By Emelie Rutherford
The Senate is likely to vote today to confirm Raytheon [RTN] executive William Lynn as deputy defense secretary, following weeks of grumbling by Senate Republicans about his past lobbying and former service in the Clinton Pentagon.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday afternoon he was working on an agreement allowing a vote today.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), perhaps Lynn’s greatest Senate critic, has told Defense Daily he would not put a hold on Lynn’s confirmation provided the vote wasn’t held before yesterday and the senator is given an hour to vent about Lynn on the Senate floor (Defense Daily, Feb. 9).
Grassley, the Senate Finance Committee ranking member, has grilled Lynn about billing practices used at the Pentagon while Lynn was comptroller and chief financial officer in the late 1990s. The senator also has raised concerns about a waiver the White House issued allowing Lynn to bypass Obama’s ethics rules banning government appointees for two years from working for agencies and on issue areas they lobbied, and from participating in matters related to their former employers.
Grassley grilled Lynn on these matters in a series of letters, and the senator’s spokeswoman said he received the nominee’s response to the third and final letter Monday night.
Grassley’s office has been working on the senator’s floor speech about Lynn, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said he also plans to raise concerns about, but not block, the confirmation.
“He did a terrible job as comptroller, number one, and two there still is the lobbying question,” Coburn told Defense Daily, referring to the subject of his planned floor remarks.
Lynn defended his Pentagon experience with the “Straight Pay” payment practice in his third letter to Grassley, in which he noted he would be subject to the sections of Obama’s ethics executive order not waived for him.
“I believe my nomination is consistent with the spirit and intent of President Obama’s Executive Order,” Lynn wrote. He also would be subject to recusal rules set by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC).
Lynn has pledged to disqualify himself for a year from working on six Raytheon programs for which he lobbied Congress in 2007 and 2008: the DDG-1000 surface combatant, the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), the F-15 airborne laser, the Patriot “Pure Fleet” Program, the Future Imagery Architecture system (which has been cancelled), and the Multiple Kill Vehicle. He only lobbied Department of Defense officials on one program, the Multiple Kill Vehicle, he wrote in a letter to SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.)
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told Defense Daily he is not concerned about problems arising because of that one-year recusal arrangement.
“We’ve done this throughout history,” Levin said. “People have to recuse themselves if they work for a company that might create an appearance of a conflict. It’s normal.”
Committee staff, Levin added, have not found any examples “where anyone who has recused himself has been involved in a conflict.”
Defense analyst Loren Thompson said removing the deputy defense secretary from some Raytheon-related program discussions “really creates a problem in terms of the way the (Defense) Department functions.”
Thompson, the chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute and defense-industry insider, said concerns about Lynn’s past Raytheon experience impacting his performance are not unfounded.
“The problem with coming out of the defense industry is you know all sorts of people, and have had all sorts of experiences that you can’t black out of your mind; they are always going to influence how you view things,” Thompson said.
“This is a real dilemma,” he added. “On the one hand, if you don’t have defense-industry experience, then you’re lacking critical insight. On the other hand, if you do, it’s inevitable that in some way it’s going to impact on your judgment. So I don’t know how you resolve this.”
The Senate confirmed on Monday three of Obama’s other Pentagon nominations: Robert Hale, the new Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer; Michele Flournoy, the new under secretary of defense for policy; and Jeh Charles Johnson, the new Pentagon general counsel.
Lynn faced little resistance from the SASC during his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing, and was only asked about his Raytheon lobbying by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) (Defense Daily, Jan. 16). After the hearing, though, McCain exchanged letters with Lynn quizzing the nominee on Raytheon matters he will have to disqualify himself from because of his past lobbying.