A new book about the pervasive corruption in the American political and economic system highlights USA TODAY's reporting that exposed the Pentagon's practice of hiring retired senior officers working for defense contractors to advise current commanders while not revealing their conflicts of interest.

The retired officers, known as senior mentors, were paid by the military at rates higher than their active-duty pay while they also collected their pensions. Eighty percent of them also worked for defense contractors trying to sell goods and services to the same parts of the military the mentors advised.

USA TODAY's reporting led Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Congress to require mentors to file financial disclosure forms revealing their potential conflicts or cease participating in the program. All but four declined, which essentially ended the program.

Janine Wedel, a George Mason University anthropologist, cited the reporting as an example of the often unseen corruption woven into American government. Too often, she wrote in her book Unaccountable, Americans don't know that the decisions made by the government, economists and academics are swayed by financial interests, not the facts.

In many cases, Wedel wrote, a former ambassador may be identified in media reports only by that title when he or she is actually working for special interests with a financial stake in the issue the former ambassador is talking or writing about.

"Today's ways of influencing are not limited to one arena or another like 'finance,' 'media,' or 'politics,' " Wedel wrote. "The lack of clear boundaries, indistinct identities, melded missions, and focus on 'performance' that we see in the media, we also see in think thanks, academia, 'grassroots' organizations, and government. Corporate websites now look like news outlets; news outlets' products, like a collection of press releases; philanthropy, like influence-laundering. And high-powered players move agilely across arenas, say, retiring from the military and government and joining a private equity firm while assuming multiple university associations."

Many of the retired officers in the USA TODAY stories about senior mentors did join private equity firms, where they could use the information gleaned from their participation in classified military exercises to guide their new employers in investment decisions. It was that access to key decision makers and information that made them valuable to the investment firms in the first place.

All too often, Wedel wrote, those involved in this casual corruption of our government and economy have self-serving justifications for their activities. They are either continuing to serve the greater good or somehow deserve their new rewards for their previous service, they claim.

In many cases, she wrote, the people involved in these activities are not unethical. What they are is unaccountable.

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