Meanwhile, Back on Earth . . .

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Just when NASA thought it had found a way to break through the clouds, it was hit by the last thing the beleaguered agency needs: a fresh scandal. Last Wednesday, while Endeavour was fueling up for its Thursday morning blast-off, two Houston TV stations and nbc Nightly News with Tom Brokaw reported that NASA had been targeted by an FBI sting operation -- code-named Lightning Strike -- that had snared agency employees and contractors.

For the rest of the week, reports of the shuttle's progress in space had to compete for air time with lurid tales of bribes, kickbacks and a bogus kidney- stone machine. Most of the stories focused on an FBI agent, posing as a businessman, who waved cash in front of NASA employees at Houston's Johnson Space Center to interest them in a "lithotriptor" -- a device that dissolves kidney stones with ultrasound. While such devices do exist and might actually serve a purpose in space (where kidney stones can develop in weightlessness), this one was just a box filled with lights and wires -- and the NASA staffers knew it. Agency employees and contractors were allegedly bribed to help book the box on a shuttle mission. According to the Houston Chronicle, a manager at NASA's Life Sciences Directorate and an employee at GB Tech, a Martin Marietta subcontractor, have been implicated in the scheme. Coming on top of NASA's other misfortunes in recent years, the disclosures were disheartening. "It gives morale a good, solid kick in the stomach," says Larry Friesen, a former engineer for Lockheed, a NASA contractor.

FBI guidelines require that sting targets show a predisposition to commit a crime before an undercover operation begins. In this case, that may not be hard to prove. According to Justice Department officials, the kidney-stone machine sting is just a small part of a much broader investigation into widespread corruption at NASA. "There are major players and a lot of big dollars involved -- big dollars," says a law-enforcement source. Another source familiar with the case goes even further. "This is the biggest thing since Ill Wind," he says. Operation Ill Wind was the code name for the vast Pentagon procurement scandal that broke five years ago. It involved eight major corporations and produced 63 convictions.

While Lightning Strike is not expected to uncover dishonesty that widespread, it is another sign that NASA has become infected with the same corrupting virus that struck the Pentagon. Two months ago, the space agency's inspector general told a congressional subcommittee that he had launched more than 400 investigations into waste, fraud and abuse. NASA's books were in such disarray, he said, that it could not account for assets worth roughly $12 billion.

None of this comes as any surprise to observers familiar with the agency, its contractors and the air of impunity with which they operate. Says one space engineer: "These guys have been insulated from the consequences of their actions for so long that they think they're above the physical laws of the land." Operation Lightning Strike is likely to bring a few of them back down to earth. If it gets out of hand, it could bring the space agency down as well.

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston