One of the few certainties with the Bush gang is a common practice: those caught up in massive scandals get promoted. We all like to joke about it, but it’s only funny because it’s true.
Take one of the lesser-known Bush scandals, for example. About a year ago, we learned that the Air Force negotiated a very lucrative contract — at $23.5 billion, it was the costliest lease in U.S. history — to lease refueling planes from Boeing. The problem was two-fold: the Air Force didn’t need the planes and the cost of the deal was several billion dollars more than it should have been, and everyone knew it.
While Boeing publicly said the deal was part of an efficient system to deliver planes to the Air Force, internal emails at the Pentagon show that the contract was “a bailout for Boeing.” The deal was eventually scrapped and the scandal led to a criminal probe, which ultimately led to prison terms for a former Air Force administrator and a senior Boeing official.
This leads us to today and the current vacancy at the top of the Air Force. Who’s Bush’s new choice to be the head of the branch of the military? Michael Wynne, head of the Pentagon’s acquisition office when the controversial Boeing contract was struck.
A report by the Defense Department’s inspector general in May faulted Wynne for not requiring the Air Force to follow proper procedures for the Boeing leases.
The report said Wynne told the White House budget office that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the lease idea “after comprehensive and deliberative review by the Leasing Review Panel” when that panel had not finished its deliberations or made recommendations.
“He wasn’t a bad guy, particularly, but he wasn’t a good guy, either,” says Danielle Brian of the non-profit Project on Government Oversight, a critic of the lease plan. “You would have hoped someone in his position would have stopped it.”
The fact that Bush has tapped Wynne to head the Air Force is a bad joke. This guy hasn’t earned a promotion; he’s earned a pink slip. When his nomination heads to the Senate for confirmation, Dems would be crazy not to take advantage of the opportunity.
In particular, we need to know what Wynne may have seen about the White House’s role in the Boeing scandal.
Bush, who enjoyed generous campaign contributions from Boeing, was reportedly very much involved with the contract. Some members of Congress and the Office of Management and Budget raised objections to the deal, but the Pentagon backed the project — after Bush “personally” asked White House aides to work out a deal. Even Chief of Staff Andrew Card participated in the contract negotiations following an aggressive lobbying campaign by Boeing.
The Pentagon’s inspector general investigated and found a series of steps that led to the “bailout for Boeing,” but we don’t have the whole story — because the White House won’t let us.
In the copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post, 45 sections were deleted by the White House counsel’s office to obscure what several sources described as references to White House involvement in the lease negotiations and its interaction with Boeing.
And now the White House has tapped the same guy who helped cut corners to make the criminal deal happen for a major promotion to head the Air Force itself. Amazing.