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Townhall
Finance...
New
Day, a New White House Scandal:
First Solyndra, Now LightSquared
By Bob Beauprez
9/17/11
It
must feel like SSDD at the White
House – same stuff, different day.
While
the stink from the Solyndra political corruption scandal continues to
grow, a
new one involving a 4-star Air Force General and military intelligence
erupted
yesterday from Capitol Hill.
According
to reports published by The
Daily Beast, General William Shelton, Commander of the Air Force Space
Command
Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, said the “White
House
tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable
to a
company tied to a large Democratic donor. “
The
company is LightSquared, a
Virginia wireless broadband provider seeking approval for a
coast-to-coast
wireless network. The
majority owner of
LightSquared is Harbinger Capital Partners an investment fund whose
CEO, Philip
Falcone, is a large Democrat Party donor.
The
bandwidth spectrum proposed to be
used by LightSquared would be very close to the global GPS system used
by
private industry as well as the U.S. military and intelligence
communities. Although
LightSquared
maintains their proposal would be “quiet neighborhood” network, the
Pentagon and
industry experts have voiced serious concerns that the “tens of
thousands of
ground stations for a wireless network could drown out the GPS signal.”
Prior
to appearing before the House
Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, the White House reviewed
and
recommended changes to General Shelton’s testimony that would have been
favorable to LightSquared. “There
was an
attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage
LightSquared in
the process in order to bias his (Gen. Shelton’s) testimony.” Rep. Mike
Turner
(R-OH), the Committee Chairman told The Daily Beast.
“The only people who were involved in the
process in preparation for the hearing included the Department of
Defense, the
White House, and the Office of Management and Budget.”
According
to the report, the White
House pressed Gen. Shelton to alter his testimony on two critical
points:
first, that the General supported the White House policy to add more
broadband
for commercial use (a campaign pledge by Obama), and secondly that the
Pentagon
would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in
just 90
days. Instead
of caving to the White
House pressure, General Shelton “chafed at the intervention” and blew
the
whistle.
Consistent
with what has become
standard-operating-procedure, the White House issued a statement
denying any
wrong doing or pressure on the General.
Read
the rest of the column at
Townhall Finance
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