Videotapes Made in Pentagon Probe

WASHINGTON--Investigators in the Pentagon bribery probe videotaped meetings in which Defense Department officials allegedly took payoffs from consultants, sources, close to the two-year investigation said yesterday.

The sources said that two key figures in the investigation, Victor Cohen, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for tactical systems, and James Gaines, a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, appear on some of the videotapes. However, the sources declined to say whether alleged bribes turned up on the recordings of those two Pentagon officials.

The consultants shown on the videotapes also include. Melvyn Paisley, the former procurement chief for the Navy whose office was searched on June 7 by federal authorities in the investigation, the sources said.

NBC News reported Friday night that Cohen would leave the Pentagon whenever a defense consultant would call, that his meetings with consultants were recorded and videotaped and that money changed hands.

The sources, meanwhile, said that Games also was videotaped at meetings with consultants in which highly confidential documents relating to Pentagon contracts allegedly changed hands.

The Washington Post reported that Cohen, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for tactical systems, is among those cooperating in the investigation.

Sources close to the case said this past week that Gaines is cooperating in the investigation. Those sources continued to make that assertion yesterday, while other sources and the Post said that while Gaines gave a statement to investigators earlier, he is not cooperating with prosecutors at this point.

Meanwhile, Defense News reported in its June 27 editions that Paisley, when he was the Navy's procurement chief under Navy Secretary John Lehman, initiated a change that effectively eliminated all but one company from a key procurement program in 1986.

The change was to drop plans for separate competitions on all six components of the Aegis weapon system and instead go with a winner-take-all scheme. The system protects ships from airborne, surface and underwater missiles.

The result of the change, Defense Week quoted several unidentified industry officials as saying, was that hundreds of millions of dollars in Navy contracts for the Aegis system went to Sperry Corp., now Unisys Corp., one of the firms involved in the Pentagon bribery investigation.

Defense Week quoted sources as attributing the shift that favored Unisys to Paisley's close association with William Galvin, a consultant to the company. The publication quoted several sources as saying that Galvin had boasted about having "wired" the Aegis competition in Sperry's favor.

In related news, Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-CA.) said yesterday that the Pentagon, defense contractors and the Reagan administration "howled" about congressional attempts to reform the procurement process, such as a ban on military procurement officials quitting and immediately going to work for the defense industry.

The Pentagon, defense contractors and the administration "were unabashed in their contempt toward congressional reforms," Boxer said in the Democratic response to President Reagan's weekly radio address.

Cohen's attorney, Seymour Glanzer, declined to comment yesterday about any aspect of the investigation when asked about the videotapes of alleged payoffs to his client and whether his client was cooperating with the government.

Cohen and Gaines have been temporarily reassigned to nonpro-curement duties because of the investigation, along with four other Pentagon employees.