By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 10, 2008 5:30 PM

Attorneys with a government oversight agency said yesterday that there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the Air Force's award to Northrop Grumman of a $40 billion deal to build new aerial refueling tankers.

"There was not an iota of intentional wrongdoing by any Air Force official," said Daniel I. Gordon, deputy general counsel, in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. "This is not a case of criminal impropriety."

In February, the Air Force selected Northrop and its partner European Aeronautic Defence & Space, parent of Airbus, to build 170 tanker aircraft to replace the aging fleet. Airbus rival Boeing protested the decision in March, and last month the Government Accountability Office ruled in its favor, saying there were major mistakes in how the Air Force conducted its acquisition process.

"We concluded that the Air Force had not followed the ground rules it set out," Gordon said. "They had rules and there were several areas where they deviated from those rules."

The tanker saga goes back to 2003, when the Air Force initially agreed to lease tankers from Boeing. But the deal was canceled when it got caught up in a procurement scandal that ended with a top Air Force official and a former Boeing executive going to prison.