Washington ? For the past three years, the Air Force has described its $30 billion proposal to convert passenger planes into military refueling tankers and lease them from Boeing Co. as an efficient way to obtain aircraft the military urgently needs.

But a different account of the deal is shown in an August 2002 e-mail exchange among four senior Pentagon officials.

“We all know that this is a bailout for Boeing,” Ronald Garant, an official of the Pentagon comptroller’s office, said in a message to two others in his office and then-Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Wayne Schroeder. “Why don’t we just bite the bullet,” he asked, and handle the acquisition like the procurement of a 1970s-era aircraft – by squeezing the manufacturer to provide a better tanker at a decent cost?

“We didn’t need those aircraft either, but we didn’t screw the taxpayer in the process,” Garant added, referring to widespread sentiment at the Pentagon that the proposed lease of Boeing 767s would cost too much for a plane with serious shortcomings.

Garant’s candid advice, which top Air Force officials did not follow, is disclosed for the first time in a new 256-page report by the Pentagon’s inspector general. It provides an extraordinary glimpse of how the Air Force worked hand-in-glove with one of its chief contractors – the financially ailing Boeing – to help it try to obtain the most costly government lease ever.

The inspector general’s report, slated for release today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, adds a new dimension to what Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., have already called one of the most significant military contracting abuses in several decades.

The scandal resulted in prison terms for former Air Force principal deputy assistant secretary Darlene Druyun and a senior Boeing official, Michael Sears.

Besides documenting precisely who was responsible, the report details the Air Force’s vigorous efforts on Boeing’s behalf. It also shows how Air Force leaders and Boeing officials jointly manipulated legislation to authorize the deal and later sought to suppress dissenting opinion throughout the Pentagon.