Carter’s post at SBD is the latest in a long string of consulting gigs and advisory roles. POLITICO Pro Ash Carter an adviser at 'stealth' consulting firm

President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the Pentagon is an adviser at a “stealth” consulting firm that boasted on its website, “When we do our job, only the inner circle knows that we were involved.”

Ash Carter, who was deputy secretary of defense from 2011 to 2013, is on the roster at the firm SBD Advisors, which has a star-studded lineup that also includes former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.


The firm provides strategic advice to individuals and corporations and specializes in behind-the-scenes assignments.

( Also on POLITICO: Carter's no yes-man for Obama)

“Our team offers guidance and stealth strategies ensuring that clients benefit from the results of our campaigns while outwardly they are under-the-radar,” the firm’s website said Thursday morning. The sentence was removed from the site later after inquiries from POLITICO.

The firm, headquartered in a suite near the White House, also provides “unique access” to “political, business and financial leaders,” according to the website. And it seeks to link its advisers — mostly former Pentagon and military leaders — to private-sector and non-profit opportunities outside the defense world. The firm’s clients include the World Wildlife Fund, the Markle Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, according to a representative for the firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“We don’t have any defense clients,” the representative said. Carter has “done no defense consulting through us,” the representative added, and is mainly interested in “public policy projects.”

The representative said the firm introduced Carter to Silicon Valley executives and noted he’s done some speaking engagements since leaving the Pentagon last year.

( Also on POLITICO: Carter tapped as defense secretary)

The way SBD has branded itself is “smelly,” said Winslow Wheeler, a defense analyst at the Project On Government Oversight, noting that Carter’s work for the firm is “certainly something that would deserve some follow-up questioning at least in the preliminary stages of the confirmation process.”

Carter’s post at SBD is the latest in a long string of consulting gigs and advisory roles for the former Harvard professor, who’s kept a low profile since leaving the Pentagon.

In addition to his role at SBD, he’s now teaching at Stanford University and is a senior executive at the Markle Foundation, which does technology research.

With Obama set to announce his defense nominee on Friday, his pick to succeed Chuck Hagel will have to give up his current private-sector and teaching posts and file disclosure forms documenting his sources of income over the past year.

Carter’s previous disclosure forms — filed during his last stint at the Pentagon, first as its top acquisition official starting in 2009 and then as deputy secretary — show he had ties to several defense firms and to finance giant Goldman Sachs, where he was an adviser on global affairs.

Before joining the Pentagon in 2009, Carter was also a senior executive at Global Technology Partners, a consulting firm, which paid him $54,797 in 2008 to provide advice to clients including defense contractor Textron.

He did a consulting assignment in 2008 for Raytheon, which paid him $10,000.

And he was a trustee at the Mitre Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that manages federal research centers, which paid him $65,500 in trustee and consulting fees during the reporting period, which covered 2008 and early 2009.

Carter, who’s held several Pentagon jobs and other government posts throughout his career, also has a long history of political giving.

He contributed in 2000 to then-Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who’s now president and CEO of the Wilson Center, and to then-Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), whom Carter has called “one of the very wisest leaders of a generation on national security matters.”

He also gave to the Democratic National Committee in 2004.

And he contributed to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007 before contributing to both her campaign and Obama’s in 2008.