E-Mails Detail Air Force Push for Boeing Deal

Pentagon Official Called Proposed Lease of Tankers a 'Bailout,' Report Finds

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer

For the past three years, the Air Force has described its $30 billion proposal to convert passenger planes into military refueling tankers and lease them from Boeing Co. as an efficient way to obtain aircraft the military urgently needs.

But a very different account of the deal is shown in an August 2002 internal e-mail exchange among four senior Pentagon officials.

'We all know that this is a bailout for Boeing,' Ronald G. Garant, an official of the Pentagon comptroller's office, said in a message to two others in his office and then-Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Wayne A. Schroeder. 'Why don't we just bite the bullet,' he asked, and handle the acquisition like the procurement of a 1970s-era aircraft -- by squeezing the manufacturer to provide a better tanker at a decent cost?

'We didn't need those aircraft either, but we didn't screw the taxpayer in the process,' Garant added, referring to widespread sentiment at the Pentagon that the proposed lease of Boeing 767s would cost too much for a plane with serious shortcomings.

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