Boeing Fined for Procuring Secret Papers

ALEXANDRIA, Va. —  The Boeing Co. pleaded guilty today to two felony charges of “unauthorized conveyance” of secret Pentagon budget documents and agreed to pay more than $5.2 million in fines and restitution.

U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III accepted the plea, entered by attorney Robert S. Bennett, after questioning company and government lawyers for nearly an hour. He said he was concerned that the plea and penalties agreed to might not sufficiently cover what he called a serious breach of national security.

Ellis said he wanted a “clear indication that the disposition bears a rational relationship to the injury to the United States and reflects an awareness on the part of the Boeing Co. on the gravity of it.”

He criticized Boeing for not sending a corporate officer from the Seattle-based aerospace firm to be present for the guilty plea and sentence. “I think you would have done well to have someone here to accept responsibility as officer of the company,” Ellis told Bennett.

The judge said he would require the corporation’s board chairman to write a letter to him expressing “the typical contrition that any defendant would express.”

Ellis fined Boeing $20,000 and ordered it to pay $5.2 million in restitution, which covers the cost of the government investigation and the value of the two illegally obtained documents.

Boeing admitted that it accepted two 1984 planning and budget documents classified secret from Richard Fowler, a former Boeing marketing official who is awaiting trial on 39 counts of conspiracy and unauthorized conveyance of more than 100 documents to the company between 1979 and 1985.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Randy Bellows said the Justice Department is continuing its investigation to determine who in the Pentagon gave the documents to Fowler.