DRAGON LADY’S “MASSACRE”

“Just when you thought youd heard the end of the ille­gal escapades of for­mer Boeing exec Darleen Druyun, along comes another chap­ter that includes alle­ga­tions of a ‘clean up’ and dele­tion’ of doc­u­ments,” the Project on Government Oversight notes. “Government audi­tors are call­ing this one the ‘15 September Massacre.’”

Earlier this year, Druyun began serv­ing a six-​​month sen­tence at Club Fed for felony con­spir­acy in rela­tion to her ille­gally tak­ing a job with Boeing Company while over­see­ing a fat Air Force tanker lease con­tract… Since the tanker scan­dal Druyun also has been sus­pected of steer­ing other weapons con­tracts to Boeing and other defense con­trac­tors more than you can count on your two hands. Druyuns name sur­faced again dur­ing tes­ti­mony Thursday after­noon before the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee…
The man point­ing the fin­ger at Druyun this time was Daniel I. Gordon, [with] the [Congressional inves­ti­ga­tors at the] Government Accountability Office. Gordon led an inves­ti­ga­tion… into the award­ing of con­tracts that the for­mer No. 2 Air Force acqui­si­tion offi­cial super­vised one a small diam­e­ter bomb con­tract and the other a C-​​130 avion­ics mod­ern­iza­tion con­tract. Gordons inves­ti­ga­tion con­cluded that the two con­tracts were improp­erly awarded.
During the C-​​130 Avionics con­tract, Gordon said, [Druyun] requested that con­tract eval­u­a­tors first come to Washington D.C. on September 15, 2000 to dis­cuss the sta­tus of their eval­u­a­tions of who should get the con­tract. During that meet­ing and four sub­se­quent meet­ings, Druyun expressly or implic­itly directed mul­ti­ple changes to the eval­u­a­tors rat­ings, many of which favored Boeing, Gordon said. Then fol­low­ing the request for final pro­posal revi­sions, the con­tract­ing offi­cer (not named in the tes­ti­mony) sent an email to a recip­i­ent list that included vir­tu­ally every­one involved in the source selec­tion process, direct­ing them to clean up and delete var­i­ous por­tions of the eval­u­a­tion record. 

With so many big Defense Department projects going so wrong, it’s no won­der McCain is now call­ing a “broad review” of the Pentagon’s sys­tem for buy­ing things.
The sleazy Druyun affair is just one “glar­ing exam­ple of a man­age­ment and over­sight fail­ure in our acqui­si­tion process,” McCain said at an Armed Services sub­com­mit­tee hear­ing yes­ter­day. “Clearly, we need to exam­ine the whole pro­cure­ment process as it works today in the Department of Defense.”

April 15th, 2005 | Money Money Money | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.