Judge Rejects Times’ Bid for Defense Probe Data

Citing a continuing need to protect the confidentiality of the government’s ongoing Pentagon fraud investigation, a federal judge in Los Angeles Thursday denied requests from the Los Angeles Times and other media companies to unseal warrants and affidavits for searches at four Southern California locations.

The decision by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon overturned a ruling by a federal magistrate, who had said the public has a right to know details of the investigation. Kenyon sided with government attorneys, who asserted that opening the documents, which have been sealed for nearly six weeks, could hamper the two-year investigation into allegations that defense industry consultants bribed Pentagon officials for information that was used by aerospace companies to obtain defense contracts.

Similar action took place Thursday in federal court in Bridgeport, Conn., where a judge said documents sought by the Hartford Courant newspaper “are extremely detailed and contain information that would certainly endanger the ongoing grand jury proceedings.”

Unsealing of Papers Sought

Court actions were brought in Los Angeles earlier this month by The Times, CBS, NBC and Copley Press, publisher of the Union and the Tribune in San Diego, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook and the South Bay Daily Breeze in Torrance. The lawsuits sought to unseal documents the government had filed in support of searches on June 14 of the Woodland Hills home of defense consultant Fred H. Lackner and the aerospace plants of Litton Data Systems in Van Nuys, Northrop Corp.’s Ventura Division in Newbury Park and Teledyne Electronics in Newbury Park.

Rex Heinke, an attorney for the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who represented The Times, said the paper plans to appeal Kenyon’s decision to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The court accepted the government’s assertions of harm without a shred of evidence supporting that assertion,” Heinke said.

In his written decision, Kenyon said that the government’s investigation “is still in a very early stage . . . (and) those responsible for the investigation have identified very real concerns over possible destruction of evidence or alteration of testimony . . . . Unsealing the affidavits at this time would divulge the entire nature and scope of the investigation . . . .”

Despite his decision, Kenyon acknowledged that he does not support an unlimited sealing of the government’s papers. “As time passes, the need for continued sealing should decrease, and the public’s interest in access to these documents will predominate,” he wrote.

Fragments Released

In the Connecticut case, the government agreed to release fragments of warrants authorizing four searches conducted June 14 in offices of Norden Systems Inc., a leading defense electronics firm in Connecticut and a subsidiary of mammoth United Technologies Corp.

The partial release showed that federal investigators suspected that evidence of criminal activity existed in the files of four senior Norden executives, three of whom were publicly identified for the first time.

Searches took place in the cities of Norwalk, Bridgeport and Trumbull, the documents showed. They showed that the FBI searched the offices of William W. Kingston, the executive vice president of Norden; Roger K. Engle, vice president of advanced programs; James E. Rapinac, vice president for business development, and Clyde J. (Jack) Richardson, identified by a company spokesman as a business unit manager responsible for Army programs.

Previously, it had only been disclosed that Rapinac’s office was searched.

The U.S. attorney for Connecticut, Stanley A. Twardy Jr., acknowledged that the Pentagon investigation encompasses “possible criminality in a defense program not previously identified” in news reports. Twardy refused to elaborate.

Firm in Capital Searched

Norden is one of two United Technologies subsidiaries that were searched by investigators. Documents were also seized at the Washington, D.C., offices of the company’s Pratt & Whitney subsidiary, a major manufacturer of aircraft engines.

In all, federal agents have carried out more than 40 searches in a dozen states and have reportedly subpoenaed more than 275 witnesses in the 2-year-old investigation, which was made public only with the first seizures of evidence in June. Only a handful of search warrants and their supporting affidavits have been released so far, several as the result of clerical errors in federal courts.

Those documents have disclosed that federal investigators suspect that major defense contractors, working through private consultants, used bribery to obtain inside information in bidding wars for contracts on weapons systems worth billions of dollars.

Norden withdrew from competition last month for a $120-million contract to supply the Marine Corps with an advanced communications system, after disclosures that a Norden consultant had obtained inside information on competitors’ bids.

The Connecticut ruling was made by U.S. District Judge T. F. Gilroy Daly, who wrote that although “there is a right under the First Amendment of access to court documents . . . at this early stage, the right is a qualified and limited one.”

Ruling ‘Disappointing’

An attorney for the Courant, Ralph Elliott, said the ruling was “more limited than other judges have made, and it is disappointing.”

The Norden spokesman, Scott Brinckerhoff, said the investigation has not affected the status of the four executives. “We are conducting business here as usual,” he said, “and they are, as well.”

According to a federal affidavit released in Dallas on June 30, wiretaps of defense industry consultants and others disclosed that a consultant to Norden, Thomas E. Muldoon, had obtained confidential bidding information on the Advanced Tactical Air Command Control program from another consultant, Mark C. Saunders, who in turn obtained it from a senior Navy procurement official, George Stone.

Last February, as Norden’s standing in the competition rose from next to last to one of the top four companies in line for the contract, Muldoon was alleged to have assured Saunders that the “$60,000 is in the bag now.”

In passing the inside information to Saunders, according to the affidavit, Stone, the Navy procurement official, remarked that, even if Norden stood no chance of winning the contract, “if it puts bread on the table . . . it ain’t a waste of time.”

Carla Lazzareschi reported from Los Angeles and Robert Gillette from Washington.