Government Contract Was Reportedly Negotiated Between FAA
Employee And Raytheon Executive Who Were Intimately Involved
A researcher at Georgia State University says that operational
errors among air traffic controllers between December 2008 and
October 2010 have risen some 3,300 percent when compared to January
2007 and November 2008. And, he says, the most likely cause for
that dramatic increase is a contract for training awarded to
Raytheon worth nearly $1 billion.
Complicating the matter, Professor Jack Williams says, is that
the FAA official in charge of negotiating the contract and the
Raytheon executive with whom she made the deal, himself a former
FAA employee, were involved in a romantic affair while the program
was being put together.
An enterprise report appearing in
The Daily Caller, published in
Washington, D.C., indicates that the relationship between Charlie
Keegan, who had been the FAA's vice president of Operations
Planning Services before leaving to take the high-ranking position
with Raytheon, and Maureen Knopes, who had been placed in charge of
re-structuring the long-standing system of training air traffic
controllers, was well known, and they eventually married in August
2007.
In June of 2006, the FAA announced that it was changing the way
bidding was done for the Air Traffic Control Optimum Training
Solutions program. The new rules, devised by Knopes and her staff,
disallowed smaller contractors like Washington Consulting Group,
who had held the contract for two decades, from bidding on their
own. The smaller company teamed up with Lockheed Martin in an
effort to win the businesses. But the rules changed again in 2007
in a way that precluded Washington Consulting Group from bidding
for the contract, and which eliminated Lockheed Martin as well.
That left Raytheon with a clear path to win the nearly $1 billion
contract.
The smaller company sued Raytheon when it learned of the
romantic involvement between Keegan and Knopes and their ensuing
marriage, as well as the spike in controller errors. An attorney
for the company told the paper that he beleives the bidding was not
conducted fairly. Raytheon has dismissed the suit as "frivoulous
and irresponsible."
The FAA is also dismissive of the charges, but will not
specifically discuss the pending litigation. A spokesperson said
that the dramatic rise in reported errors stems largely from a
self-reporting system that allows controllers to anonymously own up
to their mistakes.