Bird flu czar?
One would have to wonder how Donald Rumsfeld had time to amass a personal fortune valued at $50 to $210 million in 2001, when he was so busy.
Rumsfeld, born in 1932, was Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford (1975-1977), and under President George W. Bush (2001-2006). He was also White House Chief of Staff for part of Ford’s tenure, and served in various positions under Nixon. Plus, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and was US Ambassador to NATO. And he did so much more. Naval service, top official in federal commissions and councils. Interstitial stints in highly paid jobs in industry.
So, considering Mr. Rumsfeld’s ethics aside from any questions that might arise about his conduct as Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush, perhaps the first question to ask would be this:
How is it possible for a public servant with only 24 hours in his day to:
a) be paid so much of citizen’s money that he can invest wildly, and,
b) manage his investments so well that he is able to serve his nation and Mammon simultaneously?
Of course, Rumsfeld had investment advisors, and access to the best possible information. At one point, in fact, he had a choice between being accused of insider trading, or simply holding stocks he should ethically—even under this government’s lax standards—have sold. He chose the latter. (From a CNN report.)
The same report noted that the Office of Government Ethics could not or did not render an opinion, so Rumsfeld was following the advice of an attorney he hired privately.
The nature of the stock in question, Tamiflu, is also significant in assessing Rumsfeld’s ethical lapses regarding his investments. Tamiflu, developed by Gilead Research in response to the Avian Flu epidemic, was the darling of government pharmaceuticals purchases. In July, 2005, “the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress (was) considering a multi-billion dollar purchase.”
Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical company with rights to sell the drug, expected 2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, four times its 2004 sales.
Rumsfeld had been Gilead’s chairman from 1997 until joining Bush’s administration. In 2005, he still held a Gilead stake valued between $5 million and $25 million, according to his own financial disclosure. That seems an awfully wide range, a range that might allow for a lot of manipulation, one way or another. But, to be fair, when it seemed there might be an avian flu pandemic, Rumsfeld asked the Pentagon’s general counsel what he could or could not be involved in regarding the company, should such a scenario have arisen.
While that is at least one plus sign in his favor, it leads directly back to the original question: How much time was he spending on superintending his personal fortune while drawing a government paycheck?
Is it, in fact, ethical for government employees—civil servants—to moonlight at anything, including poring over their stock portfolios, even those in trust until they return to private life? Perhaps they should be required to sell any stocks they own, putting the proceeds in trust at some reasonable rate of return. Since government secretaries of state, defense, education, et al., make so many connections with corporate America while serving citizen America, it wouldn’t seem much of a hardship to require them to allow their $5 million to $25 million nest eggs to earn a paltry 4 percent while they served—for a considerable salary and abundant perks—the population they have sworn to serve. (Most retirement accounts, if their owners were canny enough to pull their money out of stocks during the summer’s debacle, are earning about 4 percent, if they’re lucky and have a good relationship with a bank that survived.)
There have probably been no penurious presidents, and probably no penurious government secretaries, either. As far back as the days of John Adams, questions arose about the fiscal integrity of Alexander Hamilton, for one…and Thomas Jefferson, for two. Both seemed to overspend, given their assets and positions. It seems Adams alone was not fodder for fiscal scandalmongers; he does seem to have walked his talk of frugality and pious regard for the nation he had chosen to serve. He does seem really to have put the nation above his own needs, indeed, often to his and his family’s intense fiscal and personal distress.
While it is probably fruitless even to yearn for that level of integrity and commitment from those at the helm of U.S. government agencies today, it would be nice if they would put on a cloak of respectability, and live modestly luxurious lives, rather than obscenely lavish ones, especially while those they posed at serving have been so ill-served during their tenure.
Comments