« Dogfight: Congress vs. the American Aviation Industry | Main | Obama: At last, change even I can believe in! »

Dogfight: Congress vs. the American Aviation Industry

Theres a list of names to remember about "The Tanker Deal" that I am certain will come up over the next few months.

The most obvious one is Senator John McCain, who seems to have driven the Air Force and Boeing to the point of exhaustion over this deal.

Here is his statements from November 19, 2004, in regard to the original tanker deal. Very enlightening...

Here is the "document dump" on the Emails that Senator McCain mentions in his statement. This is from the Congressional Record: November 20, 2004 (Senate) Page S11776-S11789

Prominent names that fall out of those statements are as follows:

20th Secretary of The Air Force, James Roche
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, Marvin Sambur
Darleen Druyan
Former CEO of Boeing, Phillip Condit
Former CFO of Boeing, Michael Sears.

Darleen Druyun has a nice description of her background, called "Rise and fall of a maverick". (ed: McCain must've laughed real hard when he read that one.)

From her plea agreement, we read the following:

- Acknowledged conflict of interest in negotiating employment for herself and others (daughter and future son-in-law) with Boeing while at the same time negotiating with Boeing on behalf of the Air Force.

- In negotiating with boeing concerning a lease agreement for 100 Boeing KC-767A tanker aircraft, she agreed to a higher price for the aircraft than she beleived was appropriate as a "parting gift" to Boeing prior to her leaving the Air Force Procurement Office.

Well, that's not good...

The Department of Justice published this document in regards to Michael Sear's Sentencing.

Quoted within:

United States Attorney Paul J. McNulty - "Mr. Sears had a clear choice. Instead of respecting the integrity of the governments procurement system, he chose the financial interests of his company over the best interest for America"

I think that about sums it up, both the previous "Tanker deal" and the current one as well. At a time when the Aviation industry was realing under the stress of an airline industry in collapse, Boeing was trying and was very nearly was successful at subverting the purchasing process inorder to secure billions of dollars on long term leases for these aircraft.

It was a scheme that very nearly worked and one which the taxpayers and the military in the long run, would have paid a great deal.

The fallout from the failure of this scheme cost many smart and I would even say patriotic people, their jobs and careers, all of those promises became tragedies. Worse, this was being done at a time of war, and I would make the argument that the money and man hours that were wasted in this process did little to help bring an end to the war or to help the sailors and airmen stationed overseas.

Senator McCain and Warner are to be thanked for their efforts.

As a corporate officer you have a responsibility to protect your shareholders but as a citizen you have a duty to respect the governmental processes that involve the use of taxpayer dollars.

All of the people you see mentioned above, were in some form of fashion removed from their responsibilities. Two of them, Druyun and Sears were convicted and jailed. After Condit was replaced, the next CEO was also replaced, Harry Stonecipher was also quickly removed from his position.

Now remember, Boeing is a private company, but in many ways it is also a strategic asset. It is very important to the country as a whole that Boeing be successful in its marketplace. While all of this activity was going on, Boeing was under extreme pressure with Airbus and the A380. In the end, what has saved Boeing and this strategic asset is not a new set of CEO's with special backhanded deals, but the men and women at Boeing who work as engineers, line foreman and test pilots at positions all through the company in the creation of the new Boeing 787.

As we have seen, Former CFO Michael Sears, Mrs. Druyuns boss at Boeing was also removed from his position at Boeing, but what about her boss at the Air Force? Well that was Dr. Martin Sambur. You might be interested to know that according to this site, Dr. Marvin Sambur, is now a contributor to the Clinton Campaign.

I have this feeling that we wont be seeing any contributions from these folks to the "McCain For President" campaign any time in the future.

More to follow...

Posted @ March 29, 2008 02:43 PM | Current Affairs

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://varifrank.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/1064