Daniel P. Burnham
Chairman and CEO Raytheon

Raytheon means "light from the gods." Makers of "Bunker Buster" bombs, Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, this company loves big noises and large civilian casualty counts. When a missile killed 62 civilians in a Baghdad market, that was Light from the Gods.

2002 CEO Salary: $8.9 million
War contracts in the last three years: $19.6 billion

This company loves to make things that go boom and kill lots of people such as Patriot & Tomahawk missiles including a missile that struck Baghdad market Shu'ale, killing at least 62 civilians, during the second Gulf War. About 100 Raytheon million dollar land-attack cruise missiles were lobbed at Afghanistan from U.S. Navy ships since October 7th, fifty in the opening salvo alone.

Raytheon also makes the "bunker buster" GBU- 28, a 5,000-pound bomb and missiles like the TOW, Maverick and Javelin, all being used in Operation Enduring Freedom. In addition to missiles, Raytheon also builds sensors and radars used on unmanned and manned reconnaissance airplanes used extensively in Afghanistan.

The comp[any has millions of dollars in fines for illegal activities. In October 1994, Raytheon paid $4 million to settle government charges that it had inflated the cost of a $71.5 million radar contract. In October 1993, Raytheon paid out $3.7 million to settle U.S. government charges that it had inflated the cost of Patriot missiles. The year before the company paid out $2.75 million for overpricing missile test equipment. In March 1990, Raytheon pleaded guilty in federal court to Judge Albert Bryan, Jr. in Virginia for illegally obtaining secret Air Force budget and planning documents. The company paid a million dollars in fines. In October 1987, the Justice Department signed on to a $36 million lawsuit originally filed by a former Raytheon employee, which alleged that Raytheon submitted false claims for work done on missiles.

One of Raytheon's more secretive subsidiaries is E-Systems, whose major clients have historically been the CIA and other spy agencies like the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. An unnamed Congressional aide told the Washington Post once that the company was ''virtually indistinguishable'' from the agencies it serves. ''Congress will ask for a briefing from E- Systems and the (CIA) programme manager shows up,'' the aide is
quoted as saying. ''Sometimes he gives the briefing. They're interchangeable.''

Aircraft support for drug-enforcement activities become a part of E-Systems' work after it bought up Air Asia, the CIA's aircraft repair and maintenance facility in Taiwan in 1975. Until E-Systems took it over, Air Asia provided support for Air America, the CIA's covert airline that ferried arms, heroin and opium in Indo-China during the Vietnam War, according to the British reporter Christopher Robbins, who wrote the authoritative account of the airline's history in 1979.

Immediately after acquiring Air Asia, E-Systems won a contract to maintain planes for the U.S.-funded Operation Condor in Mexico. Condor monitored drug trafficking in the state of Sinaloa in the mid-1970s. A 1985 U.S. congressional study found that the contract was ''a shambles ... There are no adequate records to indicate how the funds have been and are being spent.'' The study also cited incidents of planes being used for joy rides. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathon Marshall, authors of ''Cocaine Politics,'' say that the Condor operation ''succeeded in filling the jails with hapless peasants ... but failed to arrest a single drug trafficker.''

E-Systems paid $4.2 million in 1994 to settle a lawsuit brought by Carlos Uribe, a man in El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. Uribe charged that an E-Systems employee, Truett Burney, accidentally murdered Uribe's wife in a hotel room when his gun went off in an adjoining room in September, 1991. Burney's lawyers said he was helping install ''top secret listening devices'' on suspected drug traffickers at the time.

E-Systems has a murky history as a military contractor also. The first time the company appeared in the news was when it was sued by the widow of an employee who was killed in a 1971 crash of an Air Force plane sent to spy on a French nuclear test.

In the early 1970s, E-Systems won the contract to install communication gear on Air Force One, the U.S. president's plane. This led to similar contracts for the heads of state of Iran, Israel, Nigeria, Malaysia, Romania and Saudi Arabia. E-Systems has since built the ''Doomsday Plane,'' an airborne command post for the Pentagon and the White House in the event of a nuclear attack.
In 1977, during the height of the ''dirty war'' in Argentina, E-Systems won a contract to supply ''Wheelbarrow'' systems -- a radio transmitter that detonates explosives by remote control -- to the Argentine police. In August 1990, E-Systems pleaded guilty to criminal charges of falsifying results on tactical field radios manufactured at its Florida factories. The company paid out almost $3 million in fines to settle the charges.

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