Boeing supporter steps up anti-Airbus campaign

By Bill Rigby

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of Boeing Co's (BA.N) leading congressional supporters is stepping up her campaign to discredit EADS (EAD.PA) and its Airbus unit after the European company won a key role in a lucrative $35 billion refueling tanker contract from the U.S. Air Force.

"With this Air Force contract, Airbus is not creating American jobs, it's killing them," Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who is campaigning vehemently against the tanker award, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

"Airbus has a history of bending the truth to try to convince Congress that it plans to invest in the United States," said Murray in an e-mailed statement, sent later on Wednesday. "When you examine their claims, they just don't hold up."

Murray has long been a staunch supporter of Boeing, which has its main commercial aircraft plants in her state. The company planned to build the airframe of its refueling tankers on the 767 production line in Everett, Washington. The loss of the tanker contract could mean the closure of the 767 line and job cuts in Washington state.

Murray's press office mistakenly sent out a five-year old press release earlier on Wednesday, attacking job creation claims by Airbus, along with plans to delve into Airbus' "checkered history" and "shady dealings."

She said that, in 2003, the U.S. Commerce Department found that Airbus had created only 500 jobs in the United States, rather than Airbus' claim of 100,000.

"If you peel back the veneer on Airbus's promises this time, you start to ask similar questions," she added.

EADS declined comment on the matter. Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N), which is teaming up with EADS on the project, repeated its assertion that the tanker will be 60 percent U.S.-made, calling some recent comments in Congress "erroneous."

The Northrop/EADS team, which is planning to assemble the tankers at a new facility in Mobile, Alabama, said the project will create 25,000 jobs at 230 U.S. companies. Boeing supporters say a Boeing win would have supported 44,000 U.S. jobs at more than 300 U.S. companies.

Murray said the tanker award to Northrop/EADS would hurt U.S. workers for years to come and noted the United States had a World Trade Organization complaint pending against Airbus for unfair state subsidies.

Efforts to raise the WTO dispute may come to little if the tanker contract award is formally protested. The trade dispute was explicitly excluded by the Air Force from its request for proposals.

Michael Golden, a spokesman for the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency that evaluates contract disputes, said bidders implicitly accept the ground rules of a competition when they submit their bids, although there can be exceptions.

"The ground rules generally need to be protested prior to the closing date," Golden said. He said the details of the tanker deal would be reviewed after any protest was filed.

John Young, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, made a similar point when he met with reporters on Tuesday, saying he did not see any obvious problems that could prompt a protest.

Any obvious flaws in the process would have been raised by the companies already, he said. If Boeing exercised its right to protest, "we'll see how it goes," Young said.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Editing by Tim Dobbyn/Andre Grenon)