Editing 1976 Lockheed Bribery Scandal (section)

==Overview==
The 1976 Lockheed Bribery Scandal was a major international corruption controversy involving the Lockheed Corporation, a leading U.S. aerospace and defense contractor, which was found to have paid millions in bribes to foreign officials and political figures to secure lucrative contracts for its aircraft, notably the L-1011 TriStar and military planes like the F-104 Starfighter. 

While the main focus was the larger corrupt sales, what is overlooked is the exploitative nature of the sales to countries the [[CIA]], [[NATO]], and the United States (USAID) destabilized using [[Operation Gladio]] tactics. The newly installed dictators that followed the coup purchased millions of dollars in military industrial hardware from United States corporations while paying bribes to the corrupt regime. Many of the purchases were made using the International Monetary Fund and World Bank leaving the citizens in the country with the debt.

The scandal, uncovered through U.S. Senate investigations and subsequent global probes, exposed systemic bribery practices in the aerospace industry, implicating high-profile figures in countries such as Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany. It led to significant political fallout, legal reforms, and the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in the United States in 1977.