Operation Ill Wind was a three-year investigation launched in 1986 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation into corruption by U.S. government and military officials and defense contractors.
About 12 government officials were convicted of various crimes, including an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. About 60 private citizens were also convicted, including half a dozen major defense contractors, some smaller defense contractors, employees, and consultants.
Most worked for Unisys, pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including the use of fraud, bribery and illegal campaign contributions to obtain billions of dollars in defense contracts.
The scandal led the United States Congress to pass the 1988 Procurement Integrity Act, which regulates the pay that procurement officials can get from contractors during the first year after they leave government, and forbids them to provide bid and proposal information to their new employers.
Famous quotes containing the words operation, ill and/or wind:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)