NASA Selectee’s Unit at TRW Faces Fraud Suit : Aerospace: Daniel Goldin is not a defendant. A former employee accuses the unit of billing the government for the cost of correcting satellite design mistakes.
A TRW unit led by Daniel Goldin, nominated earlier this month to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was served Wednesday with a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging that the firm made fraudulent claims for payments on government satellite contracts.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges that TRW’s Space & Technology group in Redondo Beach used improper design standards for the spy, communications and scientific satellites, then billed the government for the cost of correcting the errors.
Goldin is not named as a defendant. The suit alleges that the former employee, Vitali Efros of Reseda, attempted unsuccessfully to contact Goldin before Efros’ dismissal in June, 1989.
“Mr. Efros made a number of allegations while he was an employee at TRW, all of which were investigated and found to have no merit,” said Julian Levine, a spokesman for TRW in Redondo Beach.
Goldin, a TRW group vice president, is facing confirmation hearings as early as Friday before the Senate subcommittee on science, technology and space, chaired by Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), a committee staffer said.
The Senate staff member said the allegations in the suit will be looked into. They will be considered important if they are borne out, the staffer said. Gore has previously said he wanted the confirmation hearings to go as quickly as possible.
Efros, whose job was “checker” of engineering drawings at TRW, asserted in an interview that he was fired by the aerospace firm after he protested to senior management that TRW was not using the design standards required under its Air Force contracts.
The suit does not cite specific damages resulting from the use of the improper standards, but Efros’ attorney, William R. Ramsey of Valencia, said the costs to the government total millions of dollars.
The whistle-blower suit was filed in November, 1990, under the federal False Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue government contractors on behalf of the public and share in any damages awarded.
Under procedures typically followed in such cases, the TRW case was sealed while the Department of Justice weighed whether it wanted to join in the prosecution. Ramsey said Justice officials are still considering whether to join the case, adding that the matter is under investigation by the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations.
Justice Department and Air Force investigators could not be reached for comment.
Efros alleges in the suit that TRW, for the four years of his employment, either failed to use or improperly used design standards established by the American National Standards Institute in 1982. As a result, several hundred drawings for satellite parts had to be redone.
In the interview, Efros said he earned an engineering degree in the former Soviet Union and emigrated to the United States in 1974. He became a U.S. citizen and was granted clearances on top-secret military satellite programs.
In raising concerns about the drawings, he said, “my purpose was to build the best satellites possible to defeat those bastards in the Soviet Union.”
Efros said he failed in repeated attempts to help clear up the problem through training other workers in the proper use of ANSI standards and by bringing the problem to the attention of upper management.
Ultimately, Efros says in the suit, he reported the technical problems to the Pentagon’s fraud hot line. As a result, he gave a briefing to the Air Force Space Division in October, 1988, prompting the Air Force’s investigation into the matter.
But the suit alleges that TRW officials fired him after learning that he triggered the investigation. On two occasions prior to his firing, Goldin, through his secretary, canceled appointments with Efros for unspecified reasons, he said in the interview.
