Defense Consultant Denies Paying Off U.S. Employees

WASHINGTON — A defense consultant at the center of an unfolding Pentagon fraud investigation acknowledged Friday that he paid other consultants for “technical information” on contracts but denied he made payments to government employees.

William L. Parkin, a former Navy contracting official who retired in 1983 and set up his own consulting firm, said he began making monthly payments to consultant Fred H. Lackner in late 1986 for information on a pending Navy contract for special aircraft equipment.

Parkin said he paid Lackner between $15,000 and $18,000 and that he then provided the contract information to his client, Hazeltine Corp. of Long Island, N.Y.

Says Material Was Not Secret

“I will say it wasn’t secret material,” Parkin said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It was technical information.”

The Justice Department has asserted in an affidavit for a search warrant that wiretapped conversations showed Parkin “served as a middleman who paid government employees for inside information and sold it to contractors.”

“I deny vehemently that I made payoffs to government officials,” Parkin was quoted as telling the Wall Street Journal in an article published Friday. “I bought information from (consultant Lackner) and passed it to Hazeltine. That is where I made an error.”

A spokesman for Hazeltine, who asked not to be identified, said Friday that the company had “been assured by investigators that neither it nor any current or former employee is a target of the investigation, and has no knowledge of Parkin acquiring any information unlawfully.”

Parkin is the second consultant this week to describe an extensive network of consultants, government officials and defense contractors whose interests in passing information often meshed.

Thomas E. Muldoon, another consultant who, like Parkin, was named in federal search warrants in June, was quoted by the Hartford (Conn.) Courant last Sunday as saying he never asked about the sources of sensitive information he received from other consultants and neither did the companies to which he passed it.

Parkin, 64, of Alexandria, Va., first described his work as a middleman in the defense industry during interviews with the Journal, which described him as one of the Navy’s most powerful contracting officers from 1966 to 1983.

Hired for Navy Work

Parkin was hired by Hazeltine in 1986 to help win Navy work on test equipment for systems that distinguish between friendly and hostile aircraft. He was paid about $36,000 over a 1 1/2-year period.

Parkin told the Journal his role was only to serve as a “front” for Lackner, now a California defense consultant who also was the object of an FBI search warrant.

Parkin said that Lackner obtained the confidential information and that he then passed it on without Lackner ever disclosing how he got it.