Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 1976, the defense contractor and airline manufacturer admits to a Senate

subcommittee that Lockheed had paid about $3 million in bribes to the office of the Japanese Prime Minister. The bribes, equivalent to about

fifteen million dollars today, were often routed through shady underworld figures in Japan,

all with the purpose of securing major contracts for new airliners from Japan, this is as the commercial

airline industry is expanding, the Japanese economy is exploding, more and more multinational

companies are getting their hands into more and more areas of

business around the world and that is ultimately what this story is about.

Lockheed was not alone. This was an era of stunning multinational corruption from Gulf oil interfering in South

Korean elections to Chiquita Banana bribing the Honduran government.

Some of this stuff was even wrapped up in the Watergate fallout.

So let's talk about the Lockheed bribe scandal

and the culmination or the middle of an era

in which American companies, I would say,

became de facto State Department officials.

So here, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello, Jody.

Hey there.

So yeah, I think all of us are really interested in this story

...