Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin

It takes some awful quick talking to sneak around the Geneva
Conventions, but if Vice President Dick Cheney had gotten his way
on the torture debate, CIA counter-terrorism agents overseas
wouldn’t even have to mince their words. That would have certainly
loosened things up for Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest
military contractor, which charges the US government up to $200 per
interrogator, per hour, according to
Pratap
Chatterjee of CorpWatch.

Based in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin offers its
interrogation recruits salaries of $70,000 to $90,000, plus bonuses
for signing and sticking it out through deployment terms,
Chatterjee writes. Every Sunday, the civilian interrogators of
tomorrow meet with military personnel in a welcome briefing before
receiving their black duffle bags filled with combat helmets,
clothing, and gas masks. They will work beside actual military
interrogators on people suspected of terrorist links, learning
Q-and-A techniques that, according to Chatterjee, range from ‘love
of comrades’ to ‘fear up harsh.’

Because their contracts with the government haven’t been made
public, it’s difficult to determine the full involvement of private
companies that serve the military. For Lockheed Martin at least,
it’s clear interrogation is only a fraction of its war services.
Since the war’s origins, a variety of the company’s planes and
missiles have been used, in addition to its satellite imagery. But
that’s only on a material level. Chatterjee quotes New York
Times national security reporter Tim Weiner as writing, the
company is an ‘information-technology empire’ serving the
government at nearly every level — sorting mail, cutting Social
Security checks, counting the census, monitoring air traffic, and,
in the process, writing ‘more computer code than Microsoft.’
— Ty Otis

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Meet the
New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin

Related Links:

CorpWatch Company Profile of Lockheed Martin