Inspector General: Conflict of interest on NASA board
WASHINGTON (AP) - April 30, 2008 The board chairman, former Skylab astronaut Ed Gibson, and five
other members work for companies hired by NASA on the
multi-billion-dollar space shuttle replacement program.
The NASA inspector general, the agency's in-house watchdog,
calls that a conflict of interest and recommends suspending the six
board members.
NASA contends that in the specialized field of aerospace, most
of the experts either work for NASA or its contractors. The agency
regularly has to deal with this on review boards, said NASA
spokesman David Steitz.
The board was set up to oversee NASA's new Orion crew capsule
project, but not the moon rocket that sits under the capsule. Plans
call for astronauts to return to the moon by 2020 and the Orion
would take them there.
The board consists of 19 members charged with providing
"independent" assessments of the project designed by NASA but
built by private firms. However, nearly one-third of them work for
those firms. Four of the six contractor employees were also
stockholders in companies making money off the NASA project.
The conflicts include two powerful space and defense
contractors: Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San
Diego and Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md.
Gibson and former NASA flight director Neil Hutchinson are vice
presidents and stockholders of SAIC, which has a $51.4 million
contract for Orion test facilities. Another board member is an SAIC
employee. A former top NASA official, Jack Garman, works for and
owns stock in Lockheed Martin, the prime builder of Orion with a
$4.3 billion contract. Two other board members work for contractors
MEI Technologies of Houston and Gray Research Inc. of Huntsville,
Ala.
In a response from NASA in the report, Scott Pace, an associate
administrator, said there is no need to suspend or replace the
board members in conflict. Pace said the standards for the board's
independence are being rewritten. The inspector general's office
called that response "nonresponsive."
An expert on government ethics said the conflict was "a
flagrant abuse and Congress should investigate."
"Not only is NASA ready to challenge the laws of physics, it
appears more than willing to challenge the laws of Congress," said
New York University professor Paul Light.
House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said he
believes "NASA will take whatever steps are required to eliminate
any conflicts of interest."
This is not just bureaucratic nitpicking, Light said.
Independent oversight is crucial and that means separate from the
contractors NASA uses so often, he said. He pointed out that NASA
lost a $125 million Mars probe in 1999 because a contractor,
Lockheed Martin, used English measurements while NASA had been
using metric measurements for years.
In a NASA self-assessment of any potential conflict of interest,
Gibson wrote that there is no conflict between him and SAIC where
he is an officer. He said SAIC provides only technical services and
that he created a "firewall" between him and SAIC's work on
Orion; he said he is barred from discussing Orion work with company
employees. SAIC did not have any comment.
However, the inspector general auditors wrote that these
assurances were not "adequate to remedy his independence
impairment."
This is the second major conflict of interest problem NASA has
had with a board recent months. Last December, NASA announced it
was delaying by two years its planned half-billion-dollar 2011
unmanned probe to Mars. because of an unspecified conflict of
interest in the board formed to pick a contractor.
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On the Net:
NASA Inspector General's report:
http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY08/IG-08-018.pdf
