The Next Big Scandal

General Shelton

With the President already under pressure from investigations into scandals such as the “Fast and Furious” gun debacle, and the $537 million Solyndra loan guarantee, his next major headache may be just breaking.

At a classified briefing, head of the Air Force Space Command Gen. William Shelton informed House members that he had been pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in order to better compliment a Virginia-based satellite and communications company funded by major Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The GOP has been wondering for some time now whether work done by that company, LightSquared, has been “unduly expedited” by the Obama administration in its push for nation-wide wireless network upgrades.

As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.

Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.” 

FoxNews.com has already jumped on the issue to suggest that this alleged pressure may have come directly from the top:

It’s unclear who exactly pressured Shelton, but it’s possible the culprits are in White House, Department of Defense or the Office of Management and Budget, which each approve military testimony prepared for Congress.

Apparently a copy of Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked to LightSquared.

For the record, the White House has officially denied trying to influence Shelton’s testimony.

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