Second Look At Post Ethics Story

An October 1 story Washington Post story examined a retired Air Force officer who was given a temporary job with a nonprofit defense contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while waiting a White House appointment for the number two Air Force procurement job. The Post quoted Lt. Col.  Charles Riechers as saying, "I really didn't do anything for CRI," in a context that sounded like an admission of ethical impropriety. Two weeks after the Post story, Riechers was found dead, an apparent suicide.

Spurred by Air Force complaints about the original story, Debroah Howell, the Post Ombudsman re-examined the Reichers case in a recent column. She concluded that the original story may have been overly simplistic. She discovered a wide range of expert opinion on whether the temporary job was unethical. Here are some of the opinions:

Stan Z. Soloway, a deputy undersecretary of defense during the Clinton administration, was critical of the story and headline. "It lacked important context and facts. There are questions of appearance here, but this does not appear to have been a no-work contract. He did work for the Air Force. While it doesn't mean the arrangement was the right thing to do, the picture is somewhat different when you look at the context." Soloway is president of the Professional Services Council, which represents the government services industry.

David M. Nadler, a government contracts partner at the firm Dickstein Shapiro, is a former Navy lawyer. He felt the arrangement was "questionable. Even if there is a legal justification, there's still a real appearance problem. Especially because of its prior situation with Druyun, you would think the Air Force would have been sensitive to the appearance issue." Riechers's job was last held by Darleen A. Druyun, a career civil servant who went to prison in 2004 for negotiating a job with Boeing while she worked for the Air Force and for showing favoritism toward the company in procurement.