To Heritage Boeing: reassert your values

Boeing is still the home team, and we want it to win. But not through corruption. Not only is there no honor in it, but there is no lasting economic advantage in it.

Boeing's board of directors has fired Chief Financial Officer Mike Sears for an act that, if proven true, amounts to corruption. Good.

Boeing's board of directors determined that Sears had improperly suggested to Darleen Druyun, the Air Force official who reviewed Boeing's bid to supply $21 billion in tanker aircraft, that Boeing might have a job for her. Already, it had employed her daughter. A year ago, Druyun came to work for Boeing, as vice president of missile-defense systems. When company lawyers began investigating, the board said, Sears and Druyun "attempted to conceal their misconduct." She was fired, too.

Good. Boeing directors are doing their job. But it should not have taken tub-thumping by Sen. John McCain and actions by the Office of the Inspector General to question this hire. This has not been the only trouble. Boeing's rocket program was exposed for hiring Lockheed employees who brought over thousands of pages of proprietary Lockheed documents.

The rocket program was inherited from McDonnell Douglas. So was Sears; after the retirement of Harry Stonecipher last year, Sears was the highest-ranking of the Stonecipher cadre. Unlike Boeing, whose corporate culture had sprung out of its Seattle-based commercial airplane business, McDonnell Douglas had become largely a military contractor.

The merger is not going to be undone. But these events should strengthen the hand of heritage Boeing people within the company. They need to reassert the values that made Boeing honorable and successful.