Raytheon exec's nomination to Pentagon held up

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's choice to be the top deputy at the Pentagon hit a snag today over questions about his recent work as a lobbyist for Waltham-based Raytheon Co., which received more than $10 billion in weapons contracts last year from the very agency he would manage.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he would delay considering the nomination of William J. Lynn III to be deputy secretary of defense until the White House provides more information on why Lynn, who was a registered lobbyist until July 2008, is exempt from new rules barring former lobbyists joining the administration from working on the issues that were the focus of their lobbying efforts.

As the Pentagon's number two official, Lynn, now Raytheon's vice president for government operations and strategy, would have wide influence over decisions affecting the company, which relies on Defense Department contracts for much of its business.

"Given the president’s new stricter rules requiring his appointees to recuse themselves from matters or issues on which they have lobbied, the Senate Armed Services Committee will need further information before proceeding" with the nomination, Levin said in a statement today.

Lynn's nomination, which must be approved by the full Senate, appears to directly contradict the rules that Obama himself laid out on Wednesday in an effort, in his words, to "close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into the government freely."

"If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied, during the previous two years," Obama said.

But today, Obama's spokesman indicated that an exception -- in the form of a waiver -- would be made for Lynn, who served as the Pentagon budget chief in the Clinton administration and was previously a defense aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

"Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. "Our waiver provisions are designed to allow uniquely qualified individuals...to serve the public interest in these critical times."

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who interviewed Lynn for the job, also defended him today.

"I asked that an exception be made," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon, saying that he believed Lynn could do the job better "than anybody else I saw."

Levin, however, said that among the questions that need to be answered are whether the new rules will preclude Lynn "from participating in key Department of Defense decisions, and if so, whether a waiver will be forthcoming and what the scope of the waiver will be."

Another Obama appointee is facing similar scrutiny as Lynn. William Carr, who last year lobbied the Department of Health and Human Services for an anti-tobacco advocacy group, has been chosen to be the agency's deputy secretary. Gibbs said today that Carr, too, was in line for an ethics waiver.