Keeping it All in the Family for "Bush Incorporated": Bush Names Cheney Kin to Legal Post
President Bush has nominated the vice president's son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, where he would oversee 1,500 lawyers who work on legal matters like Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration. Mr. Perry, who is married to Elizabeth Cheney, is leaving the Washington office of the Latham & Watkins law firm, where he was a partner, as well as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, one of the top 10 contractors for the Homeland Security Department. Mr. Perry, according to disclosure forms filed last year with the Senate, lobbied the Homeland Security Department and House Homeland Security Committee on behalf of Lockheed Martin as it applied for a government designation that certain of its products were "qualified antiterrorism technologies" and approved for sale. Last year, it was among the first companies to win such a designation. Lockheed Martin and its partners have won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commitments in the last two years for products and services it sells, including a contract to train airport security screeners for the Transportation Security Administration. [more]