Lockheed employs D.C.'s last honest man

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Lockheed Martin (Charts, Fortune 500) wasn't my favorite defense stock the last time I wrote about the sector back in January. But based on the recent news reports out of Washington, I've got a sudden soft spot for the company - one unrelated to Lockheed's business or its earnings prospects.

What impresses me about Lockheed is its decision to employ one James B. Comey as its general counsel. Comey, if you haven't been following the news, is the former Deputy Attorney General who put off (temporarily, as it turned out) White House efforts to fire select United States Attorneys for what appear to be political reasons. Tuesday it was revealed he also stymied White House efforts to do an end run around the Justice Department's opposition to the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program.

Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had to make a late-night visit to then Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room (Ashcroft was recovering from gallbladder surgery) after getting word that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were headed over there to try to convince a weak and groggy Ashcroft to sign off on the NSA program, which Ashcroft originally opposed.

"I was very upset. I was angry. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me," Comey told the Senate committee.

Full disclosure: my wife, an assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, used to work for Comey when he ran the SDNY office, and she's never been shy about expressing her high opinion of him - even wondering aloud whether he had a future in Republican politics.

Well, it's abundantly clear the Bushies aren't going to pushing Comey for elected office - not with his recent testimony or with his decision four years ago to appoint his friend and former SDNY colleague, Patrick Fitzgerald, as special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case.

Indeed, Comey must be so unpopular with the Bush White House right now that it begs the question of whether there could be some blowback for Lockheed, his employer since 2005. "I don't think so," offers Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of The Lexington Institute, a national security think tank. "I don't think Comey's testimony is going to hurt Lockheed Martin for the simple reason that he's testifying under oath. You can't blame the company for an employee accurately reporting what he saw and did."

Moreover, Thompson thinks all this might all work to Lockheed's advantage. He says that over the years, Lockheed has honed a reputation for being the most ethical, by-the-books contractor in the defense sector. "This," says Thompson, "is not going to hurt that reputation." With Jim Comey looking more and more like the last honest man in Washington, let's all hope that he's right.