chickenlittle92071
23rd Oct 2001, 04:35
To all the concerned pilots, please send this on to the White house at
[email protected]
And send it to John McCain and the others on the Senate Commerce Committee list included in the letter.
You can do something to make our skies safer. When you hear nothing about this on the news, you will know just how little your govt. cares about this....
Santee, CA. 92071
October 17, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
President Bush,
In my enclosed letter to you dated July 28, 2001, I made several allegations of drug usage on the job by over half of our nation's air traffic controllers. I also warned you about massive criminal behavior on the part of the FAA, DOT, NTSB, and FBI. I specifically asked you not to send it on to the FAA. Sadly, that is exactly what you did.
You should have read all the links in my last letter to you on to get the full picture. Instead, you forward it on to the FAA, "The fox that guards the hen house", yet again. Considering the number of people that have died as a result of this corruption, this is unacceptable. Now the blood of the innocent dead falls on your hands.
The only reply I have received so far was from the FAA. Again they are flatly denying my allegations without any explanation. They simply say my allegations are "without merit". They sent a copy of their response on to you.
This is not acceptable. In my letter to you, I told you that the NSTB had lied to us about the cause of the crash of VJ592. I told you I contacted the FBI on three occasions with my allegations and after I received a death threat. I told you that I had written to the Chairman of the NTSB and to the Director of the FBI and had heard nothing in return. Where is my response from the Chairman of the NTSB and the FBI? I would like you to tell me which agencies you sent my letter to, if any.
As it turns out, I am not the only former FAA employee who is waiting for a response after they wrote to you about criminal activity within the FAA.. Mary Diefenderfer, a former FAA airline inspector who oversaw Alaska Airlines before the crash of AS261, is waiting for a letter from you. She wrote to you back in January. Take another look her letter to you at....
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/mrd.htm
This lax oversight of the airlines and firing of loyal FAA inspectors who would not be silenced is not limited to Alaska airlines or even to the recent past. Back in the fifties, Mr. Rodney Stich was an FAA inspector of United Airlines and the same thing happened to him. What a coincidence.....
www.unfriendlyskies.com (http://www.unfriendlyskies.com)
As of 9/11, the sky has fallen. Who's fault is that? I don't think Osama Bin Laden should get all the blame.
A former FAA security expert, Steve Elson, was on 60 Minutes right after the 9/11 catastrophe. Mr. Elson spent three years as part of an elite, secret FAA unit called the Red Team. Elson’s five-man team traveled all over the country, conducting covert assessments, secretly probing security at major U.S. airports.
He got so fed up with the FAA's unwillingness to act that he resigned. You can read more about it from 60 Minutes at...
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,311591-412,00.shtml
Victoria Cummock, who lost her husband on PA103, has been screaming too. So President Clinton appointed her to the President's Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. She told him that she would only participate IF she had a say in the final report. The final report was released and she was not allowed to have any say in it. President Clinton had lied to her like he lied to us about Monica. VP Gore headed the fiasco. When she realized she was getting the shaft, she sued Gore and the Commission. Maybe you ought to talk to her. have her phone number.
The press is as guilty as the government for the deplorable condition of airline safety and security in America. We have been screaming at them for over thirty years. Better odds winning the Lotto. You cannot have a corrupt government without a corrupt press.
Since 9/11/01, the FAA has swung into action, ordering the airlines to strengthen cockpit doors. These are the same people who knew about lax security at Boston Logan airport. You should have ordered an investigation into that. Why weren't some FAA employees who were overseeing security there and around our country fired?
I see the FBI director is on TV offering a $1,000,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the terrorists. This is not the first time that the FBI has asked us for help with a criminal investigation relating to a aircraft accident. I recall the Deputy Director of the FBI, Mr. James Kallstrom, asking us for assistance with the TW800 investigation and told us the FBI would follow up on all leads. Later, when he announced that the FBI was dropping their investigation, Mr. Kallstrom informed us that no stone had been left unturned in the FBI's investigation. I have a problem with this. We sent Mr. Kallstrom a certified letter and on three occasions he refused to sign for it. On 1/9, 1/22, and again on 1/31/97, the letter was refused. You can see an image of the envelope that clearly shows these refusals to except the letter at:
http://members.aol.com/papcecst/kollstrom.html
How can we be sure this isn't just window dressing? The FBI doesn't read their mail.
You should have been asking the FAA why they are telling my Congressman, Duncan Hunter, that "no notes were taken" during a second hearing at Montgomery tower when a second controller reported the suspect controller was drinking on the job. She even reported he was using the same type of alcohol. Her allegation was identical to mine. I saw notes being taken when I was interviewed by the SAN hub manager who also interviewed the other controller making the second allegation. She was punished for reporting the drinking. Later, she was given a massive promotion when she recanted her statement during my MSPB hearing. This hearing, in front of a federal judge, was my appeal against the FAA for giving me 6 months leave without pay (LWOP) within four hours of reporting the alcohol use on the job. During this hearing, the tower manager and the SAN hub manager were allowed to sit in as I questioned my witnesses, and as I called my next witness, were allowed to leave for periods as long as 30 minutes. I believe my witnesses were threatened during this time and were briefed about the previous session. This was nothing but a kangaroo court. It's called "Tampering with witnesses". My manager at Montgomery field and the SAN hub manager must be fired and criminally prosecuted. After all, they did break the law.
You should have got the US Navy records on my co-worker. They should show that this controller was convicted twice for drug dealing. The first time in the USN's ATC academy, where he was expelled, and the second conviction on board ship. Then get ahold of his FAA application, which will show that he told the FAA about the convictions. Then fire this controller. Then find out who hired this controller and fire that person. Why is the FAA hiring a man with no ATC experience and two convictions for dealing drugs?
You should have asked the FBI for the statement of a former roommate in which she alleges seeing frequent drug use by controllers over a period of six months. She signed a statement saying she went to one of my co-workers homes and was shown "50 marijuana plants" I gave the FBI phone tapes and two hundred pages of material including the statement and they refused to act. So I taped the FBI telling me "Drug use in a control tower is a civil matter" I sent that tape to the Bush I White house. They never contacted my roommate. No government agency ever attempted to contact her. I am still in touch with her. The two FBI special agents that I met with should be fired and criminally prosecuted. So should the supervisors and higher ups that made the decision to do nothing. After all, they did break the law. I want you to tell me why the FBI is refusing to investigate these crimes.
You should have told the FAA to change their drug testing policy. The FAA is tipping off controllers about the time the drug testing team will arrive at the facility and the names of the controllers on the list to be tested. The drug-using controllers are trading shifts to avoid being tested. When the arrive, they don't test controllers at work if they are not on this list. So they only test clean controllers. You should have contacted Upjohn and got the figures of no-shows for targeted controllers.
Why is the Miami hub manager telling the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale tower chiefs about drug testing? Why are those tower chiefs telling the supervisors, and why are the supervisors telling the controllers about drug testing? How do they know which controllers to tell? They wouldn't want to tell a non-using controller about tomorrow's drug raid. It can only be that FAA management is well aware of who is using drugs and they want to protect them for some reason. Maybe they are on the FAA golf team. If the FAA is claiming not to have a drug problem and telling us that they are getting few positive results, why are they having to tip off anybody? Maybe an investigation will give us the answers to these questions.
You should have fired the MIA ATCT supervisor who altered the official attendance record of the controller who overdosed on heroin in the tower to show that he was off duty at the time. You should have fired the MIA ATCT manager, the FTL ATCT manager, and the MIA hub manager for tipping controllers off about supposed "random" drug testing. Then have them criminally prosecuted. After all, they did break the law.
The solution in simply. In a "really random" drug testing system, only a few have to be tested. Soon, you will get a lot of positives and the work force will pray that they can slip through the net and not get tested before their blood is clean again. When drug testing was implemented in 1988, the FAA gave us a month's notice before the first one. Why? They knew the numbers and couldn't replace that many. They didn't care if it was going on.
If the targeted controller trades shifts, the "really random" drug testing team should be notified the next time the controller is on duty, and test him or her ASAP. It would cost more money in the short term, but I think you would agree that we should have "really random" drug testing for our air traffic controllers for the first time in history. Once the system is clean and sober, you can cut back on the testing again. The ones that can't quit don't belong in a control tower, an approach control, or a center making $125,000 per year, And free flights.
If the drug testing people didn't have to notify the facility the day before, and did a test of the entire controller work force now, they would be catching them by the thousands. If the FAA doesn't lie to us about the results. Since the FAA is understaffed with controllers, we can't stand to lose over half of them again.
I told President Clinton that he could fix the problem by firing a small number of guilty people. The word would spread on the NATCA web site and everyone has to give up the drugs. Within a week, the problem is solved.
In the 80's we were drug tested on our annual physical. My birthday is in December, I could choose the day I had to quit using in order to give my system a chance to clean out. If I fell off the wagon a week later, I just scheduled my annual physical a week later. I used to quit the day after Thanksgiving and take the test just before Christmas. Happy Holidays! It was easy and everybody knew about it. Over half of us used pot and alcohol and a whole lot of it. Many others used coke, scrooms, and acid. And the FAA doesn't even test for these drugs. They don't test for heroin either. The FAA told us what they were testing for. We were forced to read it and sign our names to it. What drugs are controllers using now that the FAA isn't testing for? Ecstasy, meth, crack?
As bad as that old drug testing (pre 1988) was, at least it had one good point. It got controllers off the stuff for thirty days per year. The new system is worse. We were tipped off ahead of time and simply did a shift trade to avoid the "bastards". Sometimes we would wave at them when we came to work as they were leaving. It was a big joke. What we didn't know is that Upjohn might have been cooking the books or the FAA was lying about Upjohn's finding. All we knew was that people were using and coming up with false negatives. That was great news.
I have seen a co-worker smoking dope at a party and was drug tested a week later. He told everyone he was going to come up with a positive. Many controllers were at the party and knew this was a fact. When the result came back at shift change, everyone was watching as the envelope was opened. What a shock to see that the results were negative. High fives all around. People knew they could smoke dope again. The word went out nationwide. This happened at many FAA facilities around the country. The FAA has continually stuck to it's story. No drug problem. Only a scattering of positives and they are close to all applicants for the job who naturally didn't make it in. I know of a lot who did. What a crock!
When I read how the controller and the supervisor at MIA approach control killed 110 people on VJ592, I realized they they had to be impaired to make such errors. WPLG was contacted by a controller and he described the drug problem there as "rampant" That tells me that there is more than one controller using and overdosing on drugs. Only one is gone. The approach control and the Tower are in the same building and share the bathroom where the heroin overdose occurred. Controllers don't use drugs alone, it's a social thing. Only a few choose to party with civilians to keep it away from the job. Mostly, they party with each other. Someone is still using drugs there, maybe over half like I saw, and the FAA has made no effort to find out who. The investigation is over.
When I contacted Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to find out if they had been to the tower/approach before or after the overdose, they sent me there records for responses in that district. I couldn't find any responses for any ODs. The record have been tampered with. If the one OD we know about is stricken from the records, it stands to reason that if they were responding there everyday for ODs, we wouldn't know about it.
You should have ordered an outside investigation of the drug situation in the Miami/FTL area and the possible connection to the criminal handling of the VJ592 emergency. This controller and his supervisor need to be fired. Not demoted or transferred like in the past. No retirement. Fired. The message must be sent. No more drugs. No more tipping off about drug testing. No more false negatives. No more falsifying documents. No more working traffic with a buzz-on.
Look at what NATCA sent to WPLG when they reported the heroin overdose and the fact that controllers were being tipped off about "random" drug tests....
AND TONIGHT, THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSOCIATION FAXED US THIS RESPONSE TO RAD'S INVESTIGATION:
MICHAEL MCNALLY SAYS THAT AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS "DESERVE TO BE SUPPORTED AND NOT HARASSED...."
HE SUGGESTS WE FOCUS ON OBSTACLES SUCH AS:
INSUFFICIENT STAFF TO HANDLE MIAMI'S GROWING AIR TRAFFIC...
UNRELIEABLE EQUIPMENT...ASBESTOS... AND OTHER MICROBIOLOGICAL COMTAMINATION.
You can see the full article at...
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/00000132.htm
Mr. President, what do you see here? Sounds to me like NATCA is describing the reporting of an OD and the firing of an ATC as "Harassment". What is more important, a clean ATC work force, or some asbestos in the tower's ceiling tiles? I don't think the under staffing problem will be helped by hiring more dopers.
My first job as a controller was at Scott AFB control tower 1968-70. I was twenty years old. I didn't use drugs and told everyone I didn't want to see it, be around it, or know about it. So I thought it was not being used by my co-workers. It could have been all around me and I didn't see it. It was naive.
During my tour of duty in Vietnam 1970-71, I worked at Phu Cat AFB RAPCON. I didn't use drugs and again told everyone I was clean. I was shocked when one of my friends was caught with drugs in his locker when the dogs came through the barracks. But this person didn't use drugs, I thought, and I believed his story of finding the stuff in Mamasahn's area. He said that he found the drugs and was planning on turning it in the next morning. Again, nothing happened to this guy. I was pretty naive. The message was sent that it was OK to use drugs. It was all for show. Something to show the folks back home. Show them the dogs and the drug testing. That is where the war on drugs was lost. In the very beginning.
I started using pot when I was assigned to Travis AFB RAPCON 1971-74. All it took was a couple buddies telling me that all the propaganda I was hearing about pot was BS. I used pot for my remaining time in the USAF and FAA., but never at work. Pot is the only drug I've used. I was amazed to find out that about half of us were users and was welcomed into the fold. Once they knew I was using, they were assured that they were safe to use drugs around me. Any and all drugs. I saw LSD being used even after seeing propaganda movies at our monthly Commander's Call. This movie showed a US Navy controller running a PAR radar approach on board an aircraft carrier. Suddenly, he started hallucinating and seeing monsters on the screen. We just laughed at it.We had drug testing but nobody called me. Never saw anybody popped. I knew they wouldn't. We got the word. Nothing to worry about. The fix was in.
The day the Vietnam POW's landed at Travis AFB, I was working at the RAPCON and went up on the roof above BaseOps to watch all the festivities. That's where everyone went to burn weed on the mid shift. Many of my co-workers were loaded that day, as they were on many other occasions. There was a lot of press planes up to cover the event and the "Freedom Bird" requested a visual approach. We cleared him, it was his decision, but I never saw so many aircraft in such a small area. I wondered what would have happened if one of my co-workers caused an accident with that plane. All those years being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton only to die a couple minutes before arriving home safe. It's ironic, I saw John McCain, now a Senator and Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees aviation safety, hobble off that aircraft. I've been writing to him for years. He knows all about this and does nothing either.
When the FAA hired me, the first place I went was the FAA ATC academy in OKC. With no drug testing at the academy, drugs were rampant. So was cheating. We had the programs we would have to run on test day. My father taught there in 1959 and claims that it didn't go on when he was there.
I worked at Long Beach Tower, one of the busiest in the country. Again, controllers drinking or using drugs on their lunch breaks was commonplace. Sometimes is large groups if staffing was up. Mints were a must, you don't want to flaunt it in front of the Supervisor. Supervisors were using also.
At Montgomery tower, people were using pot, alcohol, mushrooms, and LSD at work, some on a weekly basis. Some would visit with the chief before coming upstairs to work. With booze, pot, or both on their breath. As the San Diego NATCA rep, I used to try to recruit controllers. Before they shelled out their union dues, they wanted to know if NATCA would put up a vigorous fight with the FAA over drug testing. The NATCA newsletters addressed this issue on the top of the front page. One of my co-workers would go along with me and deal drugs to them right in the tower cabs. Not the picture you see on TV. I had an airline pilot come to my house and he was using scrooms while he was on standby. He was also a Naval Reserve F-14 Tomcat pilot. Amazing!
You should have gotten the GAO to tell you why they are claiming to be a small organization and unable to look into my allegations when Congressman Jim Bates asked them to conduct an investigation.
At Montgomery, we had a BE-35 crash on landing in the evening, about shove time. The fog was thick and the SDFD Engine 28 couldn't find the wreckage. The two controllers on duty could only see the flames coming from the plane right in front of the tower. A female controller working had a hot date. Pleasure before work, she bailed.
Control towers are dangerously undermanned and have been for years. Many times I came close to going "Down the tubes" late night working Local, Ground, and Clearance Delivery alone after they all shoved. If you wanted them to stick around, you could, but you better have some pending traffic. It was a macho thing. You were required to play the game. My father used to "shove" at MSP tower in the fifties. By the time he got home with his buddies, they were all drunk.
I have seen controllers drinking on the job all my life. My father was an ATC advisor for the USAF from 1959-1969. We lived in London, England and Ramstein, Germany from 1959-1966. Dad would purchase radar and other ATC equipment for the air force and inspect their ATC facilities worldwide. I went with my father for a weekend drive and popped in at a NATO radar site in northern France. There we saw French controllers drinking wine at the scope. I looked at my father in disbelief. He thought it was admirable and gave them the thumbs up. My dad thought alcohol was a wonder drug.
Dad went through a quart of Canadian whiskey a day and smoked five packs of Camels a day all his life. He never drank or smoked until he became a fighter pilot in WWII. He used to bring a bottle of Calvados, a brandy, with him in the cockpit of his P-47 Thunderbolt on combat missions. Lloyd Bridges, who played Steven McCroskey, Chicago ATC, in the movie "Airplane", was the splitting image of my father and many other controllers I have worked with.. Dad thought Lloyd Bridges was great and said it brought back a lot of fond memories for him. I was the only one who wasn't laughing because I saw it all my life. It disgusted me. I kept quiet about it all my life because I didn't want to be a "snitch". When my co-worker was drinking at 0730, I chewed him out. When he replied, "Screw it, they don't test for alcohol" I was furious with him. When he refused to apologize to the others on his crew, it was the straw that broke this camel's back. Even ratting the bastard out didn't effect his attitude. Another controller "snitching" on him six weeks later and getting punished for it only sent another wrong message to him. Of course he wouldn't stop drinking on the job after that.
Dad admitted to being an alcoholic, but would insist on putting the word "functioning" in front of it. When we left London, his co-workers gave him a cartoon of himself, martini glass in one hand and a gas nozzle from a JP-4 jet fuel truck in the other. On the truck, JP-4 is covered with the word "Booze" Got the picture?
We had the same rules about alcohol usage as commercial airline pilots. No booze eight hours before work. We all know about all the pilots who got busted for violating this rule. They weren't government employees though. I rarely saw people suddenly cutting themselves off eight hours prior at a party when they had to work in the morning.
The FAA is coming off like they are so concerned about runway incursions. I have seen hundreds of them. Almost all go unreported. Pilots are afraid to report a controller for screwing up. Out of professional courtesy, we rarely took action against them when they blew it. As long as nobody got hurt.
One of the best ones I saw was when I first became a controller. A10650, a T-39 Sabreliner, sucked up his gear early on takeoff from runway 31 (he had to lose the drag and it was too late to stop) in order to clear the top of a maintenance truck parked 4,000 ft. down the runway while the crew was changing light bulbs. The local controller cleared him for takeoff without scanning his runway. I was working ground control and by the time I saw it, I only had time to transmit, "Get OFF the runway" to the truck. I watched them dive into the dirt on the side of the runway. I swear, you could have slipped a credit card between them, but not anything else.The pilot never said a word and the workers came on the radio and just said "That was close"
You can see the great view I had, the control tower is just to the NE of the intersection...
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?z=16&n=4269837&e=251384&s=25&u=2
Almost all accidents occur when a controller has one or two aircraft on frequency. I have a video of controllers working at Long Beach tower on a rainy Saturday morning. Only two in the sky. One shooting touch and go's and the other landing on an intersecting runway. The controller in charge of the local control position is pulling down his pants for the camera while the guy he is supposed to be supervising is screwing up. The next scene is two aircraft meeting at the main intersection. Later another controller is trying to get a female controller to take off her clothes for the camera. Then he starts pawing on her and continues after he yells at him to quit. The supervisor is in the frame. I have another video of a controller at Montgomery tower pulling down his pants within a foot of a female controller. She was looking right at him but didn't seem to mind. Not the picture most Americans have of our nations ATCs.
Runway incursions are increasing at an alarming rate. Why? Let's drug test the whole bunch and see what happens to those figures.
We used to sleep while working the mid shift at the tower and at the RAPCON/TRACON. We all slept on the job. I have seen a controller crawl over to the scope to take a hand off and minutes later getting a second hand off with a similar call sign, both C-141 Starlifters, descended the wrong aircraft. With mountainous terrain, the aircraft stopped his descend and climbed when he realized the error. After writing up the incident in a lengthy statement, the controller went back to sleep. A couple hours later, he did it again with two F-4 phantoms. After getting his second aircraft with a similar call sign, he dropped the wrong one. I have seen many other incidents of sleeping controllers screwing up. I have seen many older controllers falling asleep on position in the middle of the day. All controllers know about this, but we don't hear about it because nobody wants to violate the code of silence.
I used to wake up the controller on duty when I used to come in early for the day shift with the donuts in hand, at SAN approach. My father got caught by the airport asst. manager at MSP back in the mid fifties when he was sleeping on the radio console. Probably couldn't get him on the phone. It's nice and warm up on the radios.
On the mid shift, you may have one or two inbounds and then it's time to rack out, especially if you haven't been able to get any shuteye at the bar. We use to unplug our headsets, and turn up the speaker from ARTCC in case we got an inbound aircraft. If center didn't get us up on the speaker, they would call on the phone and wake us. The speakers always did the trick. They were capable of ear-splitting volume for a good reason. We also turned up the radio speakers, so if an aircraft wanted to land or taxi for takeoff, we would wake up. I have seen supervisors and controllers bringing pillows and sleeping bags to work. The supervisor would sleep downstairs where it was quieter. Not the picture we see on the evening news of our nation's control towers and radar facilities, is it?
Today, I saw the President of NATCA, Mr. Carr, talking about how his people are in the first line of defense in the war on terrorism. He wants armed guards at all ATC facilities and claims that his controllers can't watch the radar if they have to watch their backs. If we have to rely on them to protect us from the terrorists, let's drug test them to assure the American people that they are up to the task.
When I was a controller, any pilot or terrorist could gain access to the tower by ringing the buzzer and asking for the tour. We couldn't go down to escort them up, didn't have the manpower. We just buzzed them in and they would show up in the cab a few minutes later. We also used to teach classes on local procedures, show the pilots a video on the TV in the break room, and give them a tour of the tower cab. We even let in the cub scouts and brownies. All they were interested in was spinning around on the chairs and looking through the binoculars. But don't try and come up on a Sunday afternoon, the game was on. Hardly a plane in the sky and we would tell visitors that we were too busy. We were training. Every tower has a TV in the break room. It was commonplace to have controllers bring up the box in the evenings and weekends when the manager or supervisors weren't around. We used to sing, "Are you ready for some football". Not the picture we get from the mainstream media.
9/11/01 was not the first time that the White house was targeted by an terrorist aircraft. A few years back, a small private aircraft crashed into YOUR home. The secret service was furious with the FAA for not notifying them about the aircraft. This happened in the middle of the night. I know how it happened. The controller was on the floor sleeping or watching TV and heard nothing. He wasn't watching his scope or he would have seen the plane violate the restricted airspace around the White house. If a terrorist pilot doesn't want to wake up ATC, he just turns off his transponder and doesn't transmit to ATC. A controller is not going to stay up all night starring at a empty radar scope. Even after 9/11, no controller will be watching for hours on end for some aircraft to stray off course or for one to come up on an empty scope looking for primary targets at four in the morning. They will at first, but it won't be long before things get back to normal. Why wasn't that controller fired?
Since 9/11, we are all concerned about airport security, especially the screening personnel who look at our luggage. We are trying to associate someone's wages with the quality of the job they do. I hear that screeners work an average of six months before moving on. We justify the prohibited items slipping past screeners by saying "You get what you pay for, we have to compete with Burger King for these people". Ridiculous. Look what you get when you pay air traffic controllers $125,000 per year.
There is no need to pay these people more money in an effort to have them stick around longer or do a better job. If you want to make them pay closer attention, offer them a $250 bonus for each and every bomb they find. Let's hope they don't start getting their friends to bring bombs through their line in order to get a larger paycheck.
Air traffic controllers can get access to the cockpits of our nation's airliners anytime they want. It's called the FAM program. You sign up a week before your vacation and you fly free. One airline didn't require the advance notice, you just showed your FAA ID at the ticket counter. I used to fly in the cockpit. When you returned from your free trip, you write as short report about what you learned. Only took a few minutes. Controllers could always fly in the cockpit. It's an old tradition.
The pilots would often offer a seat and a meal in first class if we wanted it. I think they were nervous about an FAA employee looking over their shoulders. I liked to watch the action. I saw how easy it was for anyone to gain access as the flight attendants were entering or leaving the flight deck. I don't think we should have anyone in the cockpit who is loaded. I have seen controllers using drugs while on FAM trips. The worse abuse of the program that I observed was when two controllers flew LAX-HNL round trip in one day to spend a couple hours at the Lollipop Lounge, a strip club, in Honolulu.
You should have contacted the NTSB and found out who decided to lie to us about VJ592. The lead investigator of the accident, Mr. Gregory Feith, may have gotten pressure from above. In my last letter to you, there is a link to the letter I sent to NTSB Chairman, James Hall, asking him to re-open the investigation into the accident.
You should have gotten the FAA ATC tape and have it analyzed. That's what we did. There's about a minute and a half missing. You should have ordered another test of the oxygen cannisters that supposedly brought down the plane. We tested them and they don't burn. You should have demanded to know why the NTSB didn't interview the anonymous ValuJet mechanic who called in three days after the crash to report electrical problems on the stricken aircraft. You should have demanded to see the FAA hotline message from this mechanic who called them "one month and five days ago" forewarning of an accident involving the airline. Read more about it at...
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/0000013a.htm
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/0000013b.htm
http://www.flight592.com/NTSB/an.htm
For the last dozen years, I have taken my allegations up my chain of command. You are at the end of the road.. So was your father. He was the first one I sent this information to. How do you think you and your father will look like when the truth comes out and the American people see what you DIDN'T do? We have made SCORES of allegations of criminal wrong-doings and you have done nothing but pass the buck and become an active participant in the criminal cover up. Your father did the same.
I want to see an independent investigation completely open to the public and the press. I am subject to severe penalties and some stiff jail time if I lie to the FBI or other federal investigators. I welcome this and am totally prepared to back up all my allegations. I have LOTS of tapes of telephone calls with co-workers, the FAA, DOT, NTSB, the White house, Congressional Committees, the FBI, and the press. Not a pretty picture.
The government seems to show no interest in investigating this corruption. This is your responsibility. It is time you did your job. No more letters from the fox. I want to hear from you personally. No more passing the buck. I want to know the changes that will be made and I want to know the punishment you are dealing out. I expect that you will respond to me ASAP and will also respond to Ms. Diefenderfer. Take a closer look at my last letter to you below. Wash all that blood off your hands.
This letter will be sent to members of the Congressional Aviation Subcommittee of Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, to the families of airline disasters, to the worldwide press and posted on the Internet.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
]
CC to:
[email protected],[email protected] .gov,[email protected],[email protected] ov,[email protected],[email protected],Joh [email protected],[email protected] v,[email protected],[email protected] ,[email protected],[email protected],cbass@ hr.house.gov,[email protected],[email protected] e.gov,[email protected],[email protected],jim. [email protected],[email protected],[email protected] .gov,[email protected],[email protected],jjdu [email protected],[email protected],[email protected]. gov,[email protected],[email protected] ov,[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected] e.gov,[email protected] use.gov,[email protected],[email protected],telljim@hr .house.gov,[email protected],[email protected] ng.com, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],"Auld,Alison" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], "CT27" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Here is my last letter to you....
Santee, CA. 92071
July 28, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
President Bush,
My name is James Bergquist, former FAA air traffic controller and head of our union, NATCA, in San Diego.
On 1/20/01, Inauguration day, I sent you the attached letter containing scores of allegations of FAA, DOT, DOT IG, NTSB, FBI, and Congressional corruption and the subsequent cover up of this corruption. They have failed to investigate our allegations of FAA ATC drug use on the job, airline pilot drug use on the job, tampering with witnesses in a Federal hearing, tampering with evidence by a DOT attorney in a Congressional investigation, falsifying and tampering with evidence in the NTSB investigation of the VJ592 crash and many other crash investigation over the past 30 years.
I am not the only one speaking out.
In our group, we have two former FAA airline inspectors who have identical stories to tell. See
www.unfriendlyskies.com (http://www.unfriendlyskies.com)
and
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/mrd.htm
We also have a DOD wiring expert and Boeing's head wiring man. See his site at..
http://members.aol.com/papcecst/index.html
We have two former airline pilots....See
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/
and read our posts at www.flight592.com (http://www.flight592.com)
On June 22, 1998 I sent a letter to Mr. James Hall, Chairman of the NTSB, calling for him to reopen the investigation into the ValuJet 592 disaster. You can see this letter which is posted at
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/00000152.htm
In that letter, I told him that I had detected several errors made by the air traffic controller and his supervisor in the handling of the emergency. Additionally, I told him that I had a problem with the NTSB theory as to the cause of the disaster, with the oxygen generator fire tests, with the "uncontrolled descent" theory, and the possible drug use by the controller and his supervisor that handled the emergency. I never received a reply.
On 1/18/98 I sent a letter to Mr. Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, asking for an investigation into drug use on the job by controllers and a bomb threat I received. The San Diego Field Office refused to investigate. I never received a reply. You can read this letter at
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/000000cb.htm
I wrote to President Clinton and requested that he tell Chairman Hall and Director Freeh to respond to me without result.
Our government is a mess.
This corrupt system that you were informed about on 1/20/01 has killed many hundreds of Americans and continues to place millions of Americans in harm's way by the government's neglect. If the system is going to change, we have to start listening to whistle blowers. You won't get the truth out of the "loyal" people in the FAA, DOT, NTSB, and FBI. They are the "Fox that guards the hen house" and will not investigate their own of any other agencies of the Government.
Unfortunately, the press has lost it's nerve long ago and protects the Government by turning a blind eye to such corruption. Many times I have heard "We are NOT going to lock horns with the Feds". If they could get the truth as far as their editors, the next big story they would be working on is the bear problem at the dump. They would be shipped off to Barrow, Alaska.
Where is the war on drugs? We teach the youth of America to "Say NO to drugs", but you and the entire US Govt. is really saying YES to drugs by it's inaction in this matter. No investigation of my allegations has taken place in the past dozen years. On the contrary, I have seen only obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses and evidence. A massive amount of crimes have taken place.
Congressman Jim Bates brought this to the attention of the GAO. I have his letter and the GAO's response that they are a small organization and can't look into such matters.
We have contacted several "watchdog" groups including the Aviation Safety Institute, Ralph Nader's Aviation Consumer Action Project, and the International Airline Passenger's Association. They refuse to get involved.
We have contacted the Airline Pilot's Association, the Association of Flight Attendants, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, and the International Association of Mechanics. They are also afraid to rock the boat.
I first discovered this corruption some twelve years ago after I was given six months leave without pay within 4 hours of reporting drug use by a fellow controller on the job and subsequently fired. Another controller reported the same man for the same offense just 6 weeks laters. The FAA tampered with that witness and have told my Congressman that no documentation exists of the investigation.
I was shocked to find the extent of the corruption and to find others with identical stories to tell.
The controller we reported had admitted to her that he had used drugs on the job in the past and had been convicted in the US Navy TWICE for trafficing in drugs. He applied for the FAA during the 1981 PATCO strike was was immediately snatched up.
When I was busy recruiting new members for NATCA, this controller would go with me and deal drugs to controllers right in the control towers. I had a hard time recruiting controllers in the early days of our union. Their main concern was how NATCA was going to beat drug testing and the NATCA newsletters addressed this issue as NATCA's number one concern.
After several calls to the White house to try to track down my letter, it has taken just short of 6 months to get a reply. The other day, I finally got me reply. In my letter to you, I requested that you have a member of your staff contact me and tell me how you intend to deal with my allegations. Instead, I get yet another letter from the fox that guards the hen house.
In the 6/11/01 letter from the Dept. of Justice signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney, I was told the following...
This is in response to your letter to President Bush which alleged misconduct by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air traffic controllers and their supervisors. Your letter requuested an investigation of these matters.
Your letter was referred to the Public Integrity Section, a component of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. The Public Integrity Section of responsible for the investigation and prosecution of corruption on the part of the government officials. We have carefully reviewed your letter. Although we appreciate your concern there is insufficient information to warrant a federal criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. We must first have sufficient factual evidence to allow us to conclude that the federal crime way have occurred. I f you believe you possess specific evidence that a violation of federal criminal law has occurred, you may wish to provide that information to your local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That telephone number and address can be found in your telephone directory.
You may wish to communicate your concerns to the Investigation Section, Civil Aviation Security Division (AWP-711), FAA Western Pacific Region, 15000 Aviation Boulevard, Hawthorne, CA 90261. the Investigation Section investigates allegations of misconduct by FAA employees.
We hope this information is helpful. We regret that we are unable to be of further assistance in this manner.
Sincerely
John C. Keeney
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
----------------
If I hadn't read scores of identical letters for the past dozen years, I would not have believed my eyes.
Nobody at the Justice Dept. could have looked carefully at my letter to you, there is a link there to previous letters to President Clinton and other links of Mr. Hall and Mr. Freeh in which there is a massive amount of evidence of corruption. For Mr. Keeney to suggest I contact the FAA and FBI is no more that a slap in the face to me.
I have taped hundreds of hours of phone calls of co-workers, the FAA, DOT IG, NTSB, Congressional Subcomittees, the Commerce Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Investigation, the FBI, the White House, and the press to back up my allegations.
On 7/10/01, at 1000hrs., I called the Public Integrity Section Chief: Lee J. Radek at (202)514-1412. Mr. Radek was unavailable. When I ask to speak with any investigator, I was told that no one could call me back and was told to write another letter.
On 7/11/01 at 0830hrs, I called the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mr. John C. Keeney, who had signed my letter, at (202)514-2601. He was not available for a phone call and I was told I couldn't leave my phone number for him to call me back. the operator then suggested I call the citizen correspondence office. The anonymous person there sent me to another person at citizen correspondense. She was unable to give me her name, Id Number, or any information about her id for my records.
She suggested I contact the Office of Professional Responsibility at 202 514 3365. When I told this person that MR. Keeney was the one who signed my letter and again asked to speak to him, I was told that the only people who can talk with Mr. Keeney are the President, the Vice President, and current federal employees. Me being a former federal employee, I could not speak with him. When I told her I wanted to speak with the author of my letter, I was told to "Have a nice day" and was hung up on.
At 0850hrs., I called the Office of Professional Responsibility and talked with another anonymous female employee who explained that their office investigated misconduct by government attorneys. I explained that I had evidence that a DOT IG attorney named Mr. David Tochen had tampered with evidence in a Congressional investigation and I have a tape of him to prove it. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was told they no one was available and that they don't take information over the phone. I was also told that I didn't give them enough information. I tried to give them more information and was interrupted with "Goodbye, Sir" and was again hung up on again.
The Clinton White house has hung up on me, I have that on tape. I was very polite when I talked with them, why are all these people hanging up on me?
I am in touch with a former roommate who signed a statement twelve years ago that she saw drugs being used in my home by several controllers over a period of six months. This statement was given to the investigators in Senator Semour's investigation and the DOT IG never attempted to contact her and never got the tapes.
When I saw another whistle blower pass over the line of sanity and fired a weapon into the air in front of the White house, I started reading about him. I saw that he sent a letter to the IRS Commissioner and sent a copy to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Attorney General, and another copy to you. You can read more about it at..
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/02/08/loc_gunmens_letter.html
and read his letter to the IRS Commissioner at...
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/02/08/loc_text_of.html
Is anyone looking into his allegations?
Please read my letter to the Cincinnati Enquirer about the incident which contains my last letter to you....
Ron Liebau
[email protected]
Ron,
Thanks for talking with me a moment ago.
I would appreciate it if you would read my letter to President Bush. You will see that I have had a similar experience as Mr. Pickett had.
Mr. Pickett was calling out for justice and claims that the system was totally corrupt. He was correct. The press's job is to watch over the Government so we don't have incidents like this.
The people tend to belief the press, but the press pays no attention to the whistle blower. When can the truth come to the surface when the courts and the press protects the government and punishes the whistle blower? How can we say we live in a "free country"?
As I said on the phone to you, I don't believe that Mr. Pickett intended to shoot himself or anyone else. Why did he receive only one round from the White house Police when he had given them time to assemble dozens of officers with a lot of firepower trained on him. I believe he put his gun in his mouth to protect himself. I don't think for a minute that he pointed his gun at any officers and knew that it would mean certain death. Why were the officer combing the grounds for spent cartridges when Mr. Pickett fired two shots into the air? He had a five shot revolver which doesn't expel cartridges and looked totally different from an automatic handgun.
Mr. Pickett still needs your help. I'm sure Mr. Pickett could tell you how to get the evidence which will prove his allegations of corruption. I contacted the District of Columbia Public Defender's office and asked that his court-appointed attorney contact me. I have received no reply.
Was Mr. Pickett a long-time conscientious employee who had seen illegal practices and made the mistake of reporting it, believing right would prevail? Had he seen this all his career and just couldn't take it anymore? Did he just want to get away from it all and retire?
What will happen to Mr. Pickett once his free counsel flushes him down the drain? Will he receive a fair trial afford him in our Constitution?
Mr. Pickett sent a copy of his letter to the IRS Commissioner to President Bush. Is the White house looking into his allegations?
I live in Santee, CA. and I drive by Santana HS everyday. That boy who shot his fellow students was crying out for help and nobody listened to him. Many people knew about it and remained silent. People are driven to the brink because nobody wants to get involved.
Shortly after this senseless tragedy, the press jumped on the story about the Maryland teen who sent a death threat to a Santana student claiming to "finish the job". In my attached letter to President Bush, you will see that I had received a bomb treat via the Internet. I contacted the FBI and they did nothing. I had gone to the San Diego Field Office on two prior occasions and given them tapes that I had made of telephone conversations with co-workers and Congressional leaders and they refused to investigate my allegations of corruption.
Here is my letter to President Bush which I sent to him on inauguration day...
Santee, CA. 92071
January 20, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
Mr. President,
My names is James A. Bergquist, former FAA air traffic controller and head of our union, NATCA, in San Diego.
I watched your inaugural address this morning and was filled with hope for your Presidency.
I was especially moved when I heard you say "Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government." Later in your speech, I heard you say "We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations." and later "What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character".
I have shown courage by confronting problems and I have been ignored and chastised by my Congressman, Duncan Hunter, California Senators, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and countless other people I have contacted in our government.
I have written a dozen letters to your father and another dozen letters to President Clinton concerning a problem which effects the lives of millions of Americans, that being governmental corruption relating to aviation safety.
As a second generation air traffic controller, I have seen controllers using alcohol and drugs on the job for some fifty years. We were given advanced word of supposed "random" drug testing. I have observed official government documents being falsified on a daily basis all my life. Since then a controller at Miami tower passed out in the bathroom when he overdosed on heroin. It turned out that he and other controllers were being tipped off about "random" drug tests at Miami. Later is was learned that Ft. Lauderdale tower controllers were tipped off also. His supervisor falsified his attendance record in an attempt to show he was off duty at the time.
The problem is not limited to drug use by controllers. FAA airline inspectors are being fired for speaking out about safety issues or for being too "strict" on the carriers they are assigned to watch over. There have been aviation disasters as a direct result of this practice, including Alaska Airlines flight 261 and ValuJet flight 592.
The NTSB has lied to the American people about the cause of the crash of VJ592.
Your father chose to pass this problem on to President Clinton and he, in turn, chose to pass it on to you. As a second generation President, I am asking you to confront this problem instead of passing it on to future generations. I wish to meet with you personally to show you the documents I have collected in the past dozen years and to show you the extent of the corruption in our government which has taken the lives of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in the past.
Please look at my letter to President Clinton at...
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/berg.htm
and have a member of your staff contact me as soon as possible to let me know how you intend to deal with this critical issue involving the lives of all Americans. Thank you.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
----------
When a young Mother gets on an airliner with her children in tow, they have no idea that their government is placing their lives in danger and acting in such a reckless manner. Don't they deserve better than this?
Enough Rope-A-Dope, Mr. President, it is time to stop the carnage of innocent Americans. Take action and let all Americans know the truth.
Your father signed the bill establishing the Office of Special Counsel to protect the whistle blower. What a waste of taxpayer money! Mr. Pickett and I both had to deal with them is our appeals against the IRS in his case and the FAA in mine.
Where do we go to get the truth out? The buck stops with YOU. This is now your hot potato. Please don't throw it to someone else again. No more form letters from "The fox that guards the hen house".
This letter will be sent to members of the Congressional Aviation Subcommittee of Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, to the families of airline disasters, to the worldwide press and posted on the internet for the American people to see. I await YOUR response. I pray it won't take another 6 months and will come before another airline disaster occurs.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
]
CC to:
[email protected];[email protected] .gov;[email protected];[email protected] ov,[email protected];[email protected];Joh [email protected];[email protected] v;[email protected];[email protected] ;[email protected];[email protected],cbass@ hr.house.gov;[email protected];[email protected] e.gov;[email protected];[email protected];jim. [email protected];[email protected];[email protected] .gov;[email protected];[email protected];jjdu [email protected];[email protected];[email protected]. gov;[email protected];[email protected] ov;[email protected];[email protected];[email protected];[email protected] e.gov;[email protected] use.gov;[email protected];[email protected];telljim@hr .house.gov;[email protected]
[email protected]
And send it to John McCain and the others on the Senate Commerce Committee list included in the letter.
You can do something to make our skies safer. When you hear nothing about this on the news, you will know just how little your govt. cares about this....
Santee, CA. 92071
October 17, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
President Bush,
In my enclosed letter to you dated July 28, 2001, I made several allegations of drug usage on the job by over half of our nation's air traffic controllers. I also warned you about massive criminal behavior on the part of the FAA, DOT, NTSB, and FBI. I specifically asked you not to send it on to the FAA. Sadly, that is exactly what you did.
You should have read all the links in my last letter to you on to get the full picture. Instead, you forward it on to the FAA, "The fox that guards the hen house", yet again. Considering the number of people that have died as a result of this corruption, this is unacceptable. Now the blood of the innocent dead falls on your hands.
The only reply I have received so far was from the FAA. Again they are flatly denying my allegations without any explanation. They simply say my allegations are "without merit". They sent a copy of their response on to you.
This is not acceptable. In my letter to you, I told you that the NSTB had lied to us about the cause of the crash of VJ592. I told you I contacted the FBI on three occasions with my allegations and after I received a death threat. I told you that I had written to the Chairman of the NTSB and to the Director of the FBI and had heard nothing in return. Where is my response from the Chairman of the NTSB and the FBI? I would like you to tell me which agencies you sent my letter to, if any.
As it turns out, I am not the only former FAA employee who is waiting for a response after they wrote to you about criminal activity within the FAA.. Mary Diefenderfer, a former FAA airline inspector who oversaw Alaska Airlines before the crash of AS261, is waiting for a letter from you. She wrote to you back in January. Take another look her letter to you at....
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/mrd.htm
This lax oversight of the airlines and firing of loyal FAA inspectors who would not be silenced is not limited to Alaska airlines or even to the recent past. Back in the fifties, Mr. Rodney Stich was an FAA inspector of United Airlines and the same thing happened to him. What a coincidence.....
www.unfriendlyskies.com (http://www.unfriendlyskies.com)
As of 9/11, the sky has fallen. Who's fault is that? I don't think Osama Bin Laden should get all the blame.
A former FAA security expert, Steve Elson, was on 60 Minutes right after the 9/11 catastrophe. Mr. Elson spent three years as part of an elite, secret FAA unit called the Red Team. Elson’s five-man team traveled all over the country, conducting covert assessments, secretly probing security at major U.S. airports.
He got so fed up with the FAA's unwillingness to act that he resigned. You can read more about it from 60 Minutes at...
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,311591-412,00.shtml
Victoria Cummock, who lost her husband on PA103, has been screaming too. So President Clinton appointed her to the President's Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. She told him that she would only participate IF she had a say in the final report. The final report was released and she was not allowed to have any say in it. President Clinton had lied to her like he lied to us about Monica. VP Gore headed the fiasco. When she realized she was getting the shaft, she sued Gore and the Commission. Maybe you ought to talk to her. have her phone number.
The press is as guilty as the government for the deplorable condition of airline safety and security in America. We have been screaming at them for over thirty years. Better odds winning the Lotto. You cannot have a corrupt government without a corrupt press.
Since 9/11/01, the FAA has swung into action, ordering the airlines to strengthen cockpit doors. These are the same people who knew about lax security at Boston Logan airport. You should have ordered an investigation into that. Why weren't some FAA employees who were overseeing security there and around our country fired?
I see the FBI director is on TV offering a $1,000,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the terrorists. This is not the first time that the FBI has asked us for help with a criminal investigation relating to a aircraft accident. I recall the Deputy Director of the FBI, Mr. James Kallstrom, asking us for assistance with the TW800 investigation and told us the FBI would follow up on all leads. Later, when he announced that the FBI was dropping their investigation, Mr. Kallstrom informed us that no stone had been left unturned in the FBI's investigation. I have a problem with this. We sent Mr. Kallstrom a certified letter and on three occasions he refused to sign for it. On 1/9, 1/22, and again on 1/31/97, the letter was refused. You can see an image of the envelope that clearly shows these refusals to except the letter at:
http://members.aol.com/papcecst/kollstrom.html
How can we be sure this isn't just window dressing? The FBI doesn't read their mail.
You should have been asking the FAA why they are telling my Congressman, Duncan Hunter, that "no notes were taken" during a second hearing at Montgomery tower when a second controller reported the suspect controller was drinking on the job. She even reported he was using the same type of alcohol. Her allegation was identical to mine. I saw notes being taken when I was interviewed by the SAN hub manager who also interviewed the other controller making the second allegation. She was punished for reporting the drinking. Later, she was given a massive promotion when she recanted her statement during my MSPB hearing. This hearing, in front of a federal judge, was my appeal against the FAA for giving me 6 months leave without pay (LWOP) within four hours of reporting the alcohol use on the job. During this hearing, the tower manager and the SAN hub manager were allowed to sit in as I questioned my witnesses, and as I called my next witness, were allowed to leave for periods as long as 30 minutes. I believe my witnesses were threatened during this time and were briefed about the previous session. This was nothing but a kangaroo court. It's called "Tampering with witnesses". My manager at Montgomery field and the SAN hub manager must be fired and criminally prosecuted. After all, they did break the law.
You should have got the US Navy records on my co-worker. They should show that this controller was convicted twice for drug dealing. The first time in the USN's ATC academy, where he was expelled, and the second conviction on board ship. Then get ahold of his FAA application, which will show that he told the FAA about the convictions. Then fire this controller. Then find out who hired this controller and fire that person. Why is the FAA hiring a man with no ATC experience and two convictions for dealing drugs?
You should have asked the FBI for the statement of a former roommate in which she alleges seeing frequent drug use by controllers over a period of six months. She signed a statement saying she went to one of my co-workers homes and was shown "50 marijuana plants" I gave the FBI phone tapes and two hundred pages of material including the statement and they refused to act. So I taped the FBI telling me "Drug use in a control tower is a civil matter" I sent that tape to the Bush I White house. They never contacted my roommate. No government agency ever attempted to contact her. I am still in touch with her. The two FBI special agents that I met with should be fired and criminally prosecuted. So should the supervisors and higher ups that made the decision to do nothing. After all, they did break the law. I want you to tell me why the FBI is refusing to investigate these crimes.
You should have told the FAA to change their drug testing policy. The FAA is tipping off controllers about the time the drug testing team will arrive at the facility and the names of the controllers on the list to be tested. The drug-using controllers are trading shifts to avoid being tested. When the arrive, they don't test controllers at work if they are not on this list. So they only test clean controllers. You should have contacted Upjohn and got the figures of no-shows for targeted controllers.
Why is the Miami hub manager telling the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale tower chiefs about drug testing? Why are those tower chiefs telling the supervisors, and why are the supervisors telling the controllers about drug testing? How do they know which controllers to tell? They wouldn't want to tell a non-using controller about tomorrow's drug raid. It can only be that FAA management is well aware of who is using drugs and they want to protect them for some reason. Maybe they are on the FAA golf team. If the FAA is claiming not to have a drug problem and telling us that they are getting few positive results, why are they having to tip off anybody? Maybe an investigation will give us the answers to these questions.
You should have fired the MIA ATCT supervisor who altered the official attendance record of the controller who overdosed on heroin in the tower to show that he was off duty at the time. You should have fired the MIA ATCT manager, the FTL ATCT manager, and the MIA hub manager for tipping controllers off about supposed "random" drug testing. Then have them criminally prosecuted. After all, they did break the law.
The solution in simply. In a "really random" drug testing system, only a few have to be tested. Soon, you will get a lot of positives and the work force will pray that they can slip through the net and not get tested before their blood is clean again. When drug testing was implemented in 1988, the FAA gave us a month's notice before the first one. Why? They knew the numbers and couldn't replace that many. They didn't care if it was going on.
If the targeted controller trades shifts, the "really random" drug testing team should be notified the next time the controller is on duty, and test him or her ASAP. It would cost more money in the short term, but I think you would agree that we should have "really random" drug testing for our air traffic controllers for the first time in history. Once the system is clean and sober, you can cut back on the testing again. The ones that can't quit don't belong in a control tower, an approach control, or a center making $125,000 per year, And free flights.
If the drug testing people didn't have to notify the facility the day before, and did a test of the entire controller work force now, they would be catching them by the thousands. If the FAA doesn't lie to us about the results. Since the FAA is understaffed with controllers, we can't stand to lose over half of them again.
I told President Clinton that he could fix the problem by firing a small number of guilty people. The word would spread on the NATCA web site and everyone has to give up the drugs. Within a week, the problem is solved.
In the 80's we were drug tested on our annual physical. My birthday is in December, I could choose the day I had to quit using in order to give my system a chance to clean out. If I fell off the wagon a week later, I just scheduled my annual physical a week later. I used to quit the day after Thanksgiving and take the test just before Christmas. Happy Holidays! It was easy and everybody knew about it. Over half of us used pot and alcohol and a whole lot of it. Many others used coke, scrooms, and acid. And the FAA doesn't even test for these drugs. They don't test for heroin either. The FAA told us what they were testing for. We were forced to read it and sign our names to it. What drugs are controllers using now that the FAA isn't testing for? Ecstasy, meth, crack?
As bad as that old drug testing (pre 1988) was, at least it had one good point. It got controllers off the stuff for thirty days per year. The new system is worse. We were tipped off ahead of time and simply did a shift trade to avoid the "bastards". Sometimes we would wave at them when we came to work as they were leaving. It was a big joke. What we didn't know is that Upjohn might have been cooking the books or the FAA was lying about Upjohn's finding. All we knew was that people were using and coming up with false negatives. That was great news.
I have seen a co-worker smoking dope at a party and was drug tested a week later. He told everyone he was going to come up with a positive. Many controllers were at the party and knew this was a fact. When the result came back at shift change, everyone was watching as the envelope was opened. What a shock to see that the results were negative. High fives all around. People knew they could smoke dope again. The word went out nationwide. This happened at many FAA facilities around the country. The FAA has continually stuck to it's story. No drug problem. Only a scattering of positives and they are close to all applicants for the job who naturally didn't make it in. I know of a lot who did. What a crock!
When I read how the controller and the supervisor at MIA approach control killed 110 people on VJ592, I realized they they had to be impaired to make such errors. WPLG was contacted by a controller and he described the drug problem there as "rampant" That tells me that there is more than one controller using and overdosing on drugs. Only one is gone. The approach control and the Tower are in the same building and share the bathroom where the heroin overdose occurred. Controllers don't use drugs alone, it's a social thing. Only a few choose to party with civilians to keep it away from the job. Mostly, they party with each other. Someone is still using drugs there, maybe over half like I saw, and the FAA has made no effort to find out who. The investigation is over.
When I contacted Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to find out if they had been to the tower/approach before or after the overdose, they sent me there records for responses in that district. I couldn't find any responses for any ODs. The record have been tampered with. If the one OD we know about is stricken from the records, it stands to reason that if they were responding there everyday for ODs, we wouldn't know about it.
You should have ordered an outside investigation of the drug situation in the Miami/FTL area and the possible connection to the criminal handling of the VJ592 emergency. This controller and his supervisor need to be fired. Not demoted or transferred like in the past. No retirement. Fired. The message must be sent. No more drugs. No more tipping off about drug testing. No more false negatives. No more falsifying documents. No more working traffic with a buzz-on.
Look at what NATCA sent to WPLG when they reported the heroin overdose and the fact that controllers were being tipped off about "random" drug tests....
AND TONIGHT, THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSOCIATION FAXED US THIS RESPONSE TO RAD'S INVESTIGATION:
MICHAEL MCNALLY SAYS THAT AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS "DESERVE TO BE SUPPORTED AND NOT HARASSED...."
HE SUGGESTS WE FOCUS ON OBSTACLES SUCH AS:
INSUFFICIENT STAFF TO HANDLE MIAMI'S GROWING AIR TRAFFIC...
UNRELIEABLE EQUIPMENT...ASBESTOS... AND OTHER MICROBIOLOGICAL COMTAMINATION.
You can see the full article at...
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/00000132.htm
Mr. President, what do you see here? Sounds to me like NATCA is describing the reporting of an OD and the firing of an ATC as "Harassment". What is more important, a clean ATC work force, or some asbestos in the tower's ceiling tiles? I don't think the under staffing problem will be helped by hiring more dopers.
My first job as a controller was at Scott AFB control tower 1968-70. I was twenty years old. I didn't use drugs and told everyone I didn't want to see it, be around it, or know about it. So I thought it was not being used by my co-workers. It could have been all around me and I didn't see it. It was naive.
During my tour of duty in Vietnam 1970-71, I worked at Phu Cat AFB RAPCON. I didn't use drugs and again told everyone I was clean. I was shocked when one of my friends was caught with drugs in his locker when the dogs came through the barracks. But this person didn't use drugs, I thought, and I believed his story of finding the stuff in Mamasahn's area. He said that he found the drugs and was planning on turning it in the next morning. Again, nothing happened to this guy. I was pretty naive. The message was sent that it was OK to use drugs. It was all for show. Something to show the folks back home. Show them the dogs and the drug testing. That is where the war on drugs was lost. In the very beginning.
I started using pot when I was assigned to Travis AFB RAPCON 1971-74. All it took was a couple buddies telling me that all the propaganda I was hearing about pot was BS. I used pot for my remaining time in the USAF and FAA., but never at work. Pot is the only drug I've used. I was amazed to find out that about half of us were users and was welcomed into the fold. Once they knew I was using, they were assured that they were safe to use drugs around me. Any and all drugs. I saw LSD being used even after seeing propaganda movies at our monthly Commander's Call. This movie showed a US Navy controller running a PAR radar approach on board an aircraft carrier. Suddenly, he started hallucinating and seeing monsters on the screen. We just laughed at it.We had drug testing but nobody called me. Never saw anybody popped. I knew they wouldn't. We got the word. Nothing to worry about. The fix was in.
The day the Vietnam POW's landed at Travis AFB, I was working at the RAPCON and went up on the roof above BaseOps to watch all the festivities. That's where everyone went to burn weed on the mid shift. Many of my co-workers were loaded that day, as they were on many other occasions. There was a lot of press planes up to cover the event and the "Freedom Bird" requested a visual approach. We cleared him, it was his decision, but I never saw so many aircraft in such a small area. I wondered what would have happened if one of my co-workers caused an accident with that plane. All those years being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton only to die a couple minutes before arriving home safe. It's ironic, I saw John McCain, now a Senator and Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees aviation safety, hobble off that aircraft. I've been writing to him for years. He knows all about this and does nothing either.
When the FAA hired me, the first place I went was the FAA ATC academy in OKC. With no drug testing at the academy, drugs were rampant. So was cheating. We had the programs we would have to run on test day. My father taught there in 1959 and claims that it didn't go on when he was there.
I worked at Long Beach Tower, one of the busiest in the country. Again, controllers drinking or using drugs on their lunch breaks was commonplace. Sometimes is large groups if staffing was up. Mints were a must, you don't want to flaunt it in front of the Supervisor. Supervisors were using also.
At Montgomery tower, people were using pot, alcohol, mushrooms, and LSD at work, some on a weekly basis. Some would visit with the chief before coming upstairs to work. With booze, pot, or both on their breath. As the San Diego NATCA rep, I used to try to recruit controllers. Before they shelled out their union dues, they wanted to know if NATCA would put up a vigorous fight with the FAA over drug testing. The NATCA newsletters addressed this issue on the top of the front page. One of my co-workers would go along with me and deal drugs to them right in the tower cabs. Not the picture you see on TV. I had an airline pilot come to my house and he was using scrooms while he was on standby. He was also a Naval Reserve F-14 Tomcat pilot. Amazing!
You should have gotten the GAO to tell you why they are claiming to be a small organization and unable to look into my allegations when Congressman Jim Bates asked them to conduct an investigation.
At Montgomery, we had a BE-35 crash on landing in the evening, about shove time. The fog was thick and the SDFD Engine 28 couldn't find the wreckage. The two controllers on duty could only see the flames coming from the plane right in front of the tower. A female controller working had a hot date. Pleasure before work, she bailed.
Control towers are dangerously undermanned and have been for years. Many times I came close to going "Down the tubes" late night working Local, Ground, and Clearance Delivery alone after they all shoved. If you wanted them to stick around, you could, but you better have some pending traffic. It was a macho thing. You were required to play the game. My father used to "shove" at MSP tower in the fifties. By the time he got home with his buddies, they were all drunk.
I have seen controllers drinking on the job all my life. My father was an ATC advisor for the USAF from 1959-1969. We lived in London, England and Ramstein, Germany from 1959-1966. Dad would purchase radar and other ATC equipment for the air force and inspect their ATC facilities worldwide. I went with my father for a weekend drive and popped in at a NATO radar site in northern France. There we saw French controllers drinking wine at the scope. I looked at my father in disbelief. He thought it was admirable and gave them the thumbs up. My dad thought alcohol was a wonder drug.
Dad went through a quart of Canadian whiskey a day and smoked five packs of Camels a day all his life. He never drank or smoked until he became a fighter pilot in WWII. He used to bring a bottle of Calvados, a brandy, with him in the cockpit of his P-47 Thunderbolt on combat missions. Lloyd Bridges, who played Steven McCroskey, Chicago ATC, in the movie "Airplane", was the splitting image of my father and many other controllers I have worked with.. Dad thought Lloyd Bridges was great and said it brought back a lot of fond memories for him. I was the only one who wasn't laughing because I saw it all my life. It disgusted me. I kept quiet about it all my life because I didn't want to be a "snitch". When my co-worker was drinking at 0730, I chewed him out. When he replied, "Screw it, they don't test for alcohol" I was furious with him. When he refused to apologize to the others on his crew, it was the straw that broke this camel's back. Even ratting the bastard out didn't effect his attitude. Another controller "snitching" on him six weeks later and getting punished for it only sent another wrong message to him. Of course he wouldn't stop drinking on the job after that.
Dad admitted to being an alcoholic, but would insist on putting the word "functioning" in front of it. When we left London, his co-workers gave him a cartoon of himself, martini glass in one hand and a gas nozzle from a JP-4 jet fuel truck in the other. On the truck, JP-4 is covered with the word "Booze" Got the picture?
We had the same rules about alcohol usage as commercial airline pilots. No booze eight hours before work. We all know about all the pilots who got busted for violating this rule. They weren't government employees though. I rarely saw people suddenly cutting themselves off eight hours prior at a party when they had to work in the morning.
The FAA is coming off like they are so concerned about runway incursions. I have seen hundreds of them. Almost all go unreported. Pilots are afraid to report a controller for screwing up. Out of professional courtesy, we rarely took action against them when they blew it. As long as nobody got hurt.
One of the best ones I saw was when I first became a controller. A10650, a T-39 Sabreliner, sucked up his gear early on takeoff from runway 31 (he had to lose the drag and it was too late to stop) in order to clear the top of a maintenance truck parked 4,000 ft. down the runway while the crew was changing light bulbs. The local controller cleared him for takeoff without scanning his runway. I was working ground control and by the time I saw it, I only had time to transmit, "Get OFF the runway" to the truck. I watched them dive into the dirt on the side of the runway. I swear, you could have slipped a credit card between them, but not anything else.The pilot never said a word and the workers came on the radio and just said "That was close"
You can see the great view I had, the control tower is just to the NE of the intersection...
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?z=16&n=4269837&e=251384&s=25&u=2
Almost all accidents occur when a controller has one or two aircraft on frequency. I have a video of controllers working at Long Beach tower on a rainy Saturday morning. Only two in the sky. One shooting touch and go's and the other landing on an intersecting runway. The controller in charge of the local control position is pulling down his pants for the camera while the guy he is supposed to be supervising is screwing up. The next scene is two aircraft meeting at the main intersection. Later another controller is trying to get a female controller to take off her clothes for the camera. Then he starts pawing on her and continues after he yells at him to quit. The supervisor is in the frame. I have another video of a controller at Montgomery tower pulling down his pants within a foot of a female controller. She was looking right at him but didn't seem to mind. Not the picture most Americans have of our nations ATCs.
Runway incursions are increasing at an alarming rate. Why? Let's drug test the whole bunch and see what happens to those figures.
We used to sleep while working the mid shift at the tower and at the RAPCON/TRACON. We all slept on the job. I have seen a controller crawl over to the scope to take a hand off and minutes later getting a second hand off with a similar call sign, both C-141 Starlifters, descended the wrong aircraft. With mountainous terrain, the aircraft stopped his descend and climbed when he realized the error. After writing up the incident in a lengthy statement, the controller went back to sleep. A couple hours later, he did it again with two F-4 phantoms. After getting his second aircraft with a similar call sign, he dropped the wrong one. I have seen many other incidents of sleeping controllers screwing up. I have seen many older controllers falling asleep on position in the middle of the day. All controllers know about this, but we don't hear about it because nobody wants to violate the code of silence.
I used to wake up the controller on duty when I used to come in early for the day shift with the donuts in hand, at SAN approach. My father got caught by the airport asst. manager at MSP back in the mid fifties when he was sleeping on the radio console. Probably couldn't get him on the phone. It's nice and warm up on the radios.
On the mid shift, you may have one or two inbounds and then it's time to rack out, especially if you haven't been able to get any shuteye at the bar. We use to unplug our headsets, and turn up the speaker from ARTCC in case we got an inbound aircraft. If center didn't get us up on the speaker, they would call on the phone and wake us. The speakers always did the trick. They were capable of ear-splitting volume for a good reason. We also turned up the radio speakers, so if an aircraft wanted to land or taxi for takeoff, we would wake up. I have seen supervisors and controllers bringing pillows and sleeping bags to work. The supervisor would sleep downstairs where it was quieter. Not the picture we see on the evening news of our nation's control towers and radar facilities, is it?
Today, I saw the President of NATCA, Mr. Carr, talking about how his people are in the first line of defense in the war on terrorism. He wants armed guards at all ATC facilities and claims that his controllers can't watch the radar if they have to watch their backs. If we have to rely on them to protect us from the terrorists, let's drug test them to assure the American people that they are up to the task.
When I was a controller, any pilot or terrorist could gain access to the tower by ringing the buzzer and asking for the tour. We couldn't go down to escort them up, didn't have the manpower. We just buzzed them in and they would show up in the cab a few minutes later. We also used to teach classes on local procedures, show the pilots a video on the TV in the break room, and give them a tour of the tower cab. We even let in the cub scouts and brownies. All they were interested in was spinning around on the chairs and looking through the binoculars. But don't try and come up on a Sunday afternoon, the game was on. Hardly a plane in the sky and we would tell visitors that we were too busy. We were training. Every tower has a TV in the break room. It was commonplace to have controllers bring up the box in the evenings and weekends when the manager or supervisors weren't around. We used to sing, "Are you ready for some football". Not the picture we get from the mainstream media.
9/11/01 was not the first time that the White house was targeted by an terrorist aircraft. A few years back, a small private aircraft crashed into YOUR home. The secret service was furious with the FAA for not notifying them about the aircraft. This happened in the middle of the night. I know how it happened. The controller was on the floor sleeping or watching TV and heard nothing. He wasn't watching his scope or he would have seen the plane violate the restricted airspace around the White house. If a terrorist pilot doesn't want to wake up ATC, he just turns off his transponder and doesn't transmit to ATC. A controller is not going to stay up all night starring at a empty radar scope. Even after 9/11, no controller will be watching for hours on end for some aircraft to stray off course or for one to come up on an empty scope looking for primary targets at four in the morning. They will at first, but it won't be long before things get back to normal. Why wasn't that controller fired?
Since 9/11, we are all concerned about airport security, especially the screening personnel who look at our luggage. We are trying to associate someone's wages with the quality of the job they do. I hear that screeners work an average of six months before moving on. We justify the prohibited items slipping past screeners by saying "You get what you pay for, we have to compete with Burger King for these people". Ridiculous. Look what you get when you pay air traffic controllers $125,000 per year.
There is no need to pay these people more money in an effort to have them stick around longer or do a better job. If you want to make them pay closer attention, offer them a $250 bonus for each and every bomb they find. Let's hope they don't start getting their friends to bring bombs through their line in order to get a larger paycheck.
Air traffic controllers can get access to the cockpits of our nation's airliners anytime they want. It's called the FAM program. You sign up a week before your vacation and you fly free. One airline didn't require the advance notice, you just showed your FAA ID at the ticket counter. I used to fly in the cockpit. When you returned from your free trip, you write as short report about what you learned. Only took a few minutes. Controllers could always fly in the cockpit. It's an old tradition.
The pilots would often offer a seat and a meal in first class if we wanted it. I think they were nervous about an FAA employee looking over their shoulders. I liked to watch the action. I saw how easy it was for anyone to gain access as the flight attendants were entering or leaving the flight deck. I don't think we should have anyone in the cockpit who is loaded. I have seen controllers using drugs while on FAM trips. The worse abuse of the program that I observed was when two controllers flew LAX-HNL round trip in one day to spend a couple hours at the Lollipop Lounge, a strip club, in Honolulu.
You should have contacted the NTSB and found out who decided to lie to us about VJ592. The lead investigator of the accident, Mr. Gregory Feith, may have gotten pressure from above. In my last letter to you, there is a link to the letter I sent to NTSB Chairman, James Hall, asking him to re-open the investigation into the accident.
You should have gotten the FAA ATC tape and have it analyzed. That's what we did. There's about a minute and a half missing. You should have ordered another test of the oxygen cannisters that supposedly brought down the plane. We tested them and they don't burn. You should have demanded to know why the NTSB didn't interview the anonymous ValuJet mechanic who called in three days after the crash to report electrical problems on the stricken aircraft. You should have demanded to see the FAA hotline message from this mechanic who called them "one month and five days ago" forewarning of an accident involving the airline. Read more about it at...
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/0000013a.htm
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/0000013b.htm
http://www.flight592.com/NTSB/an.htm
For the last dozen years, I have taken my allegations up my chain of command. You are at the end of the road.. So was your father. He was the first one I sent this information to. How do you think you and your father will look like when the truth comes out and the American people see what you DIDN'T do? We have made SCORES of allegations of criminal wrong-doings and you have done nothing but pass the buck and become an active participant in the criminal cover up. Your father did the same.
I want to see an independent investigation completely open to the public and the press. I am subject to severe penalties and some stiff jail time if I lie to the FBI or other federal investigators. I welcome this and am totally prepared to back up all my allegations. I have LOTS of tapes of telephone calls with co-workers, the FAA, DOT, NTSB, the White house, Congressional Committees, the FBI, and the press. Not a pretty picture.
The government seems to show no interest in investigating this corruption. This is your responsibility. It is time you did your job. No more letters from the fox. I want to hear from you personally. No more passing the buck. I want to know the changes that will be made and I want to know the punishment you are dealing out. I expect that you will respond to me ASAP and will also respond to Ms. Diefenderfer. Take a closer look at my last letter to you below. Wash all that blood off your hands.
This letter will be sent to members of the Congressional Aviation Subcommittee of Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, to the families of airline disasters, to the worldwide press and posted on the Internet.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
]
CC to:
[email protected],[email protected] .gov,[email protected],[email protected] ov,[email protected],[email protected],Joh [email protected],[email protected] v,[email protected],[email protected] ,[email protected],[email protected],cbass@ hr.house.gov,[email protected],[email protected] e.gov,[email protected],[email protected],jim. [email protected],[email protected],[email protected] .gov,[email protected],[email protected],jjdu [email protected],[email protected],[email protected]. gov,[email protected],[email protected] ov,[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected] e.gov,[email protected] use.gov,[email protected],[email protected],telljim@hr .house.gov,[email protected],[email protected] ng.com, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],"Auld,Alison" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], "CT27" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Here is my last letter to you....
Santee, CA. 92071
July 28, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
President Bush,
My name is James Bergquist, former FAA air traffic controller and head of our union, NATCA, in San Diego.
On 1/20/01, Inauguration day, I sent you the attached letter containing scores of allegations of FAA, DOT, DOT IG, NTSB, FBI, and Congressional corruption and the subsequent cover up of this corruption. They have failed to investigate our allegations of FAA ATC drug use on the job, airline pilot drug use on the job, tampering with witnesses in a Federal hearing, tampering with evidence by a DOT attorney in a Congressional investigation, falsifying and tampering with evidence in the NTSB investigation of the VJ592 crash and many other crash investigation over the past 30 years.
I am not the only one speaking out.
In our group, we have two former FAA airline inspectors who have identical stories to tell. See
www.unfriendlyskies.com (http://www.unfriendlyskies.com)
and
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/mrd.htm
We also have a DOD wiring expert and Boeing's head wiring man. See his site at..
http://members.aol.com/papcecst/index.html
We have two former airline pilots....See
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/
and read our posts at www.flight592.com (http://www.flight592.com)
On June 22, 1998 I sent a letter to Mr. James Hall, Chairman of the NTSB, calling for him to reopen the investigation into the ValuJet 592 disaster. You can see this letter which is posted at
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/00000152.htm
In that letter, I told him that I had detected several errors made by the air traffic controller and his supervisor in the handling of the emergency. Additionally, I told him that I had a problem with the NTSB theory as to the cause of the disaster, with the oxygen generator fire tests, with the "uncontrolled descent" theory, and the possible drug use by the controller and his supervisor that handled the emergency. I never received a reply.
On 1/18/98 I sent a letter to Mr. Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, asking for an investigation into drug use on the job by controllers and a bomb threat I received. The San Diego Field Office refused to investigate. I never received a reply. You can read this letter at
http://www.flight592.com/Flight592Discussion-Current/_disc5/000000cb.htm
I wrote to President Clinton and requested that he tell Chairman Hall and Director Freeh to respond to me without result.
Our government is a mess.
This corrupt system that you were informed about on 1/20/01 has killed many hundreds of Americans and continues to place millions of Americans in harm's way by the government's neglect. If the system is going to change, we have to start listening to whistle blowers. You won't get the truth out of the "loyal" people in the FAA, DOT, NTSB, and FBI. They are the "Fox that guards the hen house" and will not investigate their own of any other agencies of the Government.
Unfortunately, the press has lost it's nerve long ago and protects the Government by turning a blind eye to such corruption. Many times I have heard "We are NOT going to lock horns with the Feds". If they could get the truth as far as their editors, the next big story they would be working on is the bear problem at the dump. They would be shipped off to Barrow, Alaska.
Where is the war on drugs? We teach the youth of America to "Say NO to drugs", but you and the entire US Govt. is really saying YES to drugs by it's inaction in this matter. No investigation of my allegations has taken place in the past dozen years. On the contrary, I have seen only obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses and evidence. A massive amount of crimes have taken place.
Congressman Jim Bates brought this to the attention of the GAO. I have his letter and the GAO's response that they are a small organization and can't look into such matters.
We have contacted several "watchdog" groups including the Aviation Safety Institute, Ralph Nader's Aviation Consumer Action Project, and the International Airline Passenger's Association. They refuse to get involved.
We have contacted the Airline Pilot's Association, the Association of Flight Attendants, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, and the International Association of Mechanics. They are also afraid to rock the boat.
I first discovered this corruption some twelve years ago after I was given six months leave without pay within 4 hours of reporting drug use by a fellow controller on the job and subsequently fired. Another controller reported the same man for the same offense just 6 weeks laters. The FAA tampered with that witness and have told my Congressman that no documentation exists of the investigation.
I was shocked to find the extent of the corruption and to find others with identical stories to tell.
The controller we reported had admitted to her that he had used drugs on the job in the past and had been convicted in the US Navy TWICE for trafficing in drugs. He applied for the FAA during the 1981 PATCO strike was was immediately snatched up.
When I was busy recruiting new members for NATCA, this controller would go with me and deal drugs to controllers right in the control towers. I had a hard time recruiting controllers in the early days of our union. Their main concern was how NATCA was going to beat drug testing and the NATCA newsletters addressed this issue as NATCA's number one concern.
After several calls to the White house to try to track down my letter, it has taken just short of 6 months to get a reply. The other day, I finally got me reply. In my letter to you, I requested that you have a member of your staff contact me and tell me how you intend to deal with my allegations. Instead, I get yet another letter from the fox that guards the hen house.
In the 6/11/01 letter from the Dept. of Justice signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney, I was told the following...
This is in response to your letter to President Bush which alleged misconduct by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air traffic controllers and their supervisors. Your letter requuested an investigation of these matters.
Your letter was referred to the Public Integrity Section, a component of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. The Public Integrity Section of responsible for the investigation and prosecution of corruption on the part of the government officials. We have carefully reviewed your letter. Although we appreciate your concern there is insufficient information to warrant a federal criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. We must first have sufficient factual evidence to allow us to conclude that the federal crime way have occurred. I f you believe you possess specific evidence that a violation of federal criminal law has occurred, you may wish to provide that information to your local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That telephone number and address can be found in your telephone directory.
You may wish to communicate your concerns to the Investigation Section, Civil Aviation Security Division (AWP-711), FAA Western Pacific Region, 15000 Aviation Boulevard, Hawthorne, CA 90261. the Investigation Section investigates allegations of misconduct by FAA employees.
We hope this information is helpful. We regret that we are unable to be of further assistance in this manner.
Sincerely
John C. Keeney
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
----------------
If I hadn't read scores of identical letters for the past dozen years, I would not have believed my eyes.
Nobody at the Justice Dept. could have looked carefully at my letter to you, there is a link there to previous letters to President Clinton and other links of Mr. Hall and Mr. Freeh in which there is a massive amount of evidence of corruption. For Mr. Keeney to suggest I contact the FAA and FBI is no more that a slap in the face to me.
I have taped hundreds of hours of phone calls of co-workers, the FAA, DOT IG, NTSB, Congressional Subcomittees, the Commerce Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Investigation, the FBI, the White House, and the press to back up my allegations.
On 7/10/01, at 1000hrs., I called the Public Integrity Section Chief: Lee J. Radek at (202)514-1412. Mr. Radek was unavailable. When I ask to speak with any investigator, I was told that no one could call me back and was told to write another letter.
On 7/11/01 at 0830hrs, I called the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mr. John C. Keeney, who had signed my letter, at (202)514-2601. He was not available for a phone call and I was told I couldn't leave my phone number for him to call me back. the operator then suggested I call the citizen correspondence office. The anonymous person there sent me to another person at citizen correspondense. She was unable to give me her name, Id Number, or any information about her id for my records.
She suggested I contact the Office of Professional Responsibility at 202 514 3365. When I told this person that MR. Keeney was the one who signed my letter and again asked to speak to him, I was told that the only people who can talk with Mr. Keeney are the President, the Vice President, and current federal employees. Me being a former federal employee, I could not speak with him. When I told her I wanted to speak with the author of my letter, I was told to "Have a nice day" and was hung up on.
At 0850hrs., I called the Office of Professional Responsibility and talked with another anonymous female employee who explained that their office investigated misconduct by government attorneys. I explained that I had evidence that a DOT IG attorney named Mr. David Tochen had tampered with evidence in a Congressional investigation and I have a tape of him to prove it. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was told they no one was available and that they don't take information over the phone. I was also told that I didn't give them enough information. I tried to give them more information and was interrupted with "Goodbye, Sir" and was again hung up on again.
The Clinton White house has hung up on me, I have that on tape. I was very polite when I talked with them, why are all these people hanging up on me?
I am in touch with a former roommate who signed a statement twelve years ago that she saw drugs being used in my home by several controllers over a period of six months. This statement was given to the investigators in Senator Semour's investigation and the DOT IG never attempted to contact her and never got the tapes.
When I saw another whistle blower pass over the line of sanity and fired a weapon into the air in front of the White house, I started reading about him. I saw that he sent a letter to the IRS Commissioner and sent a copy to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Attorney General, and another copy to you. You can read more about it at..
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/02/08/loc_gunmens_letter.html
and read his letter to the IRS Commissioner at...
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/02/08/loc_text_of.html
Is anyone looking into his allegations?
Please read my letter to the Cincinnati Enquirer about the incident which contains my last letter to you....
Ron Liebau
[email protected]
Ron,
Thanks for talking with me a moment ago.
I would appreciate it if you would read my letter to President Bush. You will see that I have had a similar experience as Mr. Pickett had.
Mr. Pickett was calling out for justice and claims that the system was totally corrupt. He was correct. The press's job is to watch over the Government so we don't have incidents like this.
The people tend to belief the press, but the press pays no attention to the whistle blower. When can the truth come to the surface when the courts and the press protects the government and punishes the whistle blower? How can we say we live in a "free country"?
As I said on the phone to you, I don't believe that Mr. Pickett intended to shoot himself or anyone else. Why did he receive only one round from the White house Police when he had given them time to assemble dozens of officers with a lot of firepower trained on him. I believe he put his gun in his mouth to protect himself. I don't think for a minute that he pointed his gun at any officers and knew that it would mean certain death. Why were the officer combing the grounds for spent cartridges when Mr. Pickett fired two shots into the air? He had a five shot revolver which doesn't expel cartridges and looked totally different from an automatic handgun.
Mr. Pickett still needs your help. I'm sure Mr. Pickett could tell you how to get the evidence which will prove his allegations of corruption. I contacted the District of Columbia Public Defender's office and asked that his court-appointed attorney contact me. I have received no reply.
Was Mr. Pickett a long-time conscientious employee who had seen illegal practices and made the mistake of reporting it, believing right would prevail? Had he seen this all his career and just couldn't take it anymore? Did he just want to get away from it all and retire?
What will happen to Mr. Pickett once his free counsel flushes him down the drain? Will he receive a fair trial afford him in our Constitution?
Mr. Pickett sent a copy of his letter to the IRS Commissioner to President Bush. Is the White house looking into his allegations?
I live in Santee, CA. and I drive by Santana HS everyday. That boy who shot his fellow students was crying out for help and nobody listened to him. Many people knew about it and remained silent. People are driven to the brink because nobody wants to get involved.
Shortly after this senseless tragedy, the press jumped on the story about the Maryland teen who sent a death threat to a Santana student claiming to "finish the job". In my attached letter to President Bush, you will see that I had received a bomb treat via the Internet. I contacted the FBI and they did nothing. I had gone to the San Diego Field Office on two prior occasions and given them tapes that I had made of telephone conversations with co-workers and Congressional leaders and they refused to investigate my allegations of corruption.
Here is my letter to President Bush which I sent to him on inauguration day...
Santee, CA. 92071
January 20, 2001
President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Via Fax: (202) 456-2461
Via E-mail at [email protected]
Mr. President,
My names is James A. Bergquist, former FAA air traffic controller and head of our union, NATCA, in San Diego.
I watched your inaugural address this morning and was filled with hope for your Presidency.
I was especially moved when I heard you say "Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government." Later in your speech, I heard you say "We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations." and later "What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character".
I have shown courage by confronting problems and I have been ignored and chastised by my Congressman, Duncan Hunter, California Senators, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and countless other people I have contacted in our government.
I have written a dozen letters to your father and another dozen letters to President Clinton concerning a problem which effects the lives of millions of Americans, that being governmental corruption relating to aviation safety.
As a second generation air traffic controller, I have seen controllers using alcohol and drugs on the job for some fifty years. We were given advanced word of supposed "random" drug testing. I have observed official government documents being falsified on a daily basis all my life. Since then a controller at Miami tower passed out in the bathroom when he overdosed on heroin. It turned out that he and other controllers were being tipped off about "random" drug tests at Miami. Later is was learned that Ft. Lauderdale tower controllers were tipped off also. His supervisor falsified his attendance record in an attempt to show he was off duty at the time.
The problem is not limited to drug use by controllers. FAA airline inspectors are being fired for speaking out about safety issues or for being too "strict" on the carriers they are assigned to watch over. There have been aviation disasters as a direct result of this practice, including Alaska Airlines flight 261 and ValuJet flight 592.
The NTSB has lied to the American people about the cause of the crash of VJ592.
Your father chose to pass this problem on to President Clinton and he, in turn, chose to pass it on to you. As a second generation President, I am asking you to confront this problem instead of passing it on to future generations. I wish to meet with you personally to show you the documents I have collected in the past dozen years and to show you the extent of the corruption in our government which has taken the lives of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in the past.
Please look at my letter to President Clinton at...
http://www.webpak.net/~skydream/berg.htm
and have a member of your staff contact me as soon as possible to let me know how you intend to deal with this critical issue involving the lives of all Americans. Thank you.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
----------
When a young Mother gets on an airliner with her children in tow, they have no idea that their government is placing their lives in danger and acting in such a reckless manner. Don't they deserve better than this?
Enough Rope-A-Dope, Mr. President, it is time to stop the carnage of innocent Americans. Take action and let all Americans know the truth.
Your father signed the bill establishing the Office of Special Counsel to protect the whistle blower. What a waste of taxpayer money! Mr. Pickett and I both had to deal with them is our appeals against the IRS in his case and the FAA in mine.
Where do we go to get the truth out? The buck stops with YOU. This is now your hot potato. Please don't throw it to someone else again. No more form letters from "The fox that guards the hen house".
This letter will be sent to members of the Congressional Aviation Subcommittee of Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, to the families of airline disasters, to the worldwide press and posted on the internet for the American people to see. I await YOUR response. I pray it won't take another 6 months and will come before another airline disaster occurs.
Sincerely,
James A. Bergquist
Air Safety Activist
[email protected]
]
CC to:
[email protected];[email protected] .gov;[email protected];[email protected] ov,[email protected];[email protected];Joh [email protected];[email protected] v;[email protected];[email protected] ;[email protected];[email protected],cbass@ hr.house.gov;[email protected];[email protected] e.gov;[email protected];[email protected];jim. [email protected];[email protected];[email protected] .gov;[email protected];[email protected];jjdu [email protected];[email protected];[email protected]. gov;[email protected];[email protected] ov;[email protected];[email protected];[email protected];[email protected] e.gov;[email protected] use.gov;[email protected];[email protected];telljim@hr .house.gov;[email protected]