General Gregory Martin, commander of the air force's materiel command, said he knew of no wrongdoing by any air force official other than Darleen Druyun, the former top acquisition official who is serving a nine month sentence for favoring Boeing in return for a high paying job.

But the continuing probes have held up nominations of air force officials "because we're not yet sure how many other people were involved," he said.

The Pentagon has yet to nominate anyone for the posts of air force secretary or top acqusitions slots that were vacated in the wake of the scandal.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took the unusual step of transferring oversight for 21 air force procurement programs to acting Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Michael Wynne.

"There's 48 reviews going on right now with respect to the organizational structure and individual programatic activities that Ms Druyun had activities in," Martin said.

"All of that takes a certain amount of time away from the primary jobs that people are doing," he said. "That's a tremendous load on people. Also there is an emotional tug to that if you know what I mean."

Air force nominations have been frozen for months by Senator John McCain to pressure the service to turn over all email related to a 21 billion dollar deal that Druyun helped negotiate to lease and buy 100 air refueling tanker planes from Boeing.

Martin, who had been nominated for the post of commander of US forces in the Pacific, withdrew his name in October after McCain told him at a hearing he would "strongly object" to his nomination leaving the Senate Armed Services committee until all his questions had been answered.

The general, whose command is responsible for overseeing air force weapons programs, had worked in the past with Druyun. He said no one suspected what she was doing. "It was a surprise," he said.

Martin said the gaps in air force leadership and the pressure of multiple investigations were taking a toll at a time when the service faces a major Pentagon review over future roles, missions and requirements.

The Quadrennial Defense Review, as it is called, will help the Pentagon decide how much it needs costly new F/A-22 and Joint Strike Fighters, already the target of budget cutters.

"When you don't have your full leadership onboard, then you begin to stretch people pretty thin," Martin told reporters. "In the end it surely would be good to get our whole team nominated and confirmed."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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