDO MBM have been awarded a contract to provide components for the next generation Paveway IV 'fire and forget' smart bomb for the UK RAF.
As a result of the apparent contradiction of being a peace messenger city while being the landlord of an arms company, Brighton City Council in July 2005 came close to passing a motion of censure against EDO MBM. At the end of a full council meeting, in which debate on the motion was refused on grounds of time limits, the council eventually passed a watered down amendment to the motion that struck out all mention of the company and instead resolved to raise a UN peace flag above the town hall on one day each year . In March 2007, shortly after a Green Party councillor had taken on the role of 'peace messenger' from a member of the ruling Labour Party group, Brighton council announced they were scrapping the peace messenger city status for financial reasons.
against 14 named protesters and two protest groups Smash EDO and Bombs out Of Brighton, on grounds of harassment. The intended injunction brought under Section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, applied to all protesters, not only those named in the court papers (who in any case strongly denied the allegations). The case created controversy because it was seen by some as an unjustified measure used by a U.S. arms company to suppress the freedom to protest of UK anti-war protesters. Others, however, suggested that the court action was used in order to prevent harassment and violent crime. The company failed to gain a permanent injunction and dropped the action in early 2006, at a cost of several million dollars in legal costs.
jury trials if not dropped by the CPS. Others were arrested after allegations that they had disobeyed police orders, assaulted police, or obstructed them in the enforcement of the injunction.
After evidence came to light in the High Court that Sussex Police may have colluded with EDO Corporation to exaggerate the threat posed by demonstrators to the safety of employees, defence solicitors in related criminal cases began to investigate further. Then in what appeared to be a domino effect
, the Crown Prosecution Service
proceeded to drop all criminal charges, against all protesters, in all related cases, in an effort to protect the confidentiality of internal Sussex police documents which may have helped defendants prove such collusion had taken place. In July 2006 13 official complaints against Sussex Police were filed by protesters alleging police collusion with the arms company.
is a director of EDO Corporation, and is Chairman of the Board of EDO (UK), which includes EDO MBM Technology Ltd in Brighton. On 1 August 2004 The Independent
reported that Sir Robert Walmsley, Former Chief of Procurement at the UK Ministry of Defence, who retired in April 2003, had been called in by a UK government watchdog, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, to answer questions about his appointments to the board of Directors of General Dynamics
and EDO Corporation.
General Dynamics was awarded the (₤1.7 billion) Prime Contractor and Systems Integration contract for the BOWMAN secure, digital voice and data communications system in September 2001, while Walmsley was still in charge of MOD procurement. On retirement in April 2003 Warmsley was offered a lucrative directorship of General Dynamics. A government watchdog committee advised Walmsley not to take up the post for one year after he had retired from the MOD, to avoid the appearance of a 'reward' being given by General Dynamics to Walmsley. Walmsley publicly joined General Dynamics in April 2004. He had by then, already become a non-executive director on the board of British Energy
. His position at General Dynamics was described as a 'triumph' by the Daily Mail on 23 February 2004 as his appointment gave him the 'highest position achieved by a Briton at a US prime contractor.'
In The Independent report, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
was said to have dismissed the watchdog recommendations that tighter rules were needed over such issues. In a later report published by The Independent on 26 December 2004, Blair was alleged to have helped 'mandarins' such as Walmsley, gain top jobs in the private sector, in defiance of anti-corruption committees. In May 2006, The Independent reported UK Government plans to scrap anti-corruption watchdog committees.
. Walmsley is cited as one of 240 people considered as the world's top advocates of neo-conservative US global military domination.
arms deal with Saudi Arabia
which was conducted in such secrecy that government National Audit Office reports into the deal remain classified. The deal has been associated with bribery and corruption allegations, and was the subject of a police investigation until dropped in controversial circumstances. Police were denied access to an NAO report because it is classified. A Daily Telegraph report on 7 July 2006 reported, that judging from a list documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that there had been two classified NAO reports rather that just one as previously thought. The revelation came about through the title of one of the documents: "Letter from Sir Robert Walmsley, Chief of Defence Procurement to C&AG [NAO head Sir John Bourn] responding to recommendations in draft audit findings - 30 March 1998" which apparently refers to a draft of a second secret NAO report.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
company, which was acquired by ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
in 2007. EDO designed and manufactured products for defense
Defense (military)
Defense has several uses in the sphere of military application.Personal defense implies measures taken by individual soldiers in protecting themselves whether by use of protective materials such as armor, or field construction of trenches or a bunker, or by using weapons that prevent the enemy...
, intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
, and commercial markets
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
, and provided related engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
and professional services. It employed 4,000 people worldwide and had revenues of $715 million in 2006. EDO's assets went to ITT Defense Electronics and Services. As of October 2011, these assets are now part of ITT Exelis.
History
Earl Dodge Osborn founded the Edo Aircraft CorporationEdo Aircraft Corporation
Edo Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturing company known primarily for manufacturing pontoons for floatplanes.-History:...
in 1925. The company's first successful product line was pontoons for floatplanes. With the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the company's focus shifted, and EDO began to provide subassemblies for military aircraft
Military aircraft
A military aircraft is any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by a legal or insurrectionary armed service of any type. Military aircraft can be either combat or non-combat:...
. This shift in emphasis led to the company being renamed the EDO Corporation in November 1947.
EDO became a public company
Public company
This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...
in 1956 with its listing on the American Stock Exchange
American Stock Exchange
NYSE Amex Equities, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange situated in New York. AMEX was a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known as the New York Curb Exchange. On January 17, 2008, NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the...
, and moved to the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
in 1983. An agreement was reached September 18, 2007 for ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
to buy EDO for $1.7 billion. After EDO shareholders' approval, the deal was closed and finalized on December 20, 2007.
Company structure
EDO's resources were aligned into two reporting segments, Electronic Systems & Communications and Engineered Systems & Services, serving six market sectors:C4 (Command, Control, Communications, and Computers)
The Command, Control, Communications, and Computers (C4C4ISTAR
In military usage, a number of abbreviations in the format C followed by additional letters are used, based on expanded versions of the abbreviation C2 - command and control.C2I stands for command, control, and intelligence....
) sector includes two business units: the Antenna Products & Technologies and the Communications & Networking Systems.
EDO’s antenna business custom designs antennas for military platforms and satellites. This includes military airborne, military shipboard, military ground, commercial wireless, commercial aviation, and advanced technology integrated/custom antennas.
The Communications & Networking Systems business unit designs and integrates voice and data communications equipment into end-to-end network solutions.
Electronic Warfare
The Electronic WarfareElectronic warfare
Electronic warfare refers to any action involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum or directed energy to control the spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede enemy assaults via the spectrum. The purpose of electronic warfare is to deny the opponent the advantage of, and ensure friendly...
sector includes three business units: Communications and Countermeasures Systems, Defense Systems, and Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems.
The Communications and Countermeasures Systems (CCS) business unit develops electronic protection technology. Products developed by CCS include the Shortstop Electronic Protection System (SEPS) for both military and civilian applications, the Data Link Validation System (DLVS) for validating and testing military data links, and the Wideband Secure Voice Equipment (WSVE) for secure voice radio transmission.
The Defense Systems business unit designs and manufactures high-performance electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and develops and produces electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The primary product areas include electronic warfare systems, radar systems, embedded systems, RF/Microwave products, air quality monitoring, nuclear detection, and manufacturing services.
The Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems business unit designs and manufactures Electronic Warfare (EW) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) systems and products. It manufactures integrated systems, antennas, receivers, digitizers, signal processors, and signal analysis software packages for ELINT, ESM, ECM, and SIGINT applications.
Integrated Systems and Structures
The Integrated Systems and Structures sector includes six business units: Defense Systems, EDO (UK) Ltd., Fiber Innovations, Fiber Science, MTech & Artisan, and Specialty Plastics.The Defense Systems business unit is a designer and manufacturer of electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and the development and production of electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The area of interest that falls within this sector includes the Aircraft and Armament Systems unit.
EDO (UK) Ltd includes EDO MBM Technology Ltd in Brighton UK, and designs, develops and manufactures weapon interfacing (carriage and release) systems, cable assemblies and electrodynamic products for the aerospace and defense industries. The UK firm makes the EDO MBM Zero Retention Force Arming Unit
Zero Retention Force Arming Unit
The Zero Retention Force Arming Unit is an military electro mechanical device. EDO MBM Technology Ltd are sole owners of the proprietary rights to one such unit and act as technical support and design authority for its ongoing use and installation....
.
The Fiber Innovations business unit develops and manufactures composite structures for the aerospace, defense and commercial industries. This includes net shaped preform assemblies using braiding and woven fabrics, resin transfer molding (RTM) and vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VaRTM).
Fiber Science designs and manufactures lightweight advanced fiber-reinforced composite products. This includes designing and producing composite structures using the latest in filament winding, laminating, resin-transfer-molding (RTM), and autoclave cure processing.
The MTech product line consists of controller electronics for MIL-STD-1760 multiple carriage weapon suspension and release equipment, controller electronics for other weapon systems, related electronic subsystems, customized simulators and test sets. EDO Artisan advertised products include, zero retention force arming units, helicopter blade crack indicators, and programmable DC power supplies, but the first of these products (the arming unit) is actually manufactured in the UK by EDO MBM Technology Ltd.
Specialty Plastics is a supplier of advanced composite piping systems for marine and offshore oil platform applications.
Intelligence and Information Warfare
The IntelligenceMilitary intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
and Information Warfare
Information warfare
The term Information Warfare is primarily an American concept involving the use and management of information technology in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent...
sector includes three business units: NexGen, EVI, and Impact Science & Technology.
EDO NexGen develops, deploys, and supports custom end-to-end solutions for U.S. government organizations. Core competencies include systems engineering, systems integration, design and development of custom hardware and software, and operational support.
EDO-EVI focuses on mission-driven research and development of custom communication systems for the U.S. Government. EVI specializes in rapid development and prototyping of hardware and software systems.
EDO-IST (Impact Science & Technology) provides Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) systems and analysis support to the intelligence community, and advanced countermeasures and electronic systems to government agencies.
Professional and Engineering Services
The Professional and Engineering Services sector includes three business units: Acquisition and Logistics Management Operations, EDO-CAS, and Technical Services Operations.The Acquisition and Logistics Management Operations business unit provides advanced technology solutions, training and performance aids, acquisition logistics, strategic business solutions, warfare experimentation and analysis and engineering services.
The EDO-CAS business unit provides engineering services, logistics support and weapons-systems analysis to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Technical Services Operations business unit provides Electronic Warfare engineering, systems maintenance, and flight test support services to the United States Air Force.
Undersea Warfare
The Undersea WarfareSubmarine warfare
Naval warfare is divided into three operational areas: surface warfare, air warfare and underwater warfare. The latter may be subdivided into submarine warfare and anti-submarine warfare as well as mine warfare and mine countermeasures...
sector includes three business units: Defense Systems, Electro-Ceramics, and Naval Communications and Sonar System.
Defense Systems is a designer and manufacturer of electronic assemblies for military and space applications, and the development and production of electromechanical systems and equipment for government and commercial marine and aircraft applications. The area of interest that falls within this sector includes the Shallow Water Influence Minesweep System (SWIMS).
The Electro-Ceramics business unit provides ceramic based products for defense and aerospace applications including underwater acoustic transducers and arrays for navigation and communication sonars for the United States Navy and its prime contractors, seismic and offshore oil exploration, industrial positioning and actuation, and medical devices.
The Naval Communications and Sonar Systems product line includes Underwater Acoustic Products, Surface Ship Command and Control and Combat Systems Integration, Data Link Products, Shore-Based Command and Control Systems, Information Management Systems (IMS).
Corporate governance
EDO's Board of DirectorsBoard of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
has adopted corporate governance
Corporate governance
Corporate governance is a number of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions which have impact on the way a company is controlled...
guidelines and charters for each of its board committees. These documents, together with the Company's Ethical Business Guide, are the foundation of EDO's corporate governance and business conduct practices
Business ethics
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.Business...
, and they are accessible for viewing on EDO's website. The Board reviews its governance guidelines and committee charters at least annually to ensure that EDO maintains and improves on its practices.
EDO Director Dennis C. Blair
Dennis C. Blair's membership on the board of directors of EDO Corporation, a subcontractor for the F-22 Raptor fighter program, and ownership of its stock was raised as a potential conflict of interest after the Institute for Defense Analyses issued a study that endorsed a three-year contract for the program. Blair told the Washington Post, "My review was not affected at all by my association with EDO Corp., and the report was a good one." He originally chose not to recuse himself because his link to EDO was not of sufficient "scale" to require it, but subsequently resigned from the EDO board to avoid any misperceptions.
However on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 the Washington Post reported that the US Department of Defense Inspector General's investigation into the affair found Blair had certainly violated the Conflict of Interest rules. The DoD report is available here: http://www.dodig.mil/fo/Foia/ERR/Blairreport113006.pdf
2004 fine
In 2004 EDO Corporation was ordered to pay a fine of $2.5 million. This matter was related to activities of the former Condor Systems company, before EDO acquired assets of Condor Systems during their bankruptcy proceedings. Charges are laid out in a letter from the U.S. State Department to EDO President and CEO James Smith. Senior Vice President of Condor Systems, Fredric B. Bassett is EDO’s Senior Vice President-Finance, Treasurer, Chief Financial Officer.The Earmarks affair
EDO Corporation has made payments from its Political Action CommitteePolitical action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...
, to the political funds of both Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
and Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
candidates, but these have tended to be to politicians who are on important government military defence and procurement committees. Controversy has arisen over contributions, to Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer
Charles Schumer
Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer is the senior United States Senator from New York and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in 1998, he defeated three-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato by a margin of 55%–44%. He was easily re-elected in 2004 by a margin of 71%–24% and in 2010 by a...
and Congressman Steven Israel, who have then backed 'earmarked
Earmark (politics)
In United States politics, an earmark is a legislative provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects, or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees...
' government military contracts for EDO Corporation, soon afterwards.
On December 27, 2005, the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
reported that:
- Many of the companies and executives who won earmarks this year donated money not only to Senator Clinton, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and to Mr. Schumer, but also to Mr. Israel. And several of those designated for earmarks gave to members of the Joint Defense Appropriations Conference Committee, which wrote the New York projects into the defense spending bill.
On 20 September 2006, the New York Sun reported EDO had gained further government defense contacts after giving financial donations to Washington insiders.
EDO President James M. Smith and the 2006 Executive Excess Report
On 30 August 2006, EDO Corporation Chairman, CEO, and President, James M. Smith, was named in a report produced by the Institute for Policy StudiesInstitute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies is a left-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C..It has been directed by John Cavanagh since 1998- History :...
and United for a Fair Economy
United for a Fair Economy
United for a Fair Economy is a national Boston, Massachusetts-based movement support organization that highlights the detriments of uneven wealth distribution. UFE was co-founded by Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel in 1995...
, entitled 'Executive Excess'. Smith was reported as having received one of the highest percentage pay raises of any CEO in America, as a direct result of the 'War on Terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
' since 2001. His total compensation in 2006 was $1.8 million per year, up from $893,200 in 2001. In July 2006 Smith filed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) data showing he had sacked 400 workers at a factory in California after his management team had failed to secure a lucrative contract for anti-IED devices. In September 2003 EDO was listed by Fortune magazine as number 10 in the top 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S. EDO have failed to make the top 100 at all in recent years because of financial troubles. and are now owned by ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
.
EDO Director Dennis C. Blair and the EDO-IDA scandal
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
for Military Support. He is on record as having knowledge of covert CIA operations within allied countries that were intended to influence political affairs for the benefit of US interests.
On 25 July 2006, the Washington Post published an article by Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning journalist R. Jeffrey Smith
R. Jeffrey Smith
R. Jeffrey Smith is a reporter at the Washington Post and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2006.Smith was a senior writer from 1977 to 1986 for Science magazine and he won two Science in Society Journalism Awards during that period. Afterward, his career has developed...
and Renae Merlethat. This detailed links between a think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
, the Institute for Defense Analyses
Institute for Defense Analyses
The Institute for Defense Analyses is a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers to assist the United States government in addressing important national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise...
(IDA) that had been commissioned as an independent advisor to the Pentagon, and EDO Corporation. The article exposed serious issues arising out of Blair's joint positions as president of IDA and as a director of EDO Corp.
The article was based on evidence gathered by a non-profit corruption watchdog, called the Project on Government Oversight
Project on Government Oversight
The Project On Government Oversight , founded in 1981, is an independent non-profit organization in the United States which investigates and seeks to expose corruption and other misconduct. POGO assists whistleblowers and investigates federal agencies, Congress, and government contractors...
(POGO) that had published a detailed report on the same day, entitled "Preying on The Taxpayer: The F22 Raptor." This report details evidence of a conflict of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
between IDA and EDO Corporation.
The POGO report describes how IDA had produced an independent study for the Pentagon, entitled F-22 A Multiyear Procurement Business Case Analysis, that advised the U.S. Congress that a multiyear procurement (MYP) of the Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
F-22 Raptor
F-22 Raptor
The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine fifth-generation supermaneuverable fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals...
could result in a cost savings, which is one of six requirements for issuing a multiyear procurement contract. The report did note, however, that this estimated cost savings was less than for other historical MYPs. Congress then approved the MYP, through a legislative amendment, proposed by Senator Saxby Chambliss
Saxby Chambliss
Clarence Saxby Chambliss, Jr. is the senior United States Senator from Georgia. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a U.S. Representative ....
(GA), partly on the basis of the report's findings. The IDA report was the only one at the time that backed an F-22 program extension, in contrast with two other previous reports that had advised against it. A separate study by RAND
RAND
RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...
, however, commissioned in the wake of the IDA-EDO scandal, also estimated a cost savings associated with an F-22 MYP contract, which was actually larger than the estimated cost savings that IDA reported. The Chambliss amendment extended the production life of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor by three years, overturning a previous decision to phase out the fighter plane because of safety and performance problems, as well as its huge expense. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee, on 25 July 2006, POGO's Danielle Brian said:
We do not know if Admiral Blair recused himself, or in any way affected the outcome of the IDA report. I would submit, however, that there is an appearance of a conflict of interest — given his substantial personal financial interest and his fiduciary responsibility to EDO—in the continued funding of the F-22A. This raises reasonable questions about the independence of IDA’s analysis. EDO is an important sub contractor on the F22 program, being the sole supplier for the F22 AMRAAM vertical ejection launcher. As a director who owned shares in the company, Dennis Blair arguably stood to gain from any decision by Congress to extend the F22 program.
On 27 July 2006, the Washington Post reported that Dennis Blair had revealed that he would resign from the board of EDO Corporation, 'as soon as possible,' because of the revelations. Dennis Blair then submitted his letter of resignation on 31 July 2006.
On 13 September 2006, the Washington Post reported that Dennis Blair had resigned his position as president of the Institute of Defense Analyses after its trustees had found that a conflict of interest had occurred. Blair was asked to give up his other paid positions with military contractors, but he refused and instead chose to give up his position of president of IDA.
On 20 September 2006, Rolling Stone magazine published an article on the story entitled "Another Tale of Waste and Fraud Unpunished".
On 28 September 2006, the New York Times reported that the F-22 multiyear contract had been approved by Congress despite opposition from Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
, George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and the present and future chairmen of top U.S. Government military procurement committees. The New York Times suggested that the military industrial lobby that pushed the F-22 multiyear programme was more powerful than the elected officials who oversee government military spending including the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
himself.
On 1 December 2006, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Inspector General had found that although Blair had indeed violated IDA's conflict of interest policy by working for both EDO and IDA at the same time, his actions had not affected IDA's results on the F-22. It also found that Blair's involvement in the IDA F-22 MYP study was "minimal," with no involvement in conducting the analysis or preparing or reviewing the report before it was finalized.
Dennis C. Blair was replaced as an EDO director by General John A. Gordon
John A. Gordon
General John Alexander Gordon was deputy director of central intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. He served as the President's Homeland Security advisor from 2003 to 2004....
(ret), who is closely linked to Blair. In 1996 Gordon replaced Blair as Associate Director for Military Affairs at the CIA, and in 2007 Blair and Gordon sit together on the council of SAFE, a corporate-military think tank tasked with finding solutions to the approaching energy crisis.
In January 2009 Blair became Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
making him the highest ranking intelligence official in the US Government. He resigned this position in May 2010.
EDO Director Leslie Kenne and the Joint Strike Fighter contract
Lieutenant General Leslie Kenne spent 32 years in the United States Air Force. In 1997 she was appointed Director of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, the U.S. Department of Defense's largest ever military acquisition program with a budget of $30 billion. Lockheed Martin is the prime JSF program contractor. Lockheed Martin awarded EDO a contract on January 9, 2002 for the design, development and manufacture of a suite of pneumatic weapon delivery systems for the JSF.Kenne resigned from the USAF in September 2003 and shortly afterwards joined the board of directors of EDO Corporation.
EDO Director Paul Kern and allegations of war crimes at Abu Ghraib/EDO links with Titan Corporation
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
to report on an internal investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
. In August 2004 he presented the Fay Report
Fay Report
A report commonly known as The Fay Report was appointed to look into the scandal at Abu Ghraib.General Paul Kern was the appointing authority for the report....
largely absolving the military hierarchy of blame for the torture and sexual abuse. Kern blamed the torture in part on the civilian contractors working with military intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
services in the prison. One of the companies involved was identified as Titan Corporation, a contractor that supplies technology and 'civilian interrogators' to military intelligence. (The company has close links to the US intelligence community. Former CIA director James Woolsey has served on its board of directors.) However Kern did not advise that Titan Corporation should be charged with any criminal offence. Kern had been picked by Rumsfeld to investigate the Military Intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib after an earlier report which had implicated them in the torture. This earlier report was called the Taguba Report
Taguba Report
The Taguba Report is the common name of an official Army Regulation 15-6 military inquiry conducted in 2004 into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.-Initiation:...
and because of its controversial reference to 'systematic abuse' was kept secret until it was leaked to Seymour Hersch of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. In June 2007 Hersch published an article on Taguba who was forced to resign after submitting the report to Rumsfeld.
A few enlisted U.S. soldiers were eventually convicted, and imprisoned as a result of the investigations. Titan Corporation sacked one of their employees Adel Nakhla who had admitted holding down prisoners who were being tortured. Another Titan employee John Israel, a 'civilian interrogator/interpreter' identified by the Taguba Report as one of the four main people believed to have been responsible for the torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
is suspected by some journalists including Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...
of being an Israeli agent.
In April 2008 the Bush Administration were ordered to release a memo under the Freedom of Information Act that showed it had approved torture techniques in 2003 and given legal argument support for the use of torture techniques.
Kern retired shortly after the report came out and in January 2005 joined EDO Corporation as a director. Two of the other ten EDO Corporation directors who helped to elect him, James Roth and Robert M. Hanisee, were, and remain directors of Titan Corporation and as directors are open to charges of collusion and direct involvement in war crimes according to international law, but they have not been prosecuted by the United States legal system. Despite a lack of political will by the US Government to prosecute, Titan Corporation and CACI
CACI
CACI International Inc is a professional services and information technology company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. CACI is a member of the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies and the Russell 2000 index. The company has approximately 13,700 employees in over 120 offices in the U.S. and...
were nonetheless defendants in a civil action brought by victims of the
torture in Abu Ghraib Prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
.
The U.S. Military Commissions Act of 2006
Military Commissions Act of 2006
The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. Drafted in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Hamdan v...
effectively brought an end to such legal actions in the US.
In 2005, Titan Corp. admitted bribery charges after it paid $2 million into the re-election fund of the President of Benin, Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou, was President of Benin from 1972 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2006. After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 17 years, for most of that time under an officially Marxist-Leninist ideology, before he was stripped of his powers by the National Conference of...
.
Kern is also a member of the Cohen Group which has as its CEO yet another EDO Corp director, Robert S. Tyrer.
Regular anti-war protests outside EDO (UK) factory
On 21 September 2006, protesters blockaded the EDO MBM factory in Brighton for several hours forcing the Managing Director Paul Hills to scale a security fence to enter the premises. He then used an angle grinder or wire cutters to cut a hole in the EDO's fence to let the employees in to work. The protesters left the scene without being arrested. On 16 September 2006, 100 protesters marched through Brighton to deliver a petition calling for the closure of EDO MBM to Brighton Town Hall. On 23 August 2006 two protesters climbed 40 feet onto the roof of EDO MBM Technology Ltd to unfurl a banner protesting the company's supply of weapons to Israel used in the QanaQana
Qana also spelled Cana is a village in southern Lebanon located southeast of the city of Tyre and north of the border with Israel. The 10,000 residents of Qana are primarily Shiite Muslim although there is also a Christian community in the village....
bombing in which 16 Lebanese children were killed. On 19 July 2006 protesters staged a 'Horrors of War' demonstration outside the Brighton factory recreating scenes of violence and mutilation that result from aerial bombardment. On the morning of 17 July 2006, three activists completely blockaded EDO's Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
subsidiary EDO MBM Technology Ltd in protest at EDO’s supply of weapons technology to the Israeli military being used to attack Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
and in the then ongoing 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War #Other uses|Tammūz]]) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War , was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. The principal parties were Hezbollah...
. These are just a few actions in an ongoing campaign of protest, civil disobedience and non-violent direct action against EDO in Brighton that began in 2004 and has come to be known as the Smash EDO campaign. There has been at least one demonstration a week outside the factory since 2004, and the number of protests against the EDO MBM since 2004 now numbers in the hundreds.
Smash EDO campaign
There have been numerous protests and direct actions since 2004 voicing the opinion that EDO MBM should close or convert its factory to civilian use. In January 2009, during the Gaza war, activists raided EDO's factory in Moulsecombe and destroyed equipment. In 2010, a jury found the activists, who invoked the lawful excuse defence, according to which it can be lawful to commit an offence to prevent a more serious crime, not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory. Jonathan Hoffman, vice-chair of the Zionist Federation, claimed the judge had "behaved more like the defence counsel than the neutral officer of the court that he was supposed to be. The role of a judge – far from advancing his own political agenda – is to clarify points of law to the lay members of the jury..."The Zero Retention Force Arming Unit
The Zero Retention Force Arming Unit (ZRFAU) is an military electro mechanical device. EDO MBM Technology Ltd are sole owners of the proprietary rights to one such unit and act as technical support and design authority for its ongoing use and installation.The units are used in U.S. Navy BRU-32,BRU-41,BRU-42, BRU-45, the US Air Force BRU-46 & BRU-47, the Royal Australian Air Force MAU-12, the European Tornado HMERU & LMERU bomb racks. The ZRFAU is also used in the Israeli Military Industries (IMI) VER-2 Bomb Rack, a bomb rack also owned by EDO MBM Technology Ltd, and currently advertised for sale by a subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd
Elbit Systems
Elbit Systems Ltd. is one of the world's largest defense electronics manufacturers and integrators. Established in 1967, and based in Haifa, Israel, Elbit employs 11,000 people worldwide....
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
., for the Israeli air force F-16.
Following investigations by campaigners into EDO MBM's links with Israel, and the submission of documents showing these links in court as part of a defence of Palestine Solidarity protesters, EDO MBM removed from their website a reference stating it was 'actively manufacturing' ZRFAUs , claiming this statement had been 'an error'. Directors of EDO(UK)Ltd, the parent company of EDO MBM admitted that a US subsidiary, Artisan Technologies, in New Jersey, did manufacture the component supplied to Israel. This subsidiary was owned by EDO UK from 2000 until it was sold in 2008. Despite the sale of the company officially manufacturing the ZRFAU, EDO MBM continue to be the sole point of contact for sales and technical support for the component from 2000 to the present day.
In November 2009 the Information Tribunal
Information Tribunal
The Information Tribunal was a tribunal non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was established as the Data Protection Tribunal to hear appeals under the Data Protection Act 1984...
looking at EDO MBM's export licence applications held by the Dept for Business (BIS) found “There was no dispute that the ERU151 and the ZRFAU are components which can be incorporated into VER-2 bomb racks for use with F-16 combat aircraft, that those aircraft are used by the Israeli air force, and that from 1998 EDO owned the right to manufacture the ERU151 and the ZRFAU.'" But "After examining the documents, it concluded the information did not confirm claims that EDO supplied Israel, and therefore the documents should remain confidential. It was then established that EDO MBM's involvement with the design, development, technical support and supply of the ZRFAU had been taking place without any apparent UK export controls, in an apparent breach of UK legislation.
In June 2010 in the EDO Decomissioners case
EDO Decomissioners Case
The EDO Decomissioners Case was a legal case tried in England in which seven members of the Smash EDO campaign were acquitted of conspiring to cause criminal damage at the premises of EDO MBM Technology Ltd. On 16/17 January 2009, Smash EDO campaign activists broke into the EDO MBM building in...
a jury of twelve members of the UK public acquitted seven people of conspiracy to cause £180,000 criminal damage to the EDO MBM factory, on the grounds that their belief that EDO MBM had been supplying Israel with the ZRFAU at the time of Operation Cast Lead and by extension their belief that EDO MBM were complicit in war crimes carried out by Israel against the people of Gaza was a reasonable belief.It followed that it also reasonable to damage the factory to the tune of £180,000 in order to try and in some small way stop these Israeli war crimes and protect Palestinian property. Even Paul Hills, the Director of EDO MBM, had accepted during the trial that the activists belief was 'not unreasonable,' in light of all the documents that appeared to establish the fact, although as in previous sworn testimony over five years, he continued to deny any such involvement.
VER-2
VER- 2 means Vertical Ejector Rack (for) 2 (bombs), and is designed for the US produced F-16 and F-18. In the 1990s Lucas Western Corpoartion helped Israel Military Industries design a rack for Israeli F-16s. A Janes Defence Weekly (JDW) article, in June 1996, stated that "Israel’s F16s use VER-2 vertical ejection bomb racks made by Israeli Military Industries (IMI)" IMI later sold this prt of its business to Elbit.In 2005 the managing director of EDO MBM admitted that the company had acquired all the rights to the VER-2 from Lucas Western in 1998 and had since been 'jointly marketing it for a third party country'. He stated under oath that he had removed references to the VER-2 from the EDO MBM website, after protests began in Brighton in 2004, to avoid controversy [42]
In May 2009 managing director Paul Hills told The Argus: “I would and have stood up in court and sworn under oath that we don’t supply to Israel, which is one of the things Smash EDO accuse us of.“
EDO MBM and UN Peace Messenger City Brighton and Hove
EDO MBM was originally targeted by protesters because it represents the most direct link between the Iraq War the Occupation of Palestine and the UK city of Brighton and Hove. The city council was the first in the country to be awarded United Nations Peace Messenger City status and yet it owns the land, Home Farm Business Park, on which EDO MBM's factory stands. EDO rent the property through a third party company, Europa Holdings Ltd, who hold a 125 year lease on the section of the park where EDO has its factory. Till early 2005 the same lease was held by Cheshire County Council.EDO MBM provided essential arming and release components for the Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
Paveway
Paveway
Paveway is a generic term for Laser Guided Bombs .Pave or PAVE is sometimes used as an acronym for precision avionics vectoring equipment; literally, electronics for controlling the speed and direction of aircraft...
'smart munitions' used extensively in the shock and awe bombing by US/UK forces at the outset of the Iraq war. This led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. EDO MBM have been awarded a contract to provide components for the next generation Paveway IV 'fire and forget' smart bomb for the UK RAF.
As a result of the apparent contradiction of being a peace messenger city while being the landlord of an arms company, Brighton City Council in July 2005 came close to passing a motion of censure against EDO MBM. At the end of a full council meeting, in which debate on the motion was refused on grounds of time limits, the council eventually passed a watered down amendment to the motion that struck out all mention of the company and instead resolved to raise a UN peace flag above the town hall on one day each year . In March 2007, shortly after a Green Party councillor had taken on the role of 'peace messenger' from a member of the ruling Labour Party group, Brighton council announced they were scrapping the peace messenger city status for financial reasons.
Injunction case: EDO MBM v Campaign to Smash EDO & others/EDO MBM v Axworthy & others
The ongoing protests led EDO MBM and its employees, in April 2005, to seek a permanent high court injunctionInjunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
against 14 named protesters and two protest groups Smash EDO and Bombs out Of Brighton, on grounds of harassment. The intended injunction brought under Section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, applied to all protesters, not only those named in the court papers (who in any case strongly denied the allegations). The case created controversy because it was seen by some as an unjustified measure used by a U.S. arms company to suppress the freedom to protest of UK anti-war protesters. Others, however, suggested that the court action was used in order to prevent harassment and violent crime. The company failed to gain a permanent injunction and dropped the action in early 2006, at a cost of several million dollars in legal costs.
Allegations of Sussex Police collusion with EDO MBM
In the course of the high court battle a temporary or interim injunction was imposed on all protesters until a full trial could deal with the full facts of the case. The restrictions on protests and the aggressive strategy of Sussex Police brought about by this injunction, led to dozens of arrests and public order criminal charges against protesters. Two protesters spent up to a week in Lewes prison (on remand) as a result of arrests for alleged breaches of the injunction. The first for using a video camera to gather evidence of an assault on a protester by a security guard, and the second for stepping into a road opposite the factory. These charges carried a penalty of up to five years in prison on conviction. The cases would have had Crown CourtCrown Court
The Crown Court of England and Wales is, together with the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal, one of the constituent parts of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
jury trials if not dropped by the CPS. Others were arrested after allegations that they had disobeyed police orders, assaulted police, or obstructed them in the enforcement of the injunction.
After evidence came to light in the High Court that Sussex Police may have colluded with EDO Corporation to exaggerate the threat posed by demonstrators to the safety of employees, defence solicitors in related criminal cases began to investigate further. Then in what appeared to be a domino effect
Domino effect
The domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes...
, the Crown Prosecution Service
Crown Prosecution Service
The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the...
proceeded to drop all criminal charges, against all protesters, in all related cases, in an effort to protect the confidentiality of internal Sussex police documents which may have helped defendants prove such collusion had taken place. In July 2006 13 official complaints against Sussex Police were filed by protesters alleging police collusion with the arms company.
EDO (UK) Chairman Sir Robert Walmsley questioned
Sir Robert WalmsleyRobert Walmsley
Admiral Sir Robert Walmsley KCB was Chief of Defence Procurement at the UK Ministry of Defence from 1996 to 2003, and is a retired admiral in the Royal Navy.-Early career:...
is a director of EDO Corporation, and is Chairman of the Board of EDO (UK), which includes EDO MBM Technology Ltd in Brighton. On 1 August 2004 The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
reported that Sir Robert Walmsley, Former Chief of Procurement at the UK Ministry of Defence, who retired in April 2003, had been called in by a UK government watchdog, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, to answer questions about his appointments to the board of Directors of General Dynamics
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...
and EDO Corporation.
General Dynamics was awarded the (₤1.7 billion) Prime Contractor and Systems Integration contract for the BOWMAN secure, digital voice and data communications system in September 2001, while Walmsley was still in charge of MOD procurement. On retirement in April 2003 Warmsley was offered a lucrative directorship of General Dynamics. A government watchdog committee advised Walmsley not to take up the post for one year after he had retired from the MOD, to avoid the appearance of a 'reward' being given by General Dynamics to Walmsley. Walmsley publicly joined General Dynamics in April 2004. He had by then, already become a non-executive director on the board of British Energy
British Energy
British Energy was the UK's largest electricity generation company by volume, before being taken over by Électricité de France in 2009. British Energy operated eight former UK state-owned nuclear power stations and one coal fired power station....
. His position at General Dynamics was described as a 'triumph' by the Daily Mail on 23 February 2004 as his appointment gave him the 'highest position achieved by a Briton at a US prime contractor.'
In The Independent report, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
was said to have dismissed the watchdog recommendations that tighter rules were needed over such issues. In a later report published by The Independent on 26 December 2004, Blair was alleged to have helped 'mandarins' such as Walmsley, gain top jobs in the private sector, in defiance of anti-corruption committees. In May 2006, The Independent reported UK Government plans to scrap anti-corruption watchdog committees.
Sir Robert Walmsley and the Global Dominance Group
In 2006 Sir Robert Walmsley was named in a report 'The Global Dominance Group' produced by the US research group Project CensoredProject Censored
Project Censored is a non-profit, media criticism and investigative journalism project within the Sonoma State University Foundation. It is managed through the School of Social Sciences at the university....
. Walmsley is cited as one of 240 people considered as the world's top advocates of neo-conservative US global military domination.
Sir Robert Walmsley and the Al Yamamah arms scandal
Sir Robert Walmsley has also been linked to controversy over the Al YamamahAl Yamamah
Al Yamamah is the name of a series of a record arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia, which have been paid for by the delivery of up to of crude oil per day to the UK government. The prime contractor has been BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace...
arms deal with Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
which was conducted in such secrecy that government National Audit Office reports into the deal remain classified. The deal has been associated with bribery and corruption allegations, and was the subject of a police investigation until dropped in controversial circumstances. Police were denied access to an NAO report because it is classified. A Daily Telegraph report on 7 July 2006 reported, that judging from a list documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that there had been two classified NAO reports rather that just one as previously thought. The revelation came about through the title of one of the documents: "Letter from Sir Robert Walmsley, Chief of Defence Procurement to C&AG [NAO head Sir John Bourn] responding to recommendations in draft audit findings - 30 March 1998" which apparently refers to a draft of a second secret NAO report.