Harry Stonecipher: Winner, Suckiest Day Award

By vouchey in News on Mar 8, 2005 3:07PM

Imagine, you're caught in an extramarital affair and it becomes public. Urk! Then, because your company's code of conduct bars that sort of behavior, you lose your job. D'oh! And finally, because you run one of the world's biggest aircraft manufacturers, the whole thing is front page news across the world -- including a front-page Wall Street Journal stipple-drawing. Ack!

That's the kind of day Harry Stonecipher is having today. Not that he didn't get himself into it. After all, he took the CEO job at Boeing with instituting better ethics as Job One. And then he decided to sleep with a junior executive. Sympathy is not appropriate here, but pity sure is.

The grandfatherly CEO was brought out of retirement specifically to rebuild Boeing after it had been rocked by a U.S. Air Force procurement scandal, which resulted in the ouster of then-CEO Phil Condit, and the jailing of the company's CFO and another executive.

Last week an anonymous source alerted Boeing's non-executive chairman, Lewis Platt, that Stonecipher had been conducting an affair with a female junior executive in the company. When asked about the affair by Platt, Stonecipher reportedly confessed that the relationship had been going on since January. The woman will remain anonymous, and will not receive any punishment for ethical breeches.

It's unlikely that she'll remain anonymous for long, however. Speculation as to her identity is probably rampant in Boeing, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer already has public denials as to the woman's identity.

Image courtesy of Boeing Russia