Boeing Probe Said to Have Widened
Federal investigators reportedly have widened a probe of illegal hiring activities at Boeing Co. to include James Albaugh, head of the aerospace giant’s defense unit, to see whether he was involved in the hiring of an Air Force contract administrator who was overseeing billions of dollars of contracts with the company.
The expanded investigation, reported Friday by the Wall Street Journal, drags Albaugh, chief executive of Boeing’s $27-billion-a-year defense and space unit, into an ethics scandal that has roiled Boeing for the last year.
A Boeing spokesman said the company had no knowledge that Albaugh or any other Boeing executive was being investigated. Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki declined to comment on any aspect of the investigation.
Already the case has led to the resignation of former Boeing Chief Executive Philip Condit and the firings and criminal prosecutions of former Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears and Darleen Druyun, the former Pentagon administrator who became a Boeing executive last year shortly after Boeing won a $23-billion Air Force tanker contract that she had worked on.
Albaugh, 54, previously has said he had no role in recruiting or hiring Druyun, whose jump from the Air Force to Boeing in January 2003, sparked the hiring ethics probe. Albaugh declined to comment Friday on the report that he was being investigated by the Justice Department.
Federal investigators’ interest in Albaugh reportedly centers on several e-mails he sent Druyun, as well as at least one meeting he had with her shortly before Boeing offered her a job late in 2002.
Boeing conducted its own internal probe of Druyun’s hiring last year and determined that Sears and Druyun had violated company policy. “But we found no other misconduct by any other Boeing executive,” spokesman John Dern said Friday. Druyun and Sears were fired in November for concealing what the company said were illegal hiring negotiations while Druyun was still working as a civilian administrator for the Air Force.
Druyun has pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.
Sears has agreed to enter a guilty plea to charges he assisted in Druyun’s illegal hiring, but his court hearing has been postponed.
Albaugh, who was paid $968,100 in salary and bonus last year -- third highest among all Boeing executives -- joined Boeing in 1996, when the company acquired his previous employer, Rockwell International Corp. He headed Boeing’s space and communications business until July 2002, when he became head of the defense unit.
Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.
