Getting Buyers Back in Line

HEADNOTE

Air Force procurement problems prompt reviews, reorganization and renewed concern about reforms.

A year before Darlcen Druyun retired from the Air Force in 2002, Defense procurement leaders had become concerned

that she exercised too much control over the service's weapons purchases, which account for most of its $53.6 billion annual procurement budget. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and Marvin Sambur, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, began reducing Druyun's authority. When she left to take a $250,000-3-year job managing Boeing's missile defense programs, Wynne and Sambur thought their worries were over.

Then, in late 2003, Boeing fired Druyun for ethics lapses and federal investigators began examining how the firm came to hire her. In October, she was fined and sentenced to nine months in federal prison for negotiating her move to Boeing while still overseeing its Air Force contracts. At her sentencing, Druyun revealed having favored Boeing in at least four multibillion-dollar contract negotiations dating back to 2001. Wynne says he was "shocked and chagrined" by Druyun's admissions. "This is very different than soliciting a job, and in acquisition this is a situation we have to consider a crisis," he says.