Conference tnpubs::xwell

29.0. "Ex-Navy aide admits accepting $475,000" by LEAF::JONG (Steve Jong/OMSD Software Pubs) Sat Jul 15 1989 16:12

    {Boston Globe, 7/15/89; reported by John M. Broder, LA Times}
    
    WASHINGTON--A former civilian Navy official confessed yeterday to
    taking $475,000 in bribes from two major defense contractors in
    exchange for confidential data on a Navy computer contract.
    
    Garland L. Tomlin Jr., 59, a 20-year Navy employee, admitted that he
    took $400,000 from Unisys Corp. and $75,000 from Honeywell Corp.
    between 1982 and 1984 to provide the companies detailed inside
    information about a $162 million Navy computer maintenance contract.
    
    Tomlin created a front company in the Bahamas to accept the payoffs and
    later transferred the funds to a Swiss bank account, according to a
    statement of facts filed with his guilty plea.  He has refunded
    $385,000 to the government, prosecutors said.
    
    Another former Navy official and three other men also pleaded guilty
    yesterday to criminal charges arising from the three-year "Ill Wind"
    investigation into corruption in the Pentagon procurement system.
    
    Corporate payoffs to government officials "show a disturbing pattern,
    and that is what this case is all about," said Henry E. Hudson, US
    Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is overseeing the
    Pentagon investigation.  "Every time we turn over a rock in this case
    we identify a new individual" involved in bribery schemes.
    
    The $475,000 taken by Tomlin represents by far the largest sum that
    investigators have proved to have been passed from military contractors
    to a Pentagon official in the procurement scandal.  Two other Pentagon
    officials earlier this year admitted in court to taking about $50,000
    each in bribes over a 10-year period.