Shady hiring of government officials, political and financial ties, fat contracts -- the most recent Boeing affair has only begun to reveal the sector's ethical practices.

Early in the year, Boeing hired the former head of Air Force purchasing, Darleen Druyun, so she may have placed Pentagon orders with Boeing after having cut a deal with the aircraft builder.

In particular, during negotiation for an 18-billion-dollar Pentagon contract for refueling tankers, Druyun may have supplied Boeing with information on a competing bid by Europe's Airbus.

Boeing, which won the bid, fired Druyun and chief financial officer Mike Sears in late November. CEO Phil Condit resigned shortly thereafter.

The Pentagon launched an inquiry into the deal, and later put it on hold.

The US aviation and defense giant said Saturday it was confident the deal would go through, despite the ethics investigation.

"We are cooperating with the Pentagon and we are confident that the tanker program with the US government will proceed," said Mark Kronenberg, vice president of international business development with Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, speaking in Dubai.

Also Saturday, The New York Times reported that an Air Force acquisitions officer urged Pentagon officials to close the Boeing deal even after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed concern about it, and shared Pentagon negotiating strategy with Boeing while negotiations were underway.

So the sudden strictness of the Pentagon, as well as the newfound virtue at Boeing -- whose new CEO Harry Stonecipher has promised to make it an "exemplary" government supplier -- are little comfort.

Republican Senator John McCain has for months denounced the "military-industrial complex," a term coined by former president Dwight Eisenhower to describe the growing coziness between the Pentagon and its suppliers.

McCain is about to seek an investigation of the revolving door between the Pentagon and Boeing, US News and World Report said in its weekly edition due out Monday.

The Pentagon's ethical laxity could also be questioned.

In May, Pentagon purchasing director Edward Aldridge joined Lockheed Martin shortly after having left the government, while remaining an advisor on purchasing strategy for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The complicity between defense contractors and the US government extends to political and financial spheres, with close bonds that are difficult to break.

"You could rightfully wonder if the relations between Boeing or any other big company in the defense industry and the Pentagon will ever be really questioned," a Defense Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Boeing has invested 20 million dollars in an investment fund managed by Richard Perle, a top Pentagon advisor, according to the Financial Times.

The company also invested 20 million dollars in the Paladin Capital Group, managed by former CIA director James Woolsey, who sits with Perle on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.

"How many ways can companies find to influence the government? The answer is: quite a few," Ken Boehm, Chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, wrote in an opinion column published Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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