Ex-Boeing Executive Gets 2 Years in Pentagon Secrets Case

A former Boeing Co. marketing executive was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for passing classified Pentagon budget documents to the aerospace giant and other defense firms.

Richard L. Fowler, 64, a one-time civilian Air Force budget analyst who worked for Boeing from 1978 to 1986, contended that he did not know he was breaking the law when he obtained more than 100 classified documents.

Among the items Fowler passed to Boeing was a five-year Pentagon budget projection and a National Security Council study of the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.”

“I am here today for doing a job I was hired to do by one of the Fortune 500 companies,” Fowler told U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. “They were not aware it was criminal. I was not aware it was criminal.”

Bryan rejected Fowler’s argument, saying that evidence at the trial “indicates to me he knew what he was doing with these documents. These offenses are serious and they warrant incarceration.”

Boeing pleaded guilty on Nov. 13 to illegally obtaining two secret Pentagon documents and agreed to pay $5.2 million in fines and penalties. Prosecutors charged that the company had sought the documents to plan budgets for future contracts.

Fowler, convicted last month of 39 felony counts of mail fraud, conspiracy and unlawful conveyance of government documents, could have been sentenced to 310 years in prison.

Fowler was held in civil contempt and jailed earlier in the week for refusing to identify his accomplices during grand jury testimony.