Leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked the Defense Department on Friday to have its inspector general's office investigate the Air Force's effort to give the Boeing Company a $23.5 billion contract for aircraft-refueling tankers.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Republican Senators John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona and the committee's ranking Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, asked for an investigation of all who had a role in awarding the contract, not just someone acting criminally.
In a 42-minute Senate speech on Friday, Mr. McCain disclosed a score of often pungent e-mail letters to and from Boeing executives and lobbyists, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and Pentagon officials.
They depicted Mr. Roche belittling competitors and critics of the plan, both in the government and among defense analysis organizations, on the grounds of cost and need for the planes. The senators said the Pentagon's earlier, criminal investigation had not gone far enough.
As a result of that investigation, Darleen Druyun, an Air Force procurement official, was found to have been favoring Boeing with contracts while negotiating a $250,000-a-year job with the company. Ms. Druyun has been sentenced to nine months in prison.
In their letter, the senators wrote, "It is astonishing to us that one individual could have so freely perpetrated, for such an extended period, this unprecedented series of fraudulent decisions and other actions that were not in the best interest of the Department of Defense."
An Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, said the e-mail messages cited in Mr. McCain's speech "reflect negotiations on an acquisition program that is now behind us."
By PETER T. KILBORN
© 2004 The New York Times
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