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Beltway Bandits at Work In the Pentagon

More than 200 subpoenas. As many as 100 defense contracts subject to cancellation. Tens of billions of dollars at stake. All last week, the revelations coming out of the FBI and Naval Investigative Service probe code- named Operation Ill Wind continued to mushroom into the biggest and most important Pentagon scandal ever.

At the heart of the mess lies the so-called Iron Triangle, the web of cozy relationships among Pentagon officials, defense consultants and military contractors. The scandal has shed light not only on a few suspected of corruption but on an entire system that seems tailor-made for cheating. It has...

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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