Air Force Secretary's e-mail queried

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Fresh questions have arisen over an e-mail U.S. Air Force Secretary James Roche sent to a White House budget official involving a job in exchange for support.

Officials at the Pentagon, Justice Department and White House Office of Management and Budget are examining the chain of events that began last year when Roche was lobbying for the White House to endorse a $23 billion bid by the Boeing Co. to provide refueling aircraft to the Pentagon.

In one e-mail, Roche offered to help land a job for the brother of a senior official in the OMB who oversees defense acquisitions.

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Caldwell denied to the Wall Street Journal Roche was offering a favor in exchange for White House support of the tanker deal. Roche's e-mail "was a light-hearted exchange between longtime friends and colleagues," he said, adding the chief ethics official of the Air Force found no ethical or legal problem with the e-mail exchange.

Roche already faces a battle to win congressional support for a raft of new programs, including advanced surveillance satellites, rockets and two families of next-generation jet fighters, the newspaper said.