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:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“Is that the wind dying? O no;
It’s only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts’ moonshine.”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)