Pentagon nominee Ashton Carter made series of paid appearances at investment firms during Pentagon hiatus
WASHINGTON _ In the 10 months following his departure as the Pentagon’s second-ranking official, Secretary of Defense nominee Ashton B. Carter earned over $100,000 from private appearances before high-profile Wall Street firms, technology investors, and defense labs, according to disclosure forms.
Carter, a longtime Harvard scholar, defense consultant, and top Pentagon official whose Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for next month, also earned $120,000 last year as a consultant to the Markle Foundation, which has a stated mission of “leveraging technology and advancing public and private leadership.’’
Carter served on the foundation’s task force on national security along with leading academics, government officials, and corporate leaders.
If he is confirmed to be the next secretary of defense, Carter has agreed to resign a pair of private-sector positions he currently holds — as an adviser for computer technology companies Box Inc., and Palo Alto Networks Inc.
In a letter to the Pentagon’s office of general counsel on Dec. 31, Carter pledged to resign from all his positions with Stanford University, the Markle Foundation, Box, Inc. and Palo Alto Networks, Inc., “to avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest.’’
He also agreed to recuse himself for two years from any decisions that might directly impact those entities unless he get special authorization from the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel.
In the year since he left the Pentagon, Carter has made a series of private paid appearances before executives of investment companies, according to an 18-page disclosure form he filed earlier this month with the Office of Government Ethics.
He received $30,000 for a meeting with executives at JMI Equity, a Baltimore-based investment company with a stake in a series of information technology firms; and a $22,500 honorarium from Barclays Capital, an international investment bank.
Carter, 60, also earned $20,000 from a meeting with the Gerson Lehrman Group, a New York business consulting firm; $5,000 from a private appearance at New York investment bank Goldman Sachs; and $15,000 from Boston-based insurance giant Liberty Mutual.
The Steel Tube of Institute of America, an industry group representing steel manufacturers, paid $13,500 for Carter’s insights.
Carter, who was also a visiting lecturer at Stanford University last fall — a perch that earned him $50,000 — made several other paid appearances, including at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, which gave him a $10,000 honorarium, and at the federally-funded Aerospace Corporation, which paid him $5,000.
If Carter as expected does win the top job at the Pentagon — his confirmation is widely predicted to get bipartisan support — he also will have to keep an eye on the business activities of his wife, Stephanie, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Stephanie Carter is employed by ABS Capital Partners, Inc. a venture capital firm with offices in Baltimore and San Francisco that currently has investments in two companies that do business with the Pentagon.
While she is not aware beforehand of the identity of companies the venture capital firm invests in, one of them is the ISO Group, a defense and aerospace engineering and technology firm, while another is Athletes’ Performance, a fitness company that consults for the military and law enforcement agencies.
Carter agreed that he will not involve himself in any matters concerning those companies “as long as my spouse owns these interests.’’
Under government ethics guidelines, neither Carter nor his spouse are allowed to own direct stock in any Pentagon contractors or must get a special waiver.
Meanwhile, if Carter learns that his wife’s firm is investing in a company that does business with the Pentagon, he said he “will promptly notify the Standards and Conduct Office to determine if any company is on the [Department of Defense] contractor list or poses a conflict of interest with my duties as secretary.’’
The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group that first reported the new disclosures last week, has been critical of some of Carter’s history of advising both the government and private industry — in some cases at the same time.
“Carter’s latest ethics disclosures show another way for former government officials to cash in: giving speeches sponsored by companies in the investment world,’’ said POGO’s Michael Smallberg.
A spokeswoman for Carter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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