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Editorial: Get rid of officers who cross ethical boundaries

Three cases of inappropriate Air Force contracting decisions cast new doubts about the service’s ethics and the way senior officers do business. Worse, they threaten to undermine the Air Force’s credibility at a critical time when leaders are fighting desperately for the resources needed to modernize an aging fleet.

In one case, a two-star general has been given a letter of reprimand for steering a contract to a preferred vendor; two other officers in the case have been punished and two more still face discipline.

In a second case, which like the first occurred at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., two generals (one of whom, retired Gen. Hal Hornburg, was also involved in the first case as an interested civilian party) are under investigation for similarly steering a contract to a favored vendor.

And in a third, the Pentagon and FBI are investigating possible criminal behavior concerning a sole-source Air Force contract with Commonwealth Research Institute, the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that hired Charles Reichers, then awaiting confirmation as a senior Air Force acquisition official, for a $13,400-a-month job, to do no work.

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne expressed his disappointment this way: “This is not how the Air Force does business and we are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Too often, however, this is exactly how the Air Force seems to do business.

Since the 2003 tanker lease scandal, which sent former Air Force acquisition chief Darleen Druyun to jail for nine months for colluding with Boeing, Air Force officials have been keenly aware of the need to clean up their act.

It is astounding incidents such as these keep cropping up. But they do.

The Air Force has taken one step after another to strengthen acquisition oversight, provide more legal reviews, make it easier to blow the whistle on problems and remind contracting officers, commanders and former officers of their ethical obligations.

Most recently, in a March 26 memo, Wynne and Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley told senior Air Force leaders to “scrupulously avoid the appearance of impropriety or favoritism.

The trouble is these fixes address only the symptoms of what is ailing the Air Force. They fail to treat the disease. The problem is that senior officers and contracting officials don’t seem to think the rules apply to them.

This is all the more astonishing given that Druyun went to jail and Reichers, who was brought in to try to fix Air Force acquisition, committed suicide after the story of his no-work job was revealed.

But if civilian contract officials have now been scared straight, the same can’t be said for those wearing the uniform. For them, the answer is not more rules, but more accountability.

Consider the case of Maj. Gen. Stephen Goldfein, then director of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, who in 2005 pressured subordinates into awarding a $50 million contract to a favored company. Goldfein, now vice director on the Joint Staff, received a letter of reprimand — but remains on the job.

True, he’s unlikely to advance or even get another assignment. But he should have been fired.

It’s worth noting that the Air Force has never in its history court-martialed a general officer. That indicates that generals are subject to a gentler set of standards than other airmen. Until the service holds generals not just to the same standard, but to a higher one, its contracting troubles won’t go away.