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The Northrop Grumman Corporation, the largest builder of warships in the world, was on a charm offensive here Tuesday. Armed with slides and charts, Philip A. Teel, who runs Northrop's shipyards, led a phalanx of executives who laid out their case for another $200 million from Congress to cover losses from Hurricane Katrina.

Despite the Bush administration's determination to have a rudimentary missile defense system in place by 2004, the fact remains that none of the Pentagon's missile defense programs are up to the task, and it is not because the ABM Treaty is standing in the way.

In the nation's "new kind of war" on terrorism, defense spending is likely to focus as much on information and surveillance as bombs and bullets.

The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

As a growing number of Department of Homeland Security employees exit the agency, the practice of former officials joining prestigious research or academic institutions while working on behalf of for-profit companies is not uncommon in Washington.

Only hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Republican Representative Curt Weldon went on CNN and announced that he didn't want to hear anyone talking about funding for schools or hospitals. From here on, it was all about spies, bombs and other manly things.

Boeing may have lost out to Lockheed in it's bid to build the Joint Strike Fighter, one of the most lucrative contracts in Pentagon history, but no one should mourn for the defense giant. The Pentagon needs a plump Boeing as much as Boeing needs Pentagon largesse. In this spirit, it's no surprise that Congress is poised to quietly hand Boeing a big consolation prize in the form two unprecedented contracts that will give the company, which has recently fled Seattle for Chicago, a bailout that will total more than $10 billion.

There are many contenders for biggest political opportunist since the September 11 atrocities. Politicians ramming through life-changing laws while telling voters they are still mourning; corporations diving for public cash; pundits accusing their opponents of treason.

WASHINGTON -- With political tension building in Indonesia over the United States military attacks on Afghanistan, US business groups are hoping to increase support for the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri by convincing Congress to lift the ban on military training for Jakarta.

Top contractor Lockheed got contracts larger than budget of Congress, Dept. of Interior

The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that it had canceled a $99.1 million contract with Parsons, one of the largest companies working in Iraq, to build a prison north of Baghdad after the firm fell more than two years behind schedule, threatened to go millions of dollars over budget and essentially abandoned the construction site.

The Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.From building cells for detainees at Guantnamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root.

George Bush has made no secret of the primary mission of his presidency: to remunerate the companies which supported his bid for power. To the oil industry he has given the Arctic wildlife reserve and the abandonment of American action on climate change.