A former Air Force official who now works for Boeing Co. had several personal ties to the aerospace giant while she was negotiating on behalf of the government a controversial plan valued at over $20 billion to lease Boeing jetliners as airborne refueling tankers.
Darleen Druyun, during her tenure as deputy acquisitions chief for the Air Force, agreed to sell her Virginia home to a Boeing attorney working on the tanker-lease arrangement, according to information compiled by a conservative nonprofit research group in Washington. In addition, her daughter and her son-in-law were and still are employed by the Chicago-based company.
These relationships have emerged in the wake of a decision last month by the Pentagon’s inspector general to formally investigate whether Druyun provided Boeing with proprietary data from a rival bidder for the tanker lease.
Druyun, 56 years old, left the Air Force in November 2002 and began working at Boeing in January in the newly created post of deputy general manager of missile-defense operations.
The move made her the latest in a long list of Pentagon officials who have taken jobs at companies whose fortunes are made in large part through government contracts. Pentagon officials say there’s no law against taking such jobs. The only restriction is a limit on personal contact with the Pentagon for a year or two, depending on the job.
Druyun’s relationship with Boeing prior to her employment with the company raises questions about whether she violated federal procurement laws and rules of ethical conduct. The investigation into whether she wrongly provided information to Boeing in the tanker negotiations has just begun and no conclusion has been reached. It isn’t clear whether her home sale and family relationships constitute a breach of government rules.
According to documents collected by National Legal and Policy Center and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Druyun and her husband agreed to sell their home to Boeing attorney John Judy while Druyun was making contract decisions related to the company, including the pending lease and other programs.
The sale closed on Jan. 3, the same day that Druyun joined Boeing. The Druyans, who listed their home with a real-estate agent, sold it to John and Judith Judy for $692,000, which was $77,477 more than they paid for the house 17 months earlier. The Judys’ purchase price appears to be in line with others in a hot real-estate market there.
John Judy is a Boeing vice president and assistant general counsel in the company’s Washington operations. He has been working on Boeing’s proposed tanker lease, which is still pending congressional approval.
A Boeing spokesman said the company stands by its decision to hire Druyun, who in late 2002 was negotiating employment with several companies. An Air Force official confirmed that Druyun had recused herself from decisions affecting Boeing. A Boeing spokesman said that Druyun’s job has nothing to do with Air Force-related programs and that she isn’t working on the tanker lease.
Monday, however, the conservative group in Washington raised questions about the real-estate deal in a letter sent to Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, as well as the agency’s investigative arm, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. In addition, the letter says Druyun’s daughter, Heather, has worked since at least 2001 in Boeing’s St. Louis operation as a resource manager and is married to a Boeing employee. A Boeing spokesman confirmed employment of the couple.
An attorney for Druyun said Air Force ethics lawyers were informed about and signed off on her daughter’s employment.
"The public has a right to expect government officials not to show favoritism to corporations in the hopes of future employment," said Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative group, which focuses on government-ethics issues. "Ms. Druyun and her family were rewarded by Boeing even before she rushed through the revolving door" between the Pentagon and the defense industry, he said.
An April 2002 e-mail written by Boeing executive Andrew Ellis says Druyun told him and other company representatives "several times" that rival European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. "was $5 million to $17 million cheaper" per aircraft than Boeing’s.
Though the leasing arrangement was initially conceived with Boeing in mind, EADS had offered the Air Force a much lower price in an effort to capture the potentially lucrative business. In March 2002, the month before the e-mail, Air Force officials informed EADS they’d only negotiate further with Boeing, citing capability weaknesses of the A340 jetliner among other things.
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