Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
NASA Orders Cover-up of Commercial Aviation Safety!
Monday, October 22, 2007
After 4 years, $8.5 Million and 24,000 interviews with commercial and general aviation pilots NASA deems findings would undermine the public’s confidence in commercial air travel. Yikes!
NASA shut down this project a year ago and refused to divulge the results. Obviously an already cash-strapped NASA felt there were good reasons to spend $8.5 Million on an aviation safety study. NASA has been auctioning off their own artifacts. One example includes a multi-million dollar satellite from the 1960’s a collector was lucky enough to snag for $50 which now sits in his barn!
Much more troubling than refusing to divulge the results of the lengthy and expensive survey is that last week NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
Ya Think?
Thomas S. Luedtke, a senior NASA official acknowledged that the findings of this study could damage the public’s confidence in the airlines adversely affecting airline profits.
For 14 months the Associated Press has tried to obtain the survey data under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. In the end, Luedtke issued a final statement which justified the cover-up. Pilots that participated in the survey might in the end lose their lively hood if the public lost faith in the safety of aviation. The pilots participated in the survey with the promise of anonymity along with the companies for whom they worked.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Somebody did ask. The U.S. tax payers have spent $8.5 million on this survey. For NASA not to tell what they learned, in order to protect the profits of the airline industry, is reprehensible.
What is that nasty smell?
Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., Congress chairman House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee said “There is a faint odor about it all”.
A faint odor isn’t exactly what a red herring gives off.
Officials at NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want publish their own report on the project. I hope they saved the data they ultimately ordered to be disposed of, otherwise their report may contain the usual vague recollection spin that permeates the U.S.’s selective memory.
Labels: Aviation Safety, NASA, Speak no Evil, cover-up
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
NASA Orders Cover-up of Commercial Aviation Safety!
