GAO audit faults Air Force tanker award

In a front-page story, the Washington Post (6/19, A1, Hedgpeth, O'Harrow, Jr.) reports, "Federal auditors" from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) "said...that the Air Force bungled its decision to award a multibillion-dollar contract for new refueling tankers to a team that includes" Northrop Grumman and "Airbus, touching off calls for a congressional probe and putting yet another twist in the years-long, scandal-plagued effort to replace the aging tanker fleet."

Also on its front page, the Wall Street Journal (6/19, A1, Cole) adds, "The decision by the GAO, while not binding, effectively gives Boeing the chance to recapture its decades-long lock on the business of supplying planes that can refuel other planes in midair." The GAO's audit "upheld the majority of Boeing's most serious objections." The GAO found that "the Air Force 'made a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman,'" and also advised the Air Force to "seek revised proposals and pick a new winner." And "although the GAO can't force the Air Force to reopen bidding, its report is likely to have that result."

In what it characterized as "a stunning turnabout," the New York Times (6/19, A1, Wayne) reports in a front-page story that the GAO's summary indicates "that the Air Force had made 'unreasonable' cost calculations which, when corrected, would make Boeing the lower bidder over time." Additionally, the summary "said the Air Force had 'conducted misleading and unequal discussions' with Boeing when the Air Force indicated to Boeing that it had satisfied program requirements when, in fact, it had not."

The Financial Times (6/19, A1, Sevastopulo, et al), the Los Angeles Times (6/19, Pae, Madhani), USA Today (6/19, Iwara), The Hill (6/19, A1, Tiron), the AP (6/19, Tessler), Bloomberg (6/19, Lococo, Ratnam), the Chicago Tribune (6/19, Madhani, Johnsson), the Christian Science Monitor (6/19, Lubold), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6/19, Wallace), Reuters (6/19, Wolf), and the U.K.'s Guardian (6/19, Clark, Gow) also cover the story.