The case involving alleged criminality between the military and corporations is similar to one 40 years ago in Maine.
Two business executives alleged by prosecutors to have bribed a now-imprisoned U.S. Navy admiral have been acquitted.
A federal jury in Washington cleared Next Jump co-CEOs Yongchul Kim and Meghan Messenger of bribing Adm. Robert Burke.
Burke, convicted a year ago in the same case, is currently serving a six-year prison sentence.
The same argument prosecutors successfully made against Burke fell short in their case against the two business executives who allegedly conspired with him.
They were charged with offering Burke a future retirement job in exchange for military contracts while he was still a four-star admiral.
The case brings to mind a famous warning from one of America’s most beloved Army generals – five-star Dwight D. Eisenhower – who served two terms as U.S. president after his heroic military service.
In a farewell speech from the White House in 1961 three days before John F. Kennedy succeeded him, President Eisenhower warned Americans of what he called the “military industrial complex.”
It was a stunning speech coming from a lifetime soldier who was suggesting that sometimes the relationship between the defense department and private military contractors can become too cozy.
Eisenhower believed that war can be very profitable for defense contractors and that the government needs to be on alert to avoid getting beguiled by weapons salesmen.
The Burke case is similar to the 1993 acquittal of Wallace Nutting, a four-star Army general who retired in Biddeford in 1985, two years before he was charged with weapons conspiracy.
The government alleged Nutting and a defense contractor that he went to work for after he left the Army sold faulty ammunition to the U.S. government.
Though Nutting was cleared, six of his co-defendants were found guilty.
How can the Admiral be convicted of accepting a bribe from those people, but they aren’t guilty of offering and paying the bribe?