4 Senior Lockheed Officials to Retire; 2 From Burbank

Two executives responsible for the Lockheed facility in Burbank where hundreds of classified military documents were reported missing last month are among four senior company officials who will retire at the end of this year, Lockheed Corp. said Monday.

Lockheed said the executive changes, which the board of directors approved Monday, had been planned for three months and had nothing to do with the highly publicized congressional probe of the documents missing from the Burbank plant.

Last month, Lockheed Chairman Lawrence O. Kitchen acknowledged that there had been “inexcusable” and “unacceptable” lapses of security at the plant, fueling speculation that some executives might be fired or otherwise replaced.

Normal Cycle of Retirement

However, analysts who follow Lockheed generally agreed Monday that the changes were part of a normal cycle of retirement of a number of executives who coincidentally are within the same group, Lockheed’s aeronautical systems unit. The group oversees Lockheed-California in Burbank, Lockheed-Georgia in Marietta, Ga., and Lockheed Aircraft Service in Ontario, Calif.

“The company is pretty up-front with the investing public,” said Sarah Stack, an analyst with Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards. “If the company thought there was any gross negligence on the part of an individual, it would be forthright about it. They don’t gain anything by firing them and saying they are going to retire anyway.”

In his testimony last month to a House subcommittee, Kitchen pledged that there would be no cover-up in the case of the missing documents and promised to name a panel of outside auditors to investigate. He insisted that there had been no “actual compromise” of program security.

The program involved was never publicly identified, but congressional sources said at the time that it involved a secret stealth fighter aircraft being produced at Burbank.

Thomas O. Lloyd-Butler at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco said Monday that, “since most of the appointments have come from within, that gives an indication that there is no infection at the company. This is a normal succession that kind of bunched up.”

Retiring are Robert B. Ormsby, 61, president of the aeronautical systems group; W. Paul Frech, 65, president of Lockheed-Georgia; Edward J. Shockley, 61, president of Lockheed Aircraft Service, and Norman E. Nelson, 68, Lockheed-California vice president and advanced development projects general manager. Ormsby and Nelson are the two most closely associated with the Burbank plant. R. Richard Heppe continues as president of Lockheed-California and as a vice president of the parent corporation.

Ormsby will be succeeded by John C. Brizendine, 61, former president of Douglas Aircraft Co.; Frech by Kenneth W. Cannestra, 55, Lockheed-Georgia executive vice president, and Shockley by Gordon H. Smith, 58, Lockheed Aircraft Service executive vice president.

Ben R. Rich, 61, president of Lockheed Advanced Aeronautics Co., will succeed Nelson as vice president and general manager of Lockheed-California’s advanced development projects. He will report to Brizendine, new president of the aeronautical systems group, not to Heppe, as Nelson does, a Lockheed spokesman said.

To assist in an orderly transition, Ormsby, Frech and Shockley will be senior advisers to Lockheed Corp. President Robert A. Fuhrman, and Nelson will advise Rich.

The Lockheed board also approved other executive appointments at the company’s missiles, space and electronics systems group, where Daniel M. Tellep continues as president of the group and of its largest operating unit, Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. Both Lockheed and independent analysts said the changes were made to improve management of the group, which is the largest of Lockheed’s businesses.

Two new group posts will be filled by 34-year Lockheed veteran Jack Freeman, 62, as executive vice president-finance and administration, and John N. McMahon, 57, as executive vice president-plans and programs. McMahon recently retired as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency after 34 years with the agency.

Freeman will also continue as executive vice president at Lockheed Missiles & Space, and McMahon will also serve as executive vice president-plans and programs of the operating unit.

In addition, Donald C. Jones, 57, vice president and general manager of the missile systems division, and Val P. Peline, 56, vice president and general manager of the space systems division, have been appointed presidents of their respective divisions.

Succeeding Cannestra as executive vice president at Lockheed-Georgia will be Bard Allison, 54, formerly vice president in charge of the C-5 and C-141 programs at Lockheed-Georgia.