Ex-U.S. Official’s Boeing Job Is Probed

The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating whether the former head of the Air National Guard violated federal ethics law by accepting a job as a lobbyist with Boeing Co. only three months after he retired from the military, officials and the former director said.

Boeing hired retired Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver, 59, in May 2002 as part of a full-court press for state, congressional and White House support for a now-defunct $23-billion deal to lease aerial refueling tankers to the Air Force. That deal was shelved after conflict-of-interest charges that brought jail terms for Boeing’s former chief financial officer and the Air Force’s top acquisition officer.

Senate Armed Services Committee leaders are broadening their scrutiny of the case to examine whether the Pentagon’s acquisition system is flawed. They now want to know whether Weaver failed to observe a one-year, federally mandated “cooling off” period before lobbying the officials and agency for which he had worked. The Justice Department also is investigating, Weaver said.

Weaver, in an interview this month, said he did nothing wrong in lobbying state adjutant generals for the tankers. He cited an opinion from National Guard Bureau Chief Counsel and Ethics Advisor James C. Hise as showing that those contacts weren’t covered by the law. “I’m not the least bit concerned,” Weaver said.

John W. Warner of Virginia and Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, requested the probe in a May 13 letter to the Pentagon inspector general.

When Weaver joined Boeing, the Air Force and the company -- the Pentagon’s No. 2 defense contractor -- were beginning intense negotiations on the tanker aircraft’s cost. After their proposal was submitted to Congress in 2003, Warner, Levin and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) questioned the cost.

The Government Accountability Office told them it was 10 times as expensive as simply upgrading the current fleet. McCain was beginning what would become a campaign against the plan, saying the Air Force was circumventing Congress to seal a deal it didn’t need and couldn’t afford.

Boeing’s view of Weaver’s role was outlined in a Jan. 23, 2003, e-mail from Andy Ellis, vice president of the Washington office of Boeing’s defense unit, Integrated Defense Systems, to IDS President James Albaugh. “National Guard engaging through Paul Weaver, a consultant who is close to [then-Air Force Secretary James] Roche, at the state, local and federal level,” Ellis wrote.