Original post by a1bill: well the rumor I heard was that sweetman is on the payroll of boeing and saab. doing fluff pieces and slagging off other makers. let us hope it is wrong. though it does make me wonder.
I would rather highly doubt that. Aviation Week is a respected aviation publication that would not want their reputation harmed by one guy in their organization. In fact if you recall, they took Bill Sweetman off the JSF program for a period of time for a Facebook comment he made prior to a visit to L-M in Fort Worth. Besides the "negative F-35" journalists, there are some "for the F-35" players in the journalistic F-35 game that are highly suspect. One is Loren Thompson, COO off the Lexington Institute, a non-profit think tank. Loren comes alive in his support of the F-35 program when the reported news is bad. Both Lockheed and Boeing contribute to the Institute. The institute was founded by a former Congressman who is now a L-M lobbyist. But, Loren is concurrently CEO of Source Associates defense consulting firm, a for profit business. He has praised L-M to no end, even suggesting that L-M deserved more credit for the demise of Bin-Laden than the Navy Seal team that actually took out Bin-Laden.