The Revolving Door

Congress regulates what officials may do after leaving the Pentagon through several statutes of different ages. GAO reviewed earlier contractor reporting systems in 1989 and 1990, and the requirements were repealed in 1995. The rules in force in 2026 are listed below.

Section 207(d) extends the period to two years for very senior personnel. The permanent bar in § 207(a) applies to particular matters the person handled personally and substantially. Each subsection of § 207 governs communications. Employment at a contractor falls outside § 207.

GAO has counted the population twice, in reports published thirteen years apart. For the 2008 report GAO matched Defense Department personnel records to IRS data and to data from 52 contractors. It examined about 35,000 senior and acquisition officials who had left in the six years since January 2001. GAO wrote that in 2006 the 52 contractors employed 86,181 of the 1,857,004 former military and civilian personnel who had left DoD service since 2001.

GAO extrapolated from a sample that at least 422 of the 2,435 could have been working on defense contracts under the responsibility of their former agency, office or command, and at least nine on the same contracts they had overseen at DoD. GAO stated that the estimate was not evidence of violations and said it found none. DoD concurred with GAO's recommendation to consider whether contractors should face additional reporting requirements. GAO also wrote: "There are acknowledged benefits to employing former government officials for both DOD and defense contractors."

GAO's 2008 case examples include a retired rear admiral who pleaded guilty under § 207 in July 2007 and paid a $15,000 fine.

The other four contractors each employed 10 or fewer. In both studies GAO compared its own findings with what contractors reported. In 2008 the contractors reported 1,263 against 2,435 in GAO's IRS-based analysis. In 2019 the ten contractors that supplied data reported 816 potentially covered officials against 1,149 in GAO's DoD and IRS data, and GAO wrote that it was "unable to reconcile the differences."

GAO's 2021 report records that the Inspector General's December 2019 follow-up (DODIG-2020-044) found 100 percent of sampled requests in the database and 97 percent answered within 30 days.

GAO also recommended in 2021 that DoD assess whether to add the lobbying prohibitions to its acquisition regulation (DFARS 252.203-7005). DoD had not considered it and concurred. GAO described "only a handful of reported PGE violations by former DOD personnel over the last decade." Its examples are a former Air Force captain placed on probation in 2015 and a Defense Digital Services product manager in 2017 whom the Inspector General referred to the Department of Justice, which "declined to prosecute the case." The DoD Standards of Conduct Office told GAO that most major contractors take compliance seriously and that violations come from individual bad actors.

Two reports count former officials, members of Congress and senior staff who hold lobbying, board or executive roles at the top 20 defense contractors. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) published its count on 5 November 2018 in "Brass Parachutes." Senator Elizabeth Warren's office published "Pentagon Alchemy" in April 2023. The 645 figure is POGO's and the 672 figure is Warren's.

POGO also reported at least 380 high-ranking Defense Department officials and officers in its database, a quarter of them (95) at the top five contractors. It wrote that most of the cases are individuals who went from senior Pentagon positions to work directly for defense contractors, and "The vast majority of the individuals identified in this report did not violate any law or regulation." The report argues that the rules are the gap. It records that only three Pentagon employees had been prosecuted for violating post-employment restrictions in ten years. Its acknowledgments thank the Charles Koch Foundation.

Warren's report found that 91 percent of its 672 cases were registered lobbyists. Its table of contractors includes companies that the report footnotes as COVID-era DoD contractors, among them Pfizer, Humana, Moderna, Regeneron and Centene, alongside General Electric and McKesson. The two counts therefore cover overlapping but different lists of firms. In Warren's Table 1 the Pfizer row prints a total of 73 although its parts sum to 74, and the printed column totals are 613, 25, 34 and 672.

The record documents seven officials who moved between Defense Department posts and contractor roles. The dates span 2009 to 2021 and three administrations: Lynn's confirmation process in 2009 (Obama), Work's appointment in 2014 (Obama), the Trump administration's Mattis, Shanahan and Esper, and Austin in 2021 (Biden). Each step below comes from the official's own letter, an SEC filing, a company release or an inspector general report.

The contractor-to-Pentagon direction is documented for five officials: Lynn, Shanahan, Esper, Mattis and Austin.

An ethics agreement is the nominee's written commitment to the Department's ethics official. The table gives each stated term in the document's own terms. Shanahan's agreement is known through the Inspector General's description, because the agreement pages in the report are images.

Esper's agreement states: "Upon confirmation, I will resign from my position with Raytheon Company," and divestiture of Raytheon stock within 90 days. He remained entitled to participate in Raytheon's deferred compensation plan. At his 16 July 2019 confirmation hearing, Senator Warren asked him to extend the recusal for his full tenure and to agree not to seek a waiver. Esper declined to extend it: "On the advice of my ethics folks at the Pentagon, the career professionals, no." Asked whether he would agree not to seek a waiver, he answered: "Uh, no Senator, I won't." He submitted a letter from the Standards of Conduct Office stating that he did not request, seek or receive a waiver or authorization while serving as Secretary of the Army or Acting Secretary of Defense. The transcript is the one posted by Warren's office.

Mattis's agreement states that he would forfeit unvested General Dynamics restricted stock and options and divest the rest within 90 days of confirmation. He kept Theranos stock, with recusal while he held it. Austin's memorandum of 6 May 2021 states that it supersedes the screening arrangement of 22 January 2021 and accounts for his recent divestitures. It sets two-year recusal periods for Booz Allen Hamilton, Austin Strategy Group, Tenet, Pine Island Capital Partners, Nucor, Guest Services, Carnegie Corporation, Auburn University, Fidelity and JPMorgan.

Defense contractors also appear on the published donor lists of two policy institutes. Each list gives dollar bands, not amounts, so the site's money-flow register records every contribution with no amount and states the band in its note. Work led the Center for a New American Security from 2013 to 2014, according to the Raytheon release of 14 August 2017.

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is itself a think tank, summed the lower ends of self-reported donor ranges for 50 think tanks in a January 2025 brief. It reports more than $34.7 million from top Pentagon contractors since 2019 and that 20 of the 32 think tanks that publish donors received contractor money.

IDA concluded that removing or altering the provisions it reviewed "is unlikely to have a perceptible impact on the ability of the Department to negotiate and execute contracts on an arms-length basis," citing competition and bid-protest safeguards. Its interviews recorded that former officials serve as "an avenue for frank conversation" between the Department and industry. The report carries a disclaimer that its views are not the Department's official position. The study examined hiring, retention and operations. It contains no analysis of contract awards or prices.

The record contains three arguments for movement between sectors. GAO states that there are acknowledged benefits to both sides. IDA's interviews report value in former officials who translate Department needs for industry and help non-traditional firms enter defense work. The safeguards in § 4.1 apply together with ethics pledges, a DFARS representation that offerors comply, screening arrangements and competition. GAO reported only a handful of violations in a decade, and POGO found three prosecutions in ten years. IDA also recorded some anecdotal harm to the hiring of civilians from the restrictions.

The GAO, Inspector General and IDA reports cited above count officials and describe rules. None of them tests whether hiring former Defense Department officials changes contract awards, prices or cost growth.

One peer-reviewed study addresses a related question. Luechinger and Moser (Journal of Public Economics, 2014) studied Senate-confirmed Defense Department appointees across six administrations and, according to its abstract, report positive abnormal stock returns for the firms involved. The result concerns market value at the time of appointment.