DENVER — A former Lockheed Martin employee was retaliated against after she complained her boss was having affairs with U.S. Army soldiers in the company’s Pen Pal program and billing the government for the liaisons, a federal administrative law judge has ruled.

Andrea L. Brown, who was director of communications for Lockheed Martin technical operations in Colorado Springs, filed a whistle-blower complaint against the company in 2008 under the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

In a decision made public Monday, Judge Russell D. Pulver ruled that Brown should get her job back — along with the pay and benefits she lost.

“(Lockheed Martin’s) actions in this matter appear to be aimed primarily at protection of the company and perhaps to some extent its vice president,” Pulver wrote in his 57-page decision, “at the expense of the bona fide whistleblower who had simply followed the company’s policy to report suspect activities within the company.”

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Shane Lyons and some of his staff held spoons to represent his belief that food should be cradled with a spoon and not pinched with tongs. Lyons, 21, commands a kitchen staff of 11. Photo by BRYAN OLLER, THE GAZETTE