STATE : Ex-Northrop Official Sentenced

A former Northrop plant manager who pleaded guilty to charges he oversaw the falsification of tests on cruise missiles for the Air Force was sentenced today to three years in prison and fined $10,000.

“The misrepresentation and the conspiracy occurred on your watch,” U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Pamela Ann Rymer said as she sentenced Clarence Gonsalves, 62, formerly a manager at Northrop plants in Pomona and El Monte.

Gonsalves, two management executives and two lower-level employees were indicted along with Northrop in April, 1989, in a massive criminal case stemming from sales of defective weapons and parts to the military in cruise missiles and the Navy’s Harrier jet.

Northrop pleaded guilty to 34 felony counts Feb. 28 in a plea bargain in which the government agreed to drop charges against the two executives in Northrop’s Precision Products Division in Massachusetts.

Under the plea bargain, Gonsalves and another employee, Howard Hyde, a former quality assurance supervisor, were to be the only defendants to receive prison terms, with Gonsalves facing the most time.