Tanker Witnesses Announced

By Marcus Weisgerber / January 25, 2011 at 10:35 PM

The Pentagon will not send political appointees or anyone from the inner circle of the KC-X tanker program to testify at a high-profile hearing on last year's snafu in which the Air Force inadvertently sent bid evaluation data to the wrong parties, instead opting to send a uniformed acquisition official and a senior cyber crime official.

Maj. Gen. Wendy Masiello, program executive officer for combat and mission support in the service's acquisition shop, and Steven Shirley, executive director of the Pentagon's Cyber Crime Center, will occupy the witness tables in the Dirksen Office Building hearing room on Thursday morning.

In her role Masiello oversees service contracts, not the high-profile weapon system acquisitions.

Last year the Air Force acknowledged that it had mistakenly send computer files containing evaluation data of each bidder's KC-X proposal to opposite parties. Boeing received EADS data, and vice versa. It came to light later that Boeing did not open the file on the disk, but an EADS employee did.

Shirley -- a former vice commander of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations -- is expected to testify on the computer forensics involved in the service's investigation into the snafu.

Boeing-friendly Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) urged Levin to hold the hearing.

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