"Everyone's nervous," Acting Undersecretary of Defense Michael W. Wynne warned in a confidential e-mail to Air Force Secretary James G. Roche on July 8, 2003.
It was two days before the Bush administration was to send its first detailed report to Congress about a controversial Air Force plan to lease refueling tankers from the Boeing Co., and a few days after a fierce backroom struggle over its language between critics of the plan and Air Force enthusiasts.
Wynne's anxiety, it turned out, was well-founded. Rather than solidifying congressional support, the report's release sparked more intense scrutiny of the most costly government lease in U.S. history, and ultimately helped end the government careers of some of those involved in preparing the report.
From a program initially seen by Boeing and the Air Force as a clever way to acquire a new tanker fleet without having to budget for it and buy the planes outright, the lease has now developed a reputation as the most significant military contracting abuse in 20 years, according to a letter sent to the Pentagon last month by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and two other committee members.
Three Boeing officials have resigned in connection with the controversy; two have pleaded guilty in federal court to ethics violations. Wynne has been unable to win confirmation as an undersecretary of defense, as a result of the "hold" placed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on most defense promotions to gain leverage in McCain's continuing battle for access to the Pentagon's internal communications about the deal. Air Force Gen. Gregory S. Martin, chief of the Air Force Materiel Command, withdrew from consideration for a more senior post after tussling publicly with McCain about the gravity of the ethics violations.
Roche and Marvin Sambur, his top acquisition manager, announced their resignations from the government two weeks ago, just before McCain splashed some acerbic and revealing internal Air Force e-mails (quoted portions of which appear in italics below) about the plan into the Congressional Record. Roche said he never intended to serve longer; Sambur said he stepped aside partly to help ease tensions with Congress, which blocked the leasing plan this summer.
The significance of the $30 billion tanker program to its supporters is reflected in the extreme language Roche and Sambur used in the e-mails to describe what they believed was at stake. The two were deeply invested in its success, and although it was principally an Air Force -- rather than a Defense Department -- initiative, they worried that any setback would be ruinous for them and others at the Pentagon.
I will not give your enemies the tools to bury us! Sambur told Roche on June 25, 2003, during a dispute over the wording of the report to Congress. Two weeks later, Roche accused dissenting government officials in an e-mail on July 8, 2003, of wanting me to sign a suicide note. BUT I WILL NOT. This whole drill has gotten out of hand!
Roche, a former executive at the Northrop Grumman Corp., is well-known for his take-no-prisoners political style. In one e-mail, he compared himself to World War II Navy Fleet Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., whose motto he quoted as: "Strike fast, strike hard, strike often."
Both Roche and Sambur, a former executive at ITT Defense with a similar style, have said the lease was a good deal because it allowed the Air Force to acquire the planes faster than if they were purchased. But the e-mails indicate they saw themselves as primarily allied with Boeing and its congressional supporters in the dispute, rather than others in the Bush administration who considered the deal a costly rip-off and violation of federal procurement rules.
