Logicon Accused of Billing U.S. for Lobbying Effort : Officials of Torrance Firm Deny Rep. Dingell’s Charges

Logicon Corp., a Torrance-based defense contractor, conducted a lobbying campaign against arms control legislation during 1987 and billed the expense of the campaign to a Department of Energy contract, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) charged during a hearing Thursday.

In a session that lasted more than eight hours, two Logicon executives defended themselves and the company’s R&D; Associates (RDA) unit against a variety of allegations involving fraudulent billings, violations of federal ethics laws and other irregular activities conducted under federal contracts.

The hearing was held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigation, chaired by Dingell. Logicon reported 1987 revenue of $204 million, derived almost entirely from government contracts. The RDA unit specializes in research on strategic issues, nuclear weapons effects and arms control, among other things.

A Logicon spokesman said the issue of the alleged lobbying activities came up last year in a report by the Congress’ General Accounting Office. That report found that the Energy Department had orchestrated an extensive lobbying campaign by Logicon and by scientists at government laboratories in opposition to a proposed congressional ban on nuclear tests. Federal law prohibits the contractors from using federal funds to lobby Congress, but the GAO did not find that this rule had been violated.

Wrote Drafts of Testimony

“We were under contract to the (Department of Energy), and it was to provide information to them that would help them prepare for hearings on arms control,” Logicon spokesman John Tuffy said. “To the best of my knowledge, we did no direct lobbying at all.”

But Dingell produced three drafts of testimony that Logicon officials wrote under contract for Adm. Sylvester R. Foley Jr., assistant secretary for defense programs at the Energy Department. The drafts included typewritten notes indicating that the drafts had been written by RDA officials. Dingell lashed out at the concept of private defense contractors writing congressional testimony for government officials and charging the government for the work.

“We weren’t framing policy in any way,” RDA manager Jack Rosengren told Dingell, adding that the work Logicon did was only “technical input” for the testimony.

Among lobbying activities Logicon billed to the government at $91 an hour were sending out holiday greetings to Energy Department officials and assembling a pamphlet containing a directory of members of Congress, Dingell said. The pamphlet was sent to the Energy Department.

“Addressing greeting cards at $91 an hour is the equivalent of DOD’s $600 toilet seat,” Dingell said. “It is only one example of the fraudulent billings to the taxpayers.”

The committee investigation found that nearly $500,000 was spent on RDA’s lobbying activities, with the money coming out of an Energy Department contract awarded to RDA for a nuclear study.

The committee went into great detail to show that Energy Department officials even attempted to provide RDA an additional half million dollars’ worth of business though a highly irregular practice of having RDA bill its Energy Department work to other firms. RDA officials at the hearing acknowledged that RDA billed some of its work for the Energy Department to Pacific Northwest Laboratories, among other firms.

Meanwhile, congressional sources said the Department of Energy’s inspector general has opened an investigation of G. Fielden Dickerson, who was the department’s deputy director of international security affairs but left the department in 1986 and joined RDA in Washington, according to congressional sources.

The investigation is focusing on whether Dickerson violated the Ethics in Government Act by continuing to oversee an RDA contract while he allegedly was negotiating for a job with the company and then continuing to work on the same contract after he became employed there. Federal law requires high-ranking federal officials who take jobs in private industry to observe a waiting period before working in the same area as they did in their government jobs.

Dingell alleged in the hearing that Dickerson discussed taking a job at RDA with Rosengren on 11 occasions while Dickerson was at the Energy Department and overseeing an RDA contract. Dickerson acknowledged that after he left the government and joined RDA, his job involved work on the same contract as when he was a bureaucrat.