<p>Last week, the <a href="http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-08-485">U.S. Government Accountability Office</a> (GAO) released a <a href="http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-08-485">report</a> that details the extensive revolving door where former Department of Defense officials are now working for defense contractors, creating glaring conflicts of interest.  </p>    <p>GAO's report found that in 2006, defense contractors employed over 86,000 former DOD employees who had left the agency since 2001. The report found instances where former DOD officials were working on contracts under the responsibility of their form agency, office or command.  And they found nine instances where former officials are working on a contract &quot;for which they had program oversight responsibilities or decision-making authorities while at DOD.&quot;</p>    <p>This isn't a newly recognized problem. A 2004 report by the <a href="http://www.pogo.org/p/contracts/c/co-040101-contractor.html">Project on Government Oversight</a> (POGO) on the revolving doors between the government and large private contractors found &quot;conflict of interest is the rule, not the exception.&quot; </p>

Via IEC Journal comes word of this Government Accountability Office report written up in this Government Executive article by Elizabeth Newell on the post-employment trends of 400 top former Defense Department officials -- all of whom were subject to a one-year ban on lobbying their old colleagues. Newell offers this staggering finding:

Approximately 65 percent of those former officials were employed by one of seven contractors: Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC); Northrop Grumman Corp.; Lockheed Martin Corp.; Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.; L3 Communications Holding Inc.; General Dynamics and Raytheon Co. All but one of those companies, Booz Allen Hamilton, ranked in the top 10 of Government Executive's Top 200 Contractors list in 2007. Booz Allen Hamilton was 24th on that list.

USASpending.gov, maintained by Office of Management and Budget, ranks all of those seven contractors in their top 20 for 2007. Newell quotes Cristina Chaplain, the report's author, as saying, "Our results indicate that defense contractors may employ a substantial number of former DOD officials on assignments related to their former DOD agencies or their direct responsibilities."

Rep. Al Wynn, who's announced he's taken a position with uber-lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro, is going to have to watch his step to avoid any conflict of interest until he actually resigns in June.

A quick look at the firm's 2006 and 2007 client lists begs the question, what's can he possibly do in his remaining time that wouldn't be a conflict with one of the firm's clients? As The Washington Post wrote Sunday in an editorial titled "Mr. Wynn's Ignoble Exit," the reason for his early exit is clear, "M-O-N-E-Y." The Post said it best, "Don't let the revolving door hit you on the way out."

Thanks to Craig Newmark, we now know where two more former staffers of resigned, retired or defeated members of Congress are now. Wayne Palmer, the former chief of staff to Sen. Rick Santorum, now lobbies for Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, while Tim Berry, the former chief of staff for Rep. Tom DeLay lobbies for Time Warner.

We now have four lobbyists verified, only 44 to go!

This is a pretty amusing take on Washington's revolving door. But the truth is often stranger than fiction. If you want all the facts, check out the Center for Responsive Politics' Revolving Door database. In fact, you can start by looking up the names of some of the people mentioned in the cartoon.

Wow, that was fast. In less than a day, 21 citizen researchers completed the first part of the Where Are They Now?" distributed research project. They investigated 268 congressional staff members whose bosses resigned, retired or were voted out of office in 2006, and found 48 who have potentially gone through the revolving door to work for K Street. Thank you to all who participated--including the 30 researchers who signed up but didn't get a chance to participate in the first part, but remember: There's still more to be done.

So far, only one of these potential revolvers has been verified. Here's your chance to do some old fashioned, person-to-person reporting: Call up a lobbying firm and verify that we have indeed identified a former congressional insider who's moved on to K Street. We give you a really simple script, and an easy way to record your efforts. Just click here to get started.

Rep. Mike Oxley, the former chair of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, retired. So did Sen. Paul Sarbanes, the ranking minority member of the Senate Banking Committee. Rep. Harold Ford lost his bid for an open Senate seat, while Sen. Rick Santorum lost his bid for his own. Criminal investigations cost both Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Rep. Bob Ney their seats.

When they left office, what happened to their former staffers? Did they go through Washington's Revolving Door? Using the Sunlight Foundation's new Where are they now? distributed research tool, you can find out who's gone from Congress to K Street. The 109th Congress closed up shop nearly one year ago. For the top staff members whose bosses resigned, retired or were voted out of office, the one year "cooling off period" -- during which they are not allowed to lobby their former colleagues on Capitol Hill -- is coming to an end. Lower level staffers have been able to lobby their old colleagues on the Hill all year.

Now you can find out what former aides are now lobbying on everything from S-Chip expansion to bridges to nowhere. Where are they now? also extends the distributed research model by allowing users, in addition to doing the preliminary research on potential revolvers, to verify information, resulting in a 100 percent-citizen-powered project. Where are they now? will thus take our experiments in citizen journalism to a new level—producing high quality, fact-checked facts that any citizen or journalist can quote and rely on.

Using the tool is simple. Pick a lawmaker you want to research from the project's home page, choose one their former aides from the the list taken from the September 2006 edition of the Congressional Directory, and look for any matches in the Senate Office of Public Records online database of lobbyist disclosures. If you do find a match, enter the firm's name and contact info from the SOPR database, and you're done with step one. If you want to verify the data, use the tool to keep track of your phone calls to the lobbying firm. And that's it. A fun little diversion for the holiday season. (P.S. -- For those curious, our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics maintain a pretty good list of former members of Congress who've gone through the revolving door--including those who left during the 109th Congress.)

Perhaps the greatest convergance of corrupt activities in Washington over the past few years occurred during the debate and passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. The story in a nutshell is that lobbyists wrote a one thousand page bill that was introduced hours before congressmen voted on it. The vote was then held open for three hours - the longest vote in the history of the House of Representatives - instead of the normal and required 15 minutes. During the open vote the Republican majority twisted arms and used threats and bribes to gain votes for the bill. (Later, Tom DeLay and other Republican congressmen would be admonished by the Ethics Committee for their actions.) When the bill was passed and signed by the President all of the main actors who helped pass the bill went to work for the pharmaceutical industry. Last night 60 Minutes did a great job covering this story. Crooks & Liars has the 60 Minutes footage:

Here's a direct Windows Media Player link.

Here's a direct Quicktime Link.