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Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal probe into whether a senior NASA official wrongly told a high-ranking Boeing Co. executive company about the status of a contract for a lunar lander, urging the company to change its bid , according to people familiar with the study.
The grand jury’s investigation, which has not been previously reported, is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and is focused on communications that occurred earlier this year outside established contractual channels, these people said. Lawyers, they said, are seeking contacts between Doug Loverro, before he resigned in May as head of NASA’s human reconnaissance programs, and Jim Chilton, former vice president of Boeing’s space and launch division.
Mr. Loverro, who was not part of NASA’s official contractors, informed Mr. Chilton that the Chicago space giant was about to be eliminated from the competition based on cost and technical evaluations, according to some of the people . Within days, Boeing had submitted a revised proposal, they said. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration formally states that the bid changes came too late to be considered, and three other companies won contracts totaling nearly $ 1 billion in April.
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The investigation is in its early stages, according to the people who know her, and it is not known whether the probe will result in a criminal case. Regardless of how it ends, the investigation increases control over Mr Loverro’s holding and carrying and raises new questions about Boeing’s decision-making and security for internal contracts. Several middle-level Boeing officials, including a lawyer, were fired from the company as a result of the controversy, people familiar with the personnel changes said.
The company has taken steps to improve compliance training after the episode, a person informed of Boeing’s internal response said.
Boeing, which has a separate criminal probe into the development of the 737 MAX passenger jet, declined to comment on the investigation or on behalf of Mr Chilton. A NASA spokesman said it was “not appropriate to discuss personnel actions”, but added, “We are confident in our procurement process.” A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment. The lawyers of Mr. Loverro were not reached for comment.
Mr. Loverro has told investigators that he was trying to help the lunar lander program and taxpayers instead of following what was not intended, according to some of the people familiar with the investigation, by reducing the chance that the bidding process would be delayed by potential challenges as an appeal to the outcome.
Mr Loverro’s communication with Boeing, and the company’s actions after that communication, brought complaints within parts of NASA, the people familiar with the investigation said. The complaints prompted a previously reported probe by the agency’s inspector general into whether Boeing gained unusual insight or an advantage in competition. Weeks after the awards were announced, Mr. Loverro stepped down as an Associate Director under pressure from NASA’s leadership.
In a farewell message to staff sent on 19 May, Mr Loverro suggested that he had exercised his authority too much or else he would have been burdened by contract rules. He wrote that “risk-taking is part of the job description” of someone in his role. Without explaining, the message said: “I took such a risk earlier in the year because I judged it necessary to pursue our mission.”
After Mr. Loverro left NASA, some of these people said, attorneys have opened their probe into whether the integrity laws of purchases were violated, requesting written statements and issuing at least one statement. The Inspector General’s civil inquiry has been put on hold pending resolution of the criminal probe, according to people familiar with both inquiries. A spokeswoman for the inspector general declined to comment.
In his statements to NASA and Justice Department investigators, these people said Mr. Loverro indicated that his goal was to prevent disruptions in NASA’s land plans. Prosecutors are also looking into his contact with another bidder, these people said, without identifying that party.
Both contacts with providers may have broken established NASA procedures designed to isolate contracting decisions from misconduct, according to these people, and could have reflected efforts by a newcomer led by NASA leaders to to increase competition. Mr. Loverro is a former senior Pentagon space official who played a key role in setting the goals and broad design of NASA’s human-lander program after joining the agency in December. He did not make the final contract decisions.
At the end of April, NASA chose the three business teams to develop land meant to take astronauts to the moon for the first time in almost half a century, and relied on a mix of startups and established contractors to lead the way with dramatically different technical solutions. A total of $ 967 million, the contracts are intended to be a down payment for billions of additional tax dollars NASA plans to spend on prototypes of lander and testing. There is no indication that the award winners – Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Blue Origin Federation LLC and Leidos Holdings Inc.’s Dynetics unit – are part of the Justice Department’s probe.
Those three companies declined to comment or were not reached.
For Boeing, however, the outcome was widely seen as a blow. Industry officials express surprise that the company was not chosen despite its formidable role in exploring human spaces that spanned some five decades.
In his farewell message, Mr Loverro wrote that his departure from NASA “had nothing to do with your performance as an organization nor with the plans we have put in place” to land astronauts on the moon in 2024, and added, ” My love is because of my personal actions. “
Mr Loverro’s dismissal attracted widespread attention, in part because it was so abrupt – he announced his resignation the day before he sent his resignation – and in part because it came less than two weeks before the flight of SpaceX from the first commercially developed capsule to carry humans to the International Space Station. The Wall Street Journal initially reported the Inspector General’s investigation, and the Washington Post later identified Mr Chilton as Mr Loverro’s contact with Boeing.
In the 737 MAX investigation, federal prosecutors gathered at the Justice Department headquarters for nearly two years. In recent months, they sought to build a case against a former Boeing pilot who oversees regulatory approvals for MAX manuals and pilot training before leaving the company, the Journal reported.
Two of the plane crashed within five months, killing a total of 346 people and sparking several investigations into Boeing’s failures to provide prompt and complete design details to regulators during the plane’s initial certification. Boeing has said it complied with all regulatory requirements when designing the MAX and is working on approving revisions and fixes to the design of the aircraft. The former Boeing pilot’s lawyer has said his client has done nothing to undermine safety or mislead regulators.
Write to Andy Pasztor at [email protected], Andrew Tangel at [email protected] and Aruna Viswanatha at [email protected]
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