Rules Circumvented on Huge Boeing Defense Contract

Then White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., acting at what officials say was the direction of President Bush, told the Air Force and OMB to resolve their differences over Boeing Co.'s campaign to win federal backing for a lucrative new military airplane contract was in trouble in October 2002.

Card's intervention was but one fruit of a two-year lobbying campaign, mounted jointly by the Air Force and Boeing, that has brought the $21 billion to $25 billion deal within one congressional hurdle of being passed. An examination of that campaign, based on dozens of interviews and thousands of internal e-mails Boeing surrendered to the Senate Commerce Committee, shows how Boeing circumvented the usual route of Pentagon acquisitions -- and, with it, many of the rules and regulations enacted over the past three decades to forestall defense contracting abuses.