Despite the performance problems, no one at the FAA raised any alarms about the Crown contract until Srite joined the staff last fall. She brought a fresh pair of eyes to FAA contracting, after eight years at the Defense Department where she oversaw two $500 million contracts for the B1 bomber.

A month into her new job, Srite received her first call from a company official at Crown, one of many contracts she was assigned to oversee. Srite learned that Crown submitted its invoices electronically for reimbursement on an FAA contracting management Web site. Srite said she did not have access to the Web site and that she had to ask managers of the program for a password. "I've never heard of a contracting officer not having access to invoices, because they are the only ones who can obligate government funds," she said.

Using the Web site, Srite said she discovered numerous invoices that appeared to be unauthorized or unexplained. For example, she came upon an invoice in March 2003 for leases of several properties in New Jersey, Bethesda, Herndon and Australia, and the lease for the Porsche. She found invoices for a trip to Las Vegas by two Crown employees. Normally, contractors must obtain written approvals before taking trips, Srite said, and she could not find any.

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Complicating oversight of the contract, Srite said, is that she is based at the FAA's office in Oklahoma City and Crown's project office was in Herndon. As is normal practice with other government contracts, the FAA usually assigns a local technical representative to monitor a contractor's work on site to confirm performance and the number of hours worked. In the Crown case, Srite said she was the one legally responsible for overseeing the contract, but the FAA said the technical representative in Herndon had been the one approving invoices.

Srite said that in January she reported the Crown invoices to the Defense Contracting Audit Agency. Another FAA employee, whom she declined to identify, also was aware of the invoices and reported them to the inspector general and to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Around that time, FAA officials started discussions with Crown to end the contract for reasons of "convenience," a broad term used to reflect the agency's discretion. The FAA agreed to pay more than $700,000 to Crown to end the contract, in a deal that requires approval by the audit agency.

Just as the contract was ending, Srite received an e-mail from her boss directing her to retain a small part of Crown's work that kept the air traffic system updated, for safety reasons, until a new contractor could be hired. Item No. 3 in the e-mail instructed her to keep two specific Crown employees on the contract.

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