Failed tanker deal may lead to higher-ups

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon report released Tuesday to answer questions about an air tanker deal gone bad instead generated more questions about what roles Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the White House played in pushing the flawed contract.

The “accountability review” of the failed push for a $23 billion plan for the Air Force to lease 100 Boeing 767s as air refueling tankers faults several top Pentagon officials for not following federal procurement rules and disregarding taxpayers’ interests.

But major sections of the report were blacked out, leading Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., to complain that it focused too narrowly on Air Force officials and made it impossible to determine the roles of other important players, including White House and senior Defense Department officials.

“The omission of this information makes the report so incomplete as to be misleading,” Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing to review the report.

The tanker plan, hatched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, was strongly supported by members of both parties in Washington state’s delegation and other members of Congress that have Boeing plants in their home districts. Under the original plan, the Pentagon would lease rather than buy 100 Boeing 767 airliners converted into aerial tankers to replace the oldest KC-135 tankers in the Air Force fleet.

Another plus for members of the Washington delegation: the first 32 tankers off the Everett assembly line were promised to Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane.

Even after Congress revised the deal to buy most of the planes and the scandal with Air Force tanker negotiator Darleen Druyun surfaced, House and Senate members from Washington have continued to back Boeing for replacement tankers.

The original lease proposal collapsed after Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others demanded more information, which exposed ethics lapses and fiscal recklessness.

Druyun, who later took a job with Boeing, is now in prison for negotiating for her Boeing job with former Boeing chief financial officer Mike Sears while she was still working on the tanker program. Sears also was convicted and sent to prison.

Druyun, former top Pentagon weapons buyer Edward “Pete” Aldridge, former Air Force Secretary James Roche and his weapons chief, Marvin Sambur, were largely to blame for Air Force misconduct in the tanker deal, according to the report.

Druyun “did not operate in a vacuum,” said committee chairman Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

“At a minimum it appears that the acquisition chain of the Air Force, and perhaps the (Pentagon), was seriously inadequate.”

Tanker misconduct may have reached the defense secretary and the White House, Levin said.

In one e-mail cited in the report, Roche wrote that Rumsfeld encouraged him not to budge on the tanker proposal, despite criticism. E-mails previously released by the Senate mention President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, discussing the deal before the Pentagon approved it.

At the hearing, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., pressed Pentagon Deputy Inspector General Thomas Gimble on whether Rumsfeld and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz may have been involved in drafting the deal. Gimble said they didn’t appear to be deeply involved in how the program was negotiated.

“Based on what they knew, it was a proper decision” to proceed with the lease, he said.

Levin accused Defense Department inspector Joseph Schmitz of being influenced by the White House in blacking out major sections of the report.

“These omissions … appear to have been undertaken in consultation with staff in the Office of White House Counsel,” compromising the report’s credibility, he said.

Levin cited a report footnote that said verbatim quotes from some e-mails were not included because of White House objections.

Schmitz said his office made final decisions on what was left out. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said names were blacked out because the report’s jurisdiction was limited to the Pentagon.

“The inspector general had access to the information” necessary to complete the report, he said.

Schmitz didn’t compel Aldridge, who now sits on Lockheed Martin’s board of directors, to testify. Schmitz’s office can subpoena witnesses, but never subpoenaed Aldridge, whose staff couldn’t reach him, Schmitz said.

Warner said the committee would ask Aldridge to appear before it, and would consider a subpoena if he didn’t comply.

Along with a detailed description of wrongdoing, the inspector general’s report includes recommendations about how to avoid future defense contracting fiascos. It calls for thorough analysis of alternative plans before any major defense contract is approved, which didn’t happen with the tankers.