Cambridge's Draper Laboratory's Brent Scowcroft/Scowcroft Group Connection

Coincidentally, the Draper Laboratory Chairman of the Board since October 2013--a “Principal” of former Kissinger Associates Vice-Chairman Brent Scowcroft’s Scowcroft Group named Franklin Miller---previously worked “twenty-two years in the Department of Defense…and four years as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush” before joining The Cohen Group of former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen for five years, according to The Scowcroft Group’s website. And between June 2015 and July 2016, Scowcroft Group Principal Miller was paid $71,625 for being Draper Laboratory’s board chairman, according to Draper Laboratory’s 2015 Form 990 financial filing.

Besides being Draper Laboratory’s chairman of the board, Scowcroft Group Principal Miller—who “provides clients both strategic and tactical advice on defense”—has also, coincidentally, been a member of the Defense Policy Board, the U.S. Strategic Command Advisory Group and the Council on Foreign Relations. And in addition, he has, coincidentally, sat on the board of directors of EADS North America (a subsidiary of Airbus Group that profits from its Pentagon war and homeland security government contracts), the Sandia Corporation (which develops more modern nuclear weapons for the Pentagon) and the Atlantic Council of the United States (whose board of directors and international advisory chairman emeritus is, coincidentally, Scowcroft Group President and Principal Brent Scowcroft).

After joining former Nixon Administration Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s for-profit Kissinger Associates “consulting”/influence-peddling firm in 1982, Draper Laboratory board chairman Miller’s business partner at the Scowcroft Group, Brent Scowcroft, was hired by the government of Kuwait’s Kuwait Petroleum Corporation [KPC] to sit alongside Ali Jabar Al Ali Al-Sabah on the board of directors of KPC’s U.S. subsidiary at that time, Santa Fe International; and Scowcroft sat on the Kuwait government’s Santa Fe International corporate board in 1984, 1985 and 1986, according to Poor’s & Standard’s Register of Corporations. Yet in the early 1990’s the former director of Kuwait’s major U.S. subsidiary at that time—Scrowcroft Group President Scowcroft—was allowed to sit in a White House office as then-President H.W. Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor. As the Scowcroft Group “consulting”/influence-peddling firm’s website notes:

“As President of The Scowcroft Group…Brent Scowcroft provides clients with unparalleled strategic advice and assistance…Brent Scowcroft served as the National Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, the only individual in U.S. history appointed to the position under two different Presidents. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. In this capacity, he advised and assisted a wide range of U.S. and foreign corporate leaders on global joint venture opportunities…His…twenty-nine-year military career…included… Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Military Assistant to President Nixon….Out of uniform, General Scowcroft...formerly served as the Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...”

And not surprisingly, when the Iraqi troops of the now-executed Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, it was the presentation of Scowcroft-- the former member of the corporate board of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s Santa Fe International U.S. subsidiary-- -- at a National Security Council meeting on Aug. 3, 1990, “that made clear what the stakes were, crystallized people’s thinking and galvanized support for a strong response” to the Iraqi military occupation of Kuwait, according to a Feb. 2, 1991 New York Times article;  and, at this meeting, “Scowcroft stated that..he believed the United States had to be willing to use force” and “that Saddam had to be toppled…covertly through the CIA, and be unclear to the world,” according to Bob Woodard’s 1991 book The Commanders. But after the United States began “to use force” in Iraq in January 1991,  U.S. military forces apparently killed around 100,000 Iraqis people in the 1991 Gulf War to restore Al-Sabah family monarchical rule in Kuwait, while at least 849 U.S. troops were either killed or wounded in the same war; and during the next 10 years more than 9,600 of the U.S. soldiers involved in the first Gulf War, who “were often required to enter radioactive battlefields unprotected and were never warned of the dangers of Depleted Uranium” weapons, reportedly also died, according to Project Censored’s Censored 2004 book.

Coincidentally, Draper Laboratory Chairman Miller’s 91-year-old Scowcroft Group business partner also currently is a “Strategy Partner” at Torch Hill Investment Partners, whose for-profit investment portfolio includes stock in Zephyr Photonics, which “is a US-based…photonics company that is focused on providing solutions to the Department of Defense, aerospace, and intelligence markets” that “has developed its unique technology over 60 contracts from US Government agencies…and defense prime contractors,” according to the Torch Hill Investment Partners website.