Public airing of tanker issues urged

WASHINGTON — Furious members of Congress ramped up their attacks on the Pentagon's tanker decision Tuesday, raising complaints about "bait-and-switch" tactics, summoning officials to testify today on Capitol Hill and spurring the Pentagon to speed up its planned debriefing on why Boeing lost the $40 billion contract.

While the rhetoric heated up, Boeing's congressional supporters noted that the politics of the tanker decision is all about the issues that have not been discussed publicly.

For example, when the Air Force secretary announced the winner of the contract for new refueling tankers on Friday, he said "Northrop Grumman Corporation," but didn't mention the European-based Airbus.

When the Air Force acquisitions director explained the factors considered in the decision, she said officials never talked about American jobs.

When the Pentagon wrote the competition specifications for Boeing and Airbus, it didn't mention the issue of European government subsidies.

And few, if any, raised the dilemma of foreign-owned companies' participation in making weaponry critical to U.S. military policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The state's congressional delegation is trying to force these issues back into public debate in hopes of reopening the tanker-contract competition.

"This is about policy, and Congress sets policy," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, adding, "Congress has every right to cancel this, and it should."

The state delegation joined lawmakers from Kansas, which also has a Boeing plant, in a coordinated campaign to stir public outrage over the Air Force's move to award the contract for 179 tankers to Airbus and its U.S. partner, Northrop.

In their opening salvos Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill, politicians from both states attacked Airbus, the Pentagon and, indirectly, Sen. John McCain.

McCain, R-Ariz., almost single-handedly torpedoed the first tanker agreement in 2004, which he denounced as a sole-source backroom deal to help Boeing's flagging 767 sales.

His presidential campaign has run TV ads touting his triumph in that Boeing tanker "scandal." McCain said this week he's always insisted on "fair and open competition," adding that he wants to be sure the Air Force "fairly applied its own rules" in awarding the contract.

But McCain himself is now part of the undercurrent of anger over the tanker decision.

In an interview, Dicks said McCain "removed all the things from the competition rules that would have favored Boeing in any way."

House members moved quickly Tuesday. They upended the Pentagon's efforts to delay a formal debriefing of Boeing and its congressional supporters until March 12, shortly before the Easter recess, by scheduling a hearing with Air Force officials before the House Appropriations Committee for this morning.

The Air Force also agreed Tuesday to debrief Boeing on Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray's office announced.

Dicks, a senior member of the House panel that holds the Defense Department's purse strings, complained that the Pentagon pulled a "bait and switch" by telling Boeing "it wanted a medium-size tanker; and then they chose the bigger one."

The bait-and-switch argument could emerge as an element in an official protest of the decision, if Boeing files one, he said.

In 2006, Boeing considered offering its larger-bodied 777 instead of the 767. But the Air Force, Dicks said, did not want that version in the competition.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has also joined the fray, issuing a tough statement that questioned "national-security implications of using an aircraft supplied by a foreign firm," as well as the effect on American unemployment.

Over in the Senate, Murray, a Democrat, gave an emotional speech describing the scene at Boeing's Everett plant last week when the contract was announced.

"I was there as those workers learned that, after 50 years, the Air Force no longer wants them to build its refueling tankers," she said, adding that she saw "the dismay in their eyes." Then she fired on Airbus and EADS, its parent company.

"In 2005, EADS was caught trying to sell military helicopters to Iran, despite our concern about Iran's support of terrorists in Iraq — and their efforts to develop nuclear weapons," she said, noting that France dismissed White House consternation at the time.

Murray said she intends to make "outsourcing our American military capabilities" a major issue in the tanker salvage efforts.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also scathingly criticized the Air Force because of the potential loss of jobs at Boeing's Wichita plant, and attacked the foreign ownership of EADS.

"We should not be beholden to the French for parts and maintenance for the defense of our nation, and we should not require our military personnel to learn to speak French to be able to operate our refueling tankers."

The second point was purely rhetorical — Airbus workers in various European countries routinely communicate in English — but that has become irrelevant in the current political debate.

Democratic presidential contenders Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., have also expressed reservations about the tanker choice.

Murray and Dicks want to wield European subsidies to Airbus/EADS as another weapon. McCain has said there is a level playing field between Airbus and Boeing in the competition.

But Dicks said the field was "tilted to Airbus" because the Pentagon did not weigh the subsidy factor in deliberations because of McCain.

In 2004, the U.S. government sued the European Union at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the EU's financial support to EADS.

Just two weeks before the Air Force was set to release its formal Request for Proposal (RFP) in December 2006, McCain wrote a letter to the incoming secretary of defense, Robert Gates, warning that he was "troubled" by the "unprecedented inclusion" of the subsidy question in the document.

Ultimately, the subsidy issue was not part of the formal RFP released shortly thereafter.

"Our government is bringing a lawsuit against them, and Mr. McCain doesn't seem to care," said Dicks.

Meanwhile, Dicks and others in the delegation have begun to grumble that the Pentagon itself has politicized the decision by avoiding references to Airbus, and by trying to delay the customary debriefing to Boeing and key members of Congress about the competition details.

"Tomorrow we're going to ask them why they didn't take subsidies into account, and about the bait-and-switch. And after they debrief us," he said, "we'll probably have another hearing."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com