Posted: Fri, Dec 19, 2003, 8:34 AM ET (1334 GMT)
An independent report released Thursday concluded that recent ethical controversies at aerospace giant Boeing are anomalies and not evidence of a larger problem at the company. The report, the result of an investigation led by former US Senator Warren Rudman, concluded that "Boeing has gone to great lengths to establish, maintain and continually improve upon an ethics program that is impressive in its scope and detail," Rudman said in a Boeing statement. "We do not believe that any of the alleged ethics breaches involving competitors' proprietary information represent either fundamental flaws or a systemic failure." The report did recommend some areas of improvement in the company's ethics policies. Those policies became an area of concern when Air Force investigators found that Boeing had obtained proprietary Lockheed Martin documents during the initial EELV competition. As a result, the Pentagon stripped seven launches originally awarded to Boeing and also barred the company from competing on future launches, a prohibition still in effect. Since then other controversies involving the hiring of a former Pentagon procurement official have led to the firing of the company's CEO and CFO.

Related Links:

•  Boeing press release
•  Reuters article
•  Space News article (subscription required)
•  Los Angeles Times article