More Bush cronyism: under-investigation Boeing gets $9.5b contract anyway

[Paragon]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=3&u=/nm/20031229/pl_nm/arms_boeing_dc

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy on Monday said it had ordered 210 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet attack jets worth $8.5 billion from Boeing Co. and would pay Boeing $979 million to develop and demonstrate a new variant, the EA-18G, with upgraded weapons.

http://www.cfo.com/article/1,5309,11540,00.html?f=features

Government reviews of a proposed $21.5-billion Air Force contract to lease 100 Boeing-built refueling planes suggest that representatives of BCC had a pivotal role in convincing the Air Force to accept a controversial structure built around a special-purpose entity (SPE) that both Boeing and the Air Force would help create.

The plan has been amended to become a deal involving a partial lease and a partial purchase. But the original 100-plane lease arrangement put BCC — a Boeing unit that's been overshadowed in media reports so far — in the middle of a scandal involving suggestions of improper sharing by the Air Force of proprietary information about a rival tanker bid and charges that Boeing wielded unethical influence in the shaping of the huge contract.