Air Force Secretary James Roche contacted his old company last year to help a brother of a top White House aide try to land a job, Northrop Grumman Corp. said on Friday.
Roche’s intervention on behalf of the brother, even as he sought the aide’s backing for a multibillion-dollar lease of Boeing Co. refueling aircraft, has sparked new questions about Air Force plans to acquire 100 modified 767 aircraft.
The action of Roche, a former vice president at Northrop, is among matters referred by the White House to the Justice Department last week regarding the $23.5 billion deal, officials said.
Improper influence exerted?
At issue is whether Roche’s effort on behalf of Peter Cleveland was an improper effort to influence his sister, Robin Cleveland, who oversees national security programs at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Also in question is whether Roche’s aides tried to hide any e-mails.
Roche’s spokesman, Lt. Col. Michael Caldwell, denied the job referral constituted any quid-pro-quo for OMB backing of the Air Force tanker proposal.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “This was a light-hearted exchange between two longtime friends, and there were no expectations attached to it,” he said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the tanker deal on hold in December after Boeing fired Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force official who has admitted illegally negotiating a job with Boeing while overseeing its Air Force contracts.
Peter Cleveland, now an aide to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, applied for a job in the legal department of Northrop through the company’s employment Web site, said Northrop spokesman Randy Belote.
“He was deemed to be an attractive candidate, and we did receive a referral from Dr. James Roche on Mr. Cleveland’s behalf,” Belote said.
Cleveland was interviewed but not offered a job because the position went to a more qualified candidate, Belote added.
Doubts about the deal
The OMB had raised serious doubts about the tanker deal on the grounds that the Air Force’s initial plan to lease 100 Boeing 767s would cost billions more than an outright purchase. The trade-off was that the Air Force would get the planes sooner.
E-mail exchanges touching on Roche’s job recommendation were among documents that OMB recently turned over to the Armed Services Committee. Those involving the job recommendation were first reported by CongressDaily, a Washington newsletter.
Neither Peter Cleveland nor Robin Cleveland returned repeated phone calls on Friday seeking comment.
Belote said Roche’s referral and the interview process took place in the “April-May time frame” last year. At that time, OMB was balking at recommending an initial tanker deal as negotiated by the Air Force on the ground it was too costly.
“Early on, OMB was concerned that initial price of the tanker aircraft was too high, and believed that, through negotiation with Boeing, the Air Force should and could reduce the price,” Joel Kaplan, the OMB’s deputy director, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 4, 2003.
Caldwell, Roche’s spokesman, said the Air Force’s chief ethics official had reviewed Roche’s e-mail exchange with the OMB’s Cleveland and deemed it to be in compliance with law and federal ethics regulations.
In addition, the OMB’s ethics counsel and the Office of Government Ethics “have informally concluded that the documents did not indicate a violation of the relevant conflict-of-interests statutes,” OMB spokesman Chad Kolton said.
“Nevertheless, because some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee had raised a concern about a potential violation, OMB referred the matter to the Department of Justice for review,” he said.
Chairman John Warner of Virginia and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, senior Republicans on the panel, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, had raised concerns, people familiar with the matter said.