Controversy surrounding a proposed lease deal between Boeing and the Air Force for one hundred 767 aircraft tankers unveiled the most serious case of crime at the Pentagon in recent history. After emerging publicly in 2003, the 23 billion-dollar plan led to the imprisonment of two top officials. Through an institutionally grounded rhetorical approach to news framing of the ordeal from 2003–2008, this essay confronts the tragic impulse of issue containment rhetoric, placing emphasis on Burke's (1969a) “scapegoat mechanism.” I critique the popular convention of episodically constructing temporary, isolated, and accessible causes for elite corruption and American greed. Moreover, I show that historical and systemic distortions prevent recognition of the limits of liberal ideology on collective social change under the hegemony of capitalism. In addition to offering a novel framework for future study, the investigation calls for further inquiry on the contested nature of discourses of nonpolitical consensus th...