With Australia’s Department of Defence, a number of retired top American military leaders have secured lucrative consulting contracts, with one former admiral earning $US5,000 ($7,560) per day for his knowledge.
One of America’s top spies worked for an Australian intelligence agency a year after leaving his position as director of national intelligence in the US when Donald Trump was elected president, according to information obtained by The ABC.
The Pentagon has revealed the specifics of the agreements for the first time, shedding light on how senior American officers have used their military experience over the past ten years to secure jobs with foreign governments, notably Australia.
Numerous retired US military personnel have been permitted to work for Australia since 2012, according to the documents that the Pentagon gave to Congress last month.
In one case, retired Admiral John Richardson, who oversaw the US Navy from 2015 to 2019, pays US$5,000 per day as a consultant under a deal he made with Australia’s defence department last year.
The retired admiral also receives travel and hotel expenses as part of the consulting agreement negotiated through the consulting firm Burdeshaw Associates in Washington, DC, to complete his job in Australia.
The capabilities of our army or air force may be impacted in the ensuing decades due to the prohibitive expense of nuclear submarines. The government has yet to explain how new detecting technology would affect the efficiency of these expensive subs in the coming years.
According to Australian government documents, the one-year contract for his “advisory services” was given without a competitive bid “due to an absence of competition for technical reasons” and started in November 2022.
The Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board and Naval Shipbuilding Expert Advisory Panel have paid William Hilarides over $2.5 million since 2016 for his advise. This was verified last week by Australia’s defence minister.
According to Pentagon documents, Mr. Hilarides charges a daily cost of $US4,000 ($6,000), and this week the ABC disclosed that he has also been chosen to lead a new evaluation of the size and composition of the surface fleet of the Royal Australian Navy.
The documents, which were initially obtained by the Washington Post, also show that in 2019, the ACT government paid a former US Navy officer the equivalent of $170,000 USD to serve as an advisor in the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate.
One of the more intriguing disclosures from the Pentagon documents is that James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence for the United States, was paid to work for Australia’s new Office of National Intelligence after resigning in 2016 following Donald Trump’s election as president.
The former under secretary of defence for intelligence and member of the United States Air Force spoke to the National Press Club in Canberra in 2017 while serving as a visiting distinguished professor at the Australian National University.
In 2018, Mr. Clapper received an undisclosed fee to work with the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) in Canberra, which had just been formally constituted in December of that year, according to the recently published Pentagon papers.
The decision to establish ONI as a single point of coordination for intelligence would bring Australia into line with its Five Eyes partners, the US and UK, as Mr Clapper noted during his 2017 visit.
