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REAUTHORIZATION OF THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
Thursday, May 6, 1999
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:25 a.m., in room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan, Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DUNCAN. We are a little bit early, but we are going to go ahead and start the hearing today. Unfortunately, there is a top secret briefing on Kosovo that is starting right at this same time, and so I think quite a few Members will be there and probably will be joining us later.
I do want to go ahead, though, and welcome everyone here this morning. I am pleased to hold this hearing on the reauthorization of the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, of course, is charged with determining the probable cause of transportation accidents and promoting transportation safety.
Although other Federal agencies have safety responsibilities, the independent oversight role of the Safety Board is unique and essential in promoting aviation safety. Its thorough and timely investigations and its recommendations, I believe, have prevented accidents in the past and hopefully will help prevent accidents in the future.
We are all pleased and proud that in this past year, 1998, 615 million passengers flew commercially for the first time without a single fatality. And I think and hope and believe that that is in large part due to the great work done within the aviation industry itself, but also hard work and great effort being directed towards safety by the FAA and by the NTSB.
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I think that the NTSB has over the years done a tremendous job, especially given its limited budget and small size. It has effectively and thoroughly investigated many accidents and incidents and has made recommendations that, as I said, may prevent accidents in the future.
Since the NTSB has no authority to issue regulations, its effectiveness is dependent upon timely accident reports and safety recommendations. Although it has traditionally issued reports in a timely manner, recent accidents have highlighted the strain on its resources that a major accident can cause. The NTSB is requesting a 3-year reauthorization increasing its budget by $23 million from its current funding level to $53.5 million. It is requesting an increase in staff from 370 to 402 in fiscal year 2000 and to 470 in fiscal years 2001 and 2002. Currently 65 percent of the NTSB staff work is on aviation issues.
The NTSB is also seeking clarification of its authority to investigate accidents on the ocean as well as in the case where there may be intentional destruction. It also wants authority to enter into agreements with foreign countries for training and technical assistance. Finally, it seeks additional protection from disclosure for the recorders used in other transportation modes.
I appreciate Chairman Hall and several members of his staff for coming here today to testify about the need for these changes and why it is important for the NTSB to increase its funding.
While I think that most people feel that the NTSB has done an excellent job, it has seen its need grow in light of the ValuJet and TWA crashes, as well as new technology innovations. However, we must balance these needs with the responsibility to spend money wisely.
Some of the money requested in its reauthorization request is necessary for training and updating of NTSB equipment.
I want to say that I feel that no chairman of the NTSB could be kinder—could have been kinder or more helpful or more responsive to this committee than Chairman Hall has been. And, Chairman Hall, I appreciate that. I think you have been an active and energetic Chairman of the NTSB, and I appreciate your work.
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However, having said that, I will say that my own brother works for the Agency for International Development, and I never have voted for any foreign aid. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that I am going to give—or vote for everything that you want, but we will hear from you today.
Also testifying today is Cynthia Lebow of the RAND Corporation. RAND has undertaken a year-long evaluation of the NTSB's ability to conduct major commercial accident investigations. Its study should be released shortly, and we look forward to hearing from her.
Finally, Commander William Donaldson is here to offer his views of the NTSB's TWA 800 investigation. Commander Donaldson has had a very distinguished career in the military, and I do not know, I have not met Mrs. Lebow or Commander Donaldson, but I am sure they are fine people as well, and we look forward to hearing from them.
And as usual, we appreciate all the witnesses taking time out from what we know are very busy schedules to come here to be with us today to present their testimony and to answer any questions.
And I now turn to my Ranking Member, the Democratic Chairman of this committee, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for holding this hearing today, and to Chairman Hall, I want to say I don't have a brother in the Foreign Service, and I have voted for foreign aid on numerous occasions.
I think the Chairman has covered almost everything there was to cover in the introduction. I simply want to say it is always a pleasure to see Chairman Hall and other members of the National Transportation Safety Board here. As I have said in the past, I will say once again today, there is certainly no finer entity of the United States Government than the National Transportation Safety Board. I don't think there is any entity of this government that does a better job for the American people. I am proud to see you folks every once in a while and simply be associated with you that way.
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I look forward to hearing testimony. And I also look forward to doing everything possible to increase the size of the National Transportation Safety Board so that they can continue to do the great work they have been doing and perhaps even expand it into other areas.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. Pease? No statement?
Mr. Traficant?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I want to thank the Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing. A little bit unusual for me, I will probably take the 5 minutes in an opening statement insofar as——
Mr. DUNCAN. Go right ahead.
Mr. TRAFICANT. After the tragic disaster of TWA Flight 800, you and this committee asked me to look at and review much of the evidence as a former sheriff, and my staff and I did that, and I would like to give a brief basic report before we start.
I believe that there are some problems, and those problems started early out with some of the coordination between the Board and the FBI, and I have some questions later on in this hearing to address some of those. But while there were problems, there has been a great cloud of conspiracy and terrorism that hangs over Flight 800, and I want to clarify for the record that my investigation supports the finding of the Board and that there was no cover-up.
The FBI made some mistakes, and I believe the FBI was wrong in not allowing the Board personnel to interview eyewitnesses, and I will have some questions on those regards. The eyewitness interviews could have been conducted better, and they could have been recorded more effectively and could have allayed some of the phenomenal sensationalism that was reported in the press. There should have been better communication and cooperation between the FBI and the Board and other parties to the investigation, such as Boeing and TWA. The Navy could have been more forthcoming early on in the investigation about the location of its warships.
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But these circumstances are not unusual, given the enormous scope of this particular investigation. And overall, I think the Board did a remarkable job, and I want to commend the dedication and professionalism and salute the Board, Mr. Hall, for their efforts.
Every piece of wreckage was thoroughly analyzed by the Nation's top metallurgists and experts. Not a single piece of evidence was uncovered that indicated that Flight 800 was hit by a missile, a missile fragment, or that a missile exploded next to the aircraft causing overpressure damage.
If, in fact, Flight 800 was downed by a missile and there was a cover-up going on, then hundreds, if not thousands, of government personnel had to be involved, including myself. This is preposterous, literally ludicrous.
Much has been said, most on the Internet, about the eyewitness statements, and I want to make a few points for the Members. The accident of Flight 800 lasted more than 40 seconds from the explosion in the center wing fuel tank to the wreckage hitting the ocean. There are very few, if any, eyewitnesses who saw the entire event from start to finish. This is very important. Most eyewitnesses saw small snippets of the tragedy. Unlike private citizens, my office reviewed all of the eyewitness statements. For the most part, they are consistent with the Board's breakup scenario of this event.
My office also painstakingly consulted with experts on eyewitness testimony. While important eyewitness testimony can differ wildly from eyewitness to eyewitness, in investigating an airline accident, eyewitness testimony is not as important as the wreckage itself, the physical evidence.
That being said, it is important to note that the bulk of the eyewitness statements are consistent with the Board's breakup scenario. Most of the eyewitnesses stated they saw an object ascending in the sky, described the object as''flare-like.'' My staff consulted with top missile experts that said that surface-to-air missiles, including shoulder-fired missiles with a range of 13,000 feet or greater, would not reassemble a flare when viewed with the naked eye, when viewed 5 to 10 miles away. This is a key to understanding the eyewitness statements. The statements do not describe, generally speaking, a surface-to-air missile launch. The eyewitness statements represent snapshots of Flight 800 in various stages of crippled flight.
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In closing, I want to state that I would think it would be in the best interest of the Congress and the Federal Government for the Board and the FBI to have a joint public event, and I recommend it, and recommend it to this committee, be it a press conference, seminar, or further congressional disclosure through hearings of Chairman Duncan, to fully explain to the American people how they came to their conclusions, which I do concur with you in.
I think the American people need to know how meticulously and thoroughly the Board and the FBI examined the possibility of a missile or a bomb. For anyone to question the validity of their findings or to suggest that the Board and the FBI are involved in a cover-up of Flight 800 is very unfortunate and runs contrary to the facts.
I will have a number of questions, Mr. Chairman, and I will not belabor the committee too much longer except to say I will ask for those in writing, but there will be a couple I would like to engage you in. But I commend you for your efforts, and I commend this Chairman who never votes for a foreign aid bill to be as supportive as he has, and I yield back my time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much Mr. Traficant.
As you mentioned, you very seldom give an opening statement of that length or of that nature, but Mr. Traficant and I have worked closely on many things over the years, and he is one of the finest members of this body, in my opinion, and I did ask that he look into this and investigate this accident on behalf of this subcommittee. He had expressed an interest in doing so, and I thought it was a commendable interest, and so—and I have conferred with him several times on this, and I have always been impressed. He has done investigations in the past that have taken great courage to get involved in, and so I appreciate your comments today, Mr. Traficant, and the work that you have done on this.
It is probably a good recommendation. You did make me realize that I didn't mention something that I meant to mention, and that is that in just about every hearing that we have held, we have had numerous witnesses who have requested the opportunity to testify who we haven't been able to accommodate, because I try to limit these hearings to about 2–1/2 to 3 hours and have always expressed a willingness to hold additional hearings if Members of the subcommittee show interest or there appears to be a need to do so.
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There is one group that requested to testify that I just found out about yesterday, and what was the name of that group, Rob? The Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization. And I will say that if that—we do have Commander Donaldson here. Apparently, I don't think he is connected to that group; is that correct? If that group—and I don't know if anyone is here today from that group, but if they want to submit any information for the committee, I will make sure that it gets to the Members of the subcommittee, and for their further consideration.
And then we may consider Mr. Traficant's suggestion that we look further into this in some way, but we will proceed with the regular reauthorization hearing at this time, and I believe Mr. Baldacci was next. Do you have any statement that you wish to make at this time?
Mr. BALDACCI. Not at this time, but reserving the right for later.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. McGovern?
All right. No other statements at this time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Chairman Hall, we are pleased to have you with us. Welcome. You have been here many times before, but we are always glad to have you back, and you may proceed with your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF JIM HALL, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, ACCOMPANIED BY PETER GOELZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, NTSB; JAMIE FINCH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT, PUBLIC AND FAMILY AFFAIRS, NTSB; DANIEL D. CAMPBELL, GENERAL COUNSEL, NTSB; VERNON ELLINGSTAD, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, NTSB; BARRY M. SWEEDLER, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS, NTSB; BERNARD S. LOEB, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF AVIATION SAFETY, NTSB; ROBERT C. LAUBY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF RAILROAD SAFETY, NTSB; JOSEPH E. OSTERMAN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF HIGHWAY SAFETY, NTSB; MARJORIE MURTAGH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MARINE SAFETY, NTSB; ROBERT J. CHIPKEVICH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF PIPELINE AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS SAFETY; AND CRAIG E. KELLER, SR., CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, NTSB
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Mr. HALL. Thank you very much, Chairman Duncan, Congressman Lipinski, and Members of the committee. If I could beg the committee's indulgence before I begin, I would like to make an introduction.
Mr. Paul Arslanian is the Chief of the Bureau of Accident Investigation in France, and he is visiting us today. He is in charge of the agency in France that investigates accidents and incidents involving French airlines and French-manufactured aircraft and engines very similar to the NTSB. He is visiting our agency this week as part of our continued cooperation in the ever-expanding worldwide safety arena.
He has quite an outstanding background, Mr. Chairman. One of his major efforts includes having been chairman of the ICAO accident investigation divisional meeting in Montreal in 1992, that led to significant changes to enhance international accident investigation procedures. And also for several years he has been chairman of a group of experts in accident investigation for the European Civil Aviation Conference, referred to as ECAC, that represents the 33 member states of ECAC for aviation safety measures.
I know you are going to want to join me in giving him a warm Tennessee welcome. Bienvenue.
Mr. DUNCAN. We always are pleased to have such a distinguished visitor with us. And welcome to the committee today. And you may proceed Mr. Hall. Thank you very much for making that introduction.
Mr. HALL. Chairman Duncan and Members of the committee, I am pleased to appear before you today on behalf of the National Transportation Safety Board for the purpose of our request for reauthorization. Sitting at the table with me are Peter Goelz, Managing Director, to my right; Dan Campbell, the general counsel, to my left; Craig Keller, our Chief Financial Officer; and Dr. Bernard Loeb, who is Director of our Office of Aviation Safety.
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Sitting behind me, Mr. Chairman, are all the office directors from the National Transportation Safety Board for our other modes and for our Office of Recommendations and Accomplishments, all who would be available to respond to any questions from this committee.
Before beginning, I want to thank this committee for its continued support of the Safety Board and its mission. The Safety Board's effectiveness depends on a sufficient level of resources, which you have always provided.
We believe the Safety Board's 18-cent-per-person annual cost to the American taxpayer has resulted in countless lives saved, numerous injuries prevented and billions of dollars in property damage averted.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Congressman Traficant for his statement and his review of the Safety Board's investigation of the tragedy involving TWA Flight 800. Congressman, you did not embark on the review with any preconceived conclusions, you asked tough questions, and we responded as openly and as candidly as we could. I thank you and Paul Marcone of your staff for your endeavors.
Mr. Chairman, I appear before you today with a number of carefully considered legislative proposals that the Safety Board believes will, if adopted, strengthen our ability to fulfill our mission into the 21st century.
The Board's testimony submitted for the record goes into some detail on our activities over the past 3 years, and explains in depth why the Safety Board is requesting changes in its authorizing statute. I would be remiss, however, if I did not highlight for you the range of activities the Safety Board employees have engaged in on behalf of the traveling public since 1996.
Since our last appearance before this committee regarding reauthorization, we have investigated 6,718 aviation accidents and issued 20 major aviation reports. We have investigated 140 highway accidents and issued 11 major highway reports. We have investigated 20 marine accidents and issued 8 major marine reports, investigated 53 pipeline hazardous materials accidents and issued 7 major hazardous material pipeline reports, investigated 159 railroad accidents and issued 13 major reports. In addition, we have also supported 26 international major aviation accident investigations. In that same time frame, we have issued a total of 1,130 safety recommendations.
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As you may be aware, this level of activity is extraordinary, and I am extremely proud, as I know this committee is, of the men and women of the Safety Board who carry out our agency's mission 365 days a year under often extremely difficult conditions.
Chairman Duncan, your committee was instrumental in assigning the Safety Board the additional responsibility of coordinating Federal assistance for families of victims of major aviation accidents. I would like to report to you on the activities of our Office of Family Affairs since the legislation was enacted in October of 1996. Since that time, we have hired a seven-member family affairs staff, implemented a Safety Board family assistance plan, received assurances from foreign and domestic air carriers regarding their plans to assist family members following an aviation disaster and hosted an international symposium on family affairs that included the attendance of over thirty three foreign nations.
In addition, we have launched our family affairs staff to six aviation accidents, three highway accidents, two marine accidents, and most recently the Amtrak accident that occurred in Illinois, and the tour boat accident in Arkansas.
You, Mr. Chairman, this committee and Chairman Shuster, who spearheaded this bill through the full committee and Congress, need to know that the Family Assistance Act of 1996 is working, and working well, on behalf of the American people. It has made a difference not only in the United States, but worldwide. We saw a marked difference in how family members were treated following the Swiss Air 111 accident last fall. Swiss Air and Delta Airlines were prepared to assist the victims' family members following that tragedy, in large part because of the Family Assistance Act and legislation passed by this committee in 1997 that extended the act to foreign air carriers flying in and out of the United States.
I would now like to briefly outline some of the reauthorization proposals we are asking the committee to adopt. In our first proposal we seek a restatement of Congressional intent regarding NTSB accident priority because of the increasing likelihood that criminal investigations will be undertaken in conjunction with NTSB investigations. Certainly that has been case in almost all of the recent major accident investigations, such as TWA Flight 800, the ValuJet 592 crash and the FineAir cargo crash in Miami. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency often initiates criminal investigations following many maritime accidents, and the ATF arson branch will investigate fires aboard vessels. The recent Amtrak collision with a flatbed truck in Illinois is also under local criminal investigation.
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Interagency coordination between ongoing safety investigations and criminal investigations can be complicated. Although the Safety Board believes that Congress assigned priority to NTSB accident investigations, we readily acknowledge that the pressing needs of a criminal investigation require special care in the handling of evidence at the scene, in the conduct of witness interviews, and the release of information to the public. We typically accommodate such requirements within our investigative process; however, without a clear statutory premise for NTSB priority, the negotiation of such compromises and accommodations will remain dependent on circumstances and personalities.
A second proposal would clarify the Safety Board's authority to conduct independent investigations and would give the Safety Board priority in investigating marine accidents. The Safety Board currently maintains primacy in accident investigations in all other modes of transportation, and in marine accidents it does not meet the criteria of a major marine accident. However, without clear authority we cannot take full advantage of the party system, the expenditure of our resources is determined by the Coast Guard rather than by the Board, and evidence collection and witness interviews are scheduled by the need to commence a formal public hearing within days of the accident rather than the needs of the investigation.
Our investigative independence from all other modal administrations has been deemed to be necessary in order to conduct thorough and fair investigations. There is no less need in the marine area.
For example, we are currently investigating a tragic accident on Lake Hamilton in Arkansas which resulted in the loss of 13 lives. The vessel, commonly called a duck, is one of at least 60 converted World War II amphibious craft that operate nationwide and are certified and inspected by the Coast Guard. Both we and the Coast Guard are investigating the accident. However, the Coast Guard has exerted its veto power over investigating the accident under NTSB rules. They have also declined to participate as a party in our investigation.
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I believe the American people would be best served by an independent investigation. Although the Coast Guard has recently complied with our request for some leeway before commencing its formal hearing, the remainder of the investigation is unclear. Without the clear authority to do so, our investigators on scene cannot benefit from the party system, nor can they take control of the vessel when it is raised from the lake. We agree with the Coast Guard's own conclusions in its 1995 quality action team study of marine safety investigations: It should not conduct a parallel formal investigation when the NTSB investigates an accident; rather, it should be a party to our investigation.
A third critical amendment involves four management revisions, which, if adopted, would give us the ability to hire and retain the best qualified individuals. These revisions include reasonable rates for overtime pay for our investigators, accepted service appointment authority, discretionary base pay supplement for employees engaged in investigative work, and retirement at age 55 with 20 or more years of service.
A fourth amendment would extend the same protections currently provided for cockpit voice recorders to video and voice recorders in all modes of transportation. We believe there can be great safety advances if video recorder technologies are applied to all modes of transportation. We just completed a 3-day symposium on recorders that confirmed that the technology is available now. We need to make sure that a lack of disclosure protection is not an impediment to their introduction and use.
We have proposed other amendments, and I have supplied detailed support for them in my written testimony.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to explain our rationale for asking the RAND Corporation to take an independent look at our training and personnel needs, as well as our party system. As our investigations and the transportation systems we oversee become more complex, I believe it is vital that our agency has a blueprint for the future so that we can continue to be the world's foremost accident investigation agency. As a result, I have become increasingly concerned about a number of challenging issues facing this Board. One of those issues is the technical training of Board personnel. We have good, highly qualified people, and I think the study will show that we work them hard; in many cases, too hard. But when I reviewed our training status last year, I saw that the agency was not doing enough to prepare them and keep them up with today's technology. So I mandated that all Safety Board employees have documented training plans, and I have fully funded those plans this year.
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This fiscal year the Safety Board will spend almost $2 million for training, including familiarization in several aircraft types, Doppler radar and icing, material failure analysis, scanning electron microscope, and X-ray analysis and locomotive air brakes. Barring accident investigation overload, by the end of the year Board staff will have received some of the training they need to prepare for the future.
This is only a first step, as I think the RAND study will highlight. I am looking forward to hearing their recommendations on this matter.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the party system is the backbone of our investigative activities. It allows us to significantly leverage or resources on behalf of the traveling public and the American taxpayer. I am hopeful that the RAND report will identify some of the evolving challenges to the process and will outline potential steps that we can take to ensure the continued independence of our agency and the continued excellence of our work.
Lastly, Mr. Chairman, the Department of Transportation is proposing $3.4 billion for direct safety funding in its total budget of $50.5 billion for fiscal year 2000. The NTSB's request of $73 million, which is just 2 percent of the DOT's safety program request, is the most inexpensive insurance policy that the Congress can provide to the American people to assure American taxpayers that their transportation safety concerns are being protected through independent oversight.
That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. The staff and I will be glad to respond to any of the questions you and the committee Members may have.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well thank you very much, Mr. Hall.
Before we begin the questions, why don't you just introduce the staff members that you have at the table with you.
Mr. HALL. OK. Peter Goelz is our Managing Director. Bernie Loeb. Dr. Loeb is the head of our Office of Aviation Safety. Dan Campbell is our General Counsel, and Craig Keller is our Financial Officer.
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Behind me—stand up so the committee can see—Dr. Vern Ellingstad, head of our Office of Research and Engineering; Dr. Barry Sweedler, who is head of our Office of Recommendations and Accomplishments; Mr. Jamie Finch, who is head of our Office of Government Affairs, Family Affairs and Public Affairs.
Behind me are the other office directors: Bob Chipkevich. Bob, if you would stand. He is from Tennessee, Mr. Chairman. He is the head of our Office of Pipeline and Hazardous Materials; Mr. Joe Osterman, he is the head of our Office of Highway Safety; Marjorie Murtagh, head of our Office of Marine Safety; Mr. Bob Lauby, head of our Office of Railroad Safety; and Deb Smith, who is my special assistant.
I think that includes everybody. Did I get everybody?
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much. And everyone is welcome, especially the people from Tennessee. But anyway, we appreciate you being with us today.
Let me—Chairman Hall, let me first commend you for the work that you have done with the Family Assistance Act. I know that you have made that a special emphasis, and that was a big problem earlier on. And the treatment of the family members of victims of these tragic accidents, I think, has seen a great improvement thanks to you and Mr. Goelz in particular.
But let me ask you this. You have been working, of course, with the Red Cross. I am sure you know the Salvation Army has expressed an interest in becoming involved in that type of work. Do you see a problem with that, or is that something that can be worked out? What is your position on that?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, I have asked Mr. Goelz to look into that request, and I will ask him to comment briefly.
Mr. GOELZ. Mr. Chairman, at your committee's request, and at the Salvation Army's request, we set up a meeting at the Board between the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army in January and had some discussions about that. In February of this year, we had another meeting set up to follow up on that meeting. The Salvation Army was not able to make it, and they have agreed to reschedule.
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We certainly have no objections to the Salvation Army participating at accident scenes with us. They always do. I have been to virtually every major accident in the last 5 years. The Salvation Army is always there. They do extraordinary work with us, and we would look forward to working out a partnership with them and the American Red Cross.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. I think that would be good. That is a good organization, both of those are.
Chairman Hall, you know there has been at least one study, if not more, that has gotten a lot of attention and publicity on Nightline and in USA Today and in other places that because of the great increase in the number of airplanes flying, the great increase in air passenger traffic, the great increase in air cargo traffic, that we are going to have as many as one accident or one crash per week by the year 2015. I am sure you are familiar with that.
Mr. HALL. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Is that some out-of-line study or exaggerated-type study, or does the NTSB expect that the number of crashes is going to shoot up because of this great increase in air traffic?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, that study was done by the Boeing Corporation and has been well accepted in the industry. I would point out that the one crash per week is worldwide, not in the United States, but there is a challenge. This past year, as you pointed out, is the first year since the NTSB has been keeping records that we did not have a single fatality in scheduled passenger air traffic in the United States. Last year we also carried 643 million passengers. We are projected to carry a billion by the year 2010. Those domestic enplanements are projected to go up each year, and the U.S. carrier international enplanements are expected to increase from 53 to over 100 million by 2010 as well as the growth we are seeing now. We soon have, Mr. Chairman, over 200 of the regional jets in service in the United States, the introduction of an entirely new fleet of airplanes into service, and we are going to see the commercial fleet in this country increase from 5,000 up to about 7,200 in 2010.
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Of course, this is more traffic in the air to be controlled by the towers and more traffic on the ground. So we are working very closely, with the industry and the FAA, to be sure that we are trying to address both worldwide and domestically the things that we think will prevent that accident rate from becoming a reality in the future.
Mr. DUNCAN. You know, at the 1996 reauthorization hearing for the NTSB, Congressman Ehlers suggested that perhaps the NTSB should not try to investigate every single aviation accident, particularly the small general aviation accidents, and you seemed to be sort of opposed to that at that time. Do you still believe that the NTSB should investigate even the smallest of the accidents that occur?
Mr. HALL. Well, of course, Mr. Chairman, that is a policy question for this committee and for the Congress. There is no local authority to investigate aviation accidents. That is by law done by the Safety Board. There are about 2,000 general aviation accidents each year. About a quarter of those roughly are fatal accidents. We fully investigate most fatal accidents through our eight regional offices, and about 50 percent of our resources go to supporting general aviation accident investigation.
I have asked the RAND Corporation to address that issue, and I think they are going to have some recommendations as part of their study.
Mr. DUNCAN. You know that roughly 90 percent of all transportation fatalities are highway-related, and yet I am told that only about 13 percent of your budget is directed toward investigations of that type. Do you think more should be done in that area?
Mr. HALL. Definitely, Mr. Chairman. I have been very concerned about that. After having the privilege of serving in this position for 4 years, I tried to set certain goals for 1999, and those goals are to highlight heavy vehicle safety and child passenger safety.
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Mr. Chairman, we have killed on our highways in the United States in the 1990's more young people under the age of 25 than we killed during the comparable period in the Vietnam War. We have tremendous carnage and increased pressure on our highways. That we are going to get Commercial truck traffic doubled in the last 5 years. We are going to aggressively work to put technology to work for use in our highway system. That was one of the purposes of the 3-day symposium that we just concluded on transportation recorder use in safety, to let the other modes of transportation see what has been done in aviation. That type of technology can be taken and put in place on our highways to make our highways much safer and to, I believe, dramatically reduce the numbers of deaths and injuries on our highways.
Mr. DUNCAN. My time is up, but let me ask you two more questions quickly. One is in regard to this request for additional authority for higher overtime pay, better retirement benefits, authority to hire people at higher salaries, I have seen on some of the television news programs, 20/20, Dateline, that type of program, that some of the Federal law enforcement agencies have really abused this overtime pay authority so that a lot of people have been getting almost more in overtime pay than they have in regular salary, or as much. And in addition, the retirement, 20 years at the age of 55, there is probably not 1 percent of the companies in the private sector that have retirement benefits that lucrative. In fact, that is much more lucrative than the congressional retirement that is often criticized. And I am wondering about this authority to hire people at a much higher salary. Is this some sort of a way to get big pay raises for everybody at the top of the NTSB? Would you be willing to put limitations on the number of people who could request for all of these and limitations on the amount of overtime that people could get?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, I will ask Mr. Campbell to make some brief comments on this to begin with. First of all, I have been pretty frozen in my pay since I have been in this position. And I think that all of us that work for the government have an obligation to properly account for the monies we are given. I think my number one responsibility is to report to the committee how we spend our money.
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This request on overtime, number one, and all of these issues are being addressed in the RAND study as well, would only apply to the work done at the accident scene. We have some of our accident investigators that have to work some 60, 70, 80 hours a week at the accident scene.
The other things are changes we think would be desirable to help us recruit and keep the type of trained personnel to effectively do the accident investigation work for the American people.
Mr. Campbell, you may want to comment briefly on the Chairman's question as well, since Mr. Campbell is the individual I asked to research this matter for me.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Your specific question is would we consider some limitations, and I think that our whole package springs from the notion that, one, we would like to bring some fairness into a situation in which there is not now an equitable relationship, and I speak specifically with regard to overtime. I think Chairman Hall has indicated that when we work overtime at an accident scene, for any of our investigators, the accident overtime pay is below their normal pay. And so we were looking at that as the issue.
The opportunity to handsomely increase salaries by overtime is not a subject that we had obviously intended, and if there is some kind of limitation that we could agree to with the committee, some sort of understanding on that, we would be very happy to do that, because what we are looking for in overtime is just to bring an equitable situation about because we don't have one.
The issue of the change in salary has to do somewhat with the fact that we are in competition with the Federal Aviation Administration for a number of our investigators, and we were focusing principally at the investigator level, which is the GS–13 and 14, and sometimes the 15 level. The notion that this was going to turn itself into a boon for managers itself is not one that we had contemplated, and I think there would be plenty of room for expressing some specific intent on that if that is the wish of the committee.
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The retirement issue has a great deal to do with the fact that we frequently need to recruit for our agency from folks who are already somewhat advanced in their career. I think the RAND study will show that we are looking at people in an age group in their thirties and forties, and we would like to be able to offer a package that would permit them to see a career with the NTSB as something other than the end of their working life, in part because we are recruiting from people who have skills and have been in the private sector and may wish to return to the private sector.
It was not our intention that this would result in a lucrative retirement. The sums that are involved in the retirement are not increased, and so that the provisions are still limited to whatever you might accrue during the 20-year period. But it does permit us to recruit people with a more attractive package.
Mr. HALL. I think the bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is that we want to be able to compete effectively, and we want to be able to have fair overtime for the people who are out working accident investigations. We would work with the committee in any way, but those are the two objectives we are trying to get at.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I think we will make some changes, but we may put some limitations on them.
But finally let me ask you this. You know that later today we are going to hear from Commander Donaldson, and he has submitted testimony that is very, very critical of you. And we will be very fair to Commander Donaldson as we are to all witnesses, but in fairness to you, do you wish to make any statement concerning—I am sure you have read some of the things that Commander Donaldson has said about you, and the fact that he basically has charged that you have impeded the investigation or attempted to cover up some things. And we, of course, have heard a strong statement already from Congressman Traficant that he does not believe that that has happened. But in fairness to you, do you wish to say anything at this point about anything that Commander Donaldson has said or might say today?
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Mr. HALL. Well, Mr. Chairman, I plan to stay here and listen to what Commander Donaldson has to say about me. I have not had a chance to read has statement because the purpose of this hearing, as you know, is the reauthorization of the National Transportation Safety Board, and I had focused on being sure that I could effectively make those arguments and points on behalf of the Board pertaining to our reauthorization request.
I want to assure this committee that I am, through my entire career at the National Transportation Safety Board, through my service to the Government in the State of Tennessee, through the work I did for the Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee under the direction of Senator Edmund Muskie, the work I did on the personal staff of Senator Albert Gore, Sr., and my 2 years of service in the United States Army, including a year of service in Vietnam, nothing makes me prouder than to be an American. There is no greater honor that I have in the public service. And I would in no way dishonor my public service, dishonor the opportunity that the Senate and the President gave me to serve in this position by misleading, covering up, or in any way not telling you exactly what the American people deserve and you as their elected representatives deserve, and that is the truth.
And I have everybody here, and at any time if this committee has questions before Commander Donaldson's testimony, if there is anything you want to ask us, and all of you all have an open invitation at any time to come down and visit with the men and women at National Transportation Safety Board, see any of the activities that we do, everything we do is an open book.
And the society we live in now, Mr. Chairman, with 24-hour news coverage and all the attention, every voice in this country gets heard, and I have no problem with that. Freedom of speech is the best thing that has kept us free. And the other thing that has kept us free in this country, in my personal opinion, is checks and balances. You all have an oversight responsibility over our agency, and I hope you exercise it effectively. I think you have, and that is why we participated with Congressman Traficant's inquiry and tried to be sure that any questions that he or his staff had were responded to.
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The committee recently sent down a number of questions. I have not had an opportunity to read his statement, and that is probably best, because it is able for me to keep my blood pressure down for the balance of the hearing.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. Lipinski has asked that we go to Congressman Traficant for the next round.
Mr. TRAFICANT. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank our distinguished Ranking Member Mr. Lipinski for the great work he has done on this subcommittee, for being fair to all the Members as well. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski.
There is nothing in our investigation that would suggest anything to the contrary of what Mr. Hall has stated. I would like to state that I believe Mr. Hall has done an outstanding job, and I think there are some circumstances surrounding this, Mr. Chairman, that have made people with tremendous knowledge of aviation, such as Commander Donaldson, have reasonable questions, because I think there has been a cloud over this for some unfortunate reason, and maybe that can be remedied today, and hopefully it can lay to rest some of the charges that have been laid.
Having said that, I have a number of questions I would like to submit for the record. I would like for them to be responded to in writing, spread across the record, and I ask unanimous consent for those purposes.
Mr. DUNCAN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Thank you. With that, I have several questions that I think deal more specifically with that issue which causes concern in later panels, TWA Flight 800. And I think one of the reasons maybe why we have some people that are very critical and questioning the motives here revolve around a couple of mistakes. Hopefully they are mistakes, but I would like to know the facts to them.
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Given that 49 U.S. Code section 1131 gives the National Transportation Safety Board, when investigating an aviation accident—and I will quote—priority over any investigation by another department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government, end quote, having said that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to know why in the initial days of TWA Flight 800 investigation the Board was not the lead investigative agency?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Traficant, the Board assumed, and I believe we felt, we were the lead investigative agency. However, there was some mistakes made that would certainly have given other people a different impression. And those mistakes, I think, have been pointed out by you and by others, and those are the things that we are in the process of addressing.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Having said that, there were certain activities taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which clearly usurped the primary lead agency, the Board, from certainly the eyewitness accounts and certain other aspects. Having said that, and that, I think, is now a matter of record, why didn't the Board at that time aggressively challenge the FBI in the days immediately following the crash when the FBI actually barred the Board personnel from interviewing eyewitnesses?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Traficant, I think that was my responsibility, and that was a mistake. The FBI was very aggressive. I read in the news reports some 1- to 2,000 investigators that were out looking at this accident. Under the Board rules—and as you know, the Board has been in existence for 32 years—under the Board's rules, we rotate our Board members at accident sites. And under the Code of Federal Regulation, 831.8, our investigator in charge is supposed to organize, construct, control, and manage the field phase of the investigation, and the Board member at the scene of an accident investigation is the official spokesperson for the Safety Board.
Those roles, I think, led the FBI and the public to not understand the structure of the National Transportation Safety Board. I think I failed to be aggressive enough at the very beginning with the FBI in asserting our interest and our authority. And I think that one of the reasons that was made, which we will not make in the future, is that there was an assumption by many people, obviously in the public and on the Board that there was some sort of illegal activity that resulted in the event and it was very soon going to be an FBI investigation.
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Mr. TRAFICANT. I believe that is an honest response and that concurs with much of the detailed work that we tried to focus on that.
To the chairman, I would like to say that for many of the critics out there that still have grave concerns about the truth of this matter, I believe the fact that there was this lack of communication problem where the FBI stepped in and gave a veil over this thing that in fact there was a missile or bomb. I would further like to say this in my opinion; although I have been critical of the FBI at times, I think they did a good job and an honest job and had nothing to do with a cover-up whatsoever.
I have a couple more brief questions. One of the questions I would like for you to answer in writing, but I want to just state publicly, is describe all of the steps and measures the Board and the FBI took to investigate the possibility that this Flight 800 crash was caused by a missile.
I would also like to know specifically how many Federal Government employees had access to Flight 800 wreckage during the entire course of the investigation.
And I would like to know, did the Board experience any problems, and I would like for to you answer this one here briefly, but if you could, expound in writing: Did the Board experience any problems in terms of cooperation and sharing of information with the United States Navy during the course of the 800 investigation?
Mr. HALL. No, we did not experience any problems with the United States Navy, Congressman.
Mr. TRAFICANT. In closing out, then, I think that there are——
Mr. HALL. In fact, if I may, Congressman, Captain Chip McCord and the Navy and the salvage team that went there for the recovery purposes, were heroic in their efforts and in what they did. And I was out on the ships at the time of the recoveries, and many of those individuals were going down into spaghetti-like scenes of wreckage to look for the important recorders and for the recovery of human remains.
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So we did not have any problems at all with the U.S. Navy.
Mr. TRAFICANT. It is my understanding that the International Civil Aviation Organization allows for parties to review draft reports prior to reports being finalized. This approach allows the parties to submit productive comments and results in broader acceptance of report findings.
It is my understanding, Mr. Chairman, that the United States is the only country operating under ICAO that does not follow this procedure. Could you just briefly explain to this subcommittee why the Board does not allow greater participation by private parties and other parties involved in these matters?
Mr. HALL. At present, Congressman, the procedure is for us to use the party process to do the factual part of the investigation, that is, to establish the facts of the matter; and we feel we should call on the expertise. Who knows the Boeing aircraft better, or should know it better, than the Boeing Corporation? Who knows the Pratt & Whitney engine better than the Pratt & Whitney Company? Who knows the operations of the airplane and the procedures of the airline better than the specific airline involved, et cetera? So we always use them for the expertise.
Then, when we get to the analysis, we do that independently with our technical staff. We do accept from the independent—from the other parties submissions. On the Pittsburgh USAir 427 accident, the submission I got from the Boeing Corporation, as well as from USAir and from the Air Line Pilots Association, was practically more material for me to read than all of the material that the Board had produced.
So we have a process. The process is strained right now, Congressman, because of the TV cameras and because of lawyers. There is so much money involved in these decisions. And now the family members have all of a sudden realized, well, now why are we not parties to the investigation too? Because they had people that lost their lives on the plane they want to be represented at the table.
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On one side, we have got Boeing and a lot of manufacturers saying we need to have more access to your final product so we can tweak it before it is gone; and the family members want to have more access. That is why I have asked the RAND Corporation to take a look at the party process. It has served the Board and the Nation well for the last 32 years, but are there things that we should do in the future differently from what we have done in the past. Congressman, I just am so proud of this country. We provide the American people an independent accident investigation—that is the whole purpose of the money spent here.
If there is a better way to do that in the future, I think we ought to do it. And that is one of the main reasons I wanted to have the RAND Corporation get involved so that we could be sure that the work we are doing for the American people and for the Representatives and the committees we report to, you all could have confidence in it.
Mr. TRAFICANT. In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to just make a statement for the record briefly for you and Mr. Lipinski, and Mr. Oberstar is now in here. Through all of the investigation that we tried to pull together for the committee, Chairman Hall and his staff were honest, forthcoming, and even offered areas where we may not have asked. There have been problems in the way this was handled in the beginning; I think, because of the fact that the FBI painstakingly looked at the possibility of a missile, it put a cloud over this. But I do not believe there is any cover-up, I believe the Board has done a tremendous job, and I think they do, after my close work with them, a job that we can be proud of.
With that, I want to thank the chairman and his people here, and thank you for having the hearing.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. I want to apologize to the other members, but because of Mr. Traficant's special work on this I did allow him to go over, and I went over, and we will try to proceed within the time limits for everybody from here on.
But, Mr. Mica, we will call on you next.
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Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Chairman Hall. I first of all want to say that I think that the NTSB does an excellent job for the most part with limited resources and personnel. Having served on this committee some years ago and back again, I have followed your progress, and I would be interested to hear the RAND report results.
Today I am a bit concerned about the question of independence as far as this study and the party process. And again I do look forward to those comments. There is an excellent series—and I recommend this to all of the members—in the St. Petersburg Times. It is not my local paper, I represent the Orlando area, but they did an incredible series, and it gives some insight into this party process and particularly as it relates to one of the unsolved mysteries that we have had, and that is the performance of the 737 in particular and how the party system works.
It was done by Mr. Bill Adair. Mr. Adair describes the party system as follows:
''But the party system was no party. Each group had a huge stake in the outcome of the investigation and they fought to protect their interests. If Boeing's plane were blamed for the crash, the company stood to lose millions in sales. USAir, already reeling from the previous crashes, could be doomed if the public thought its pilots were at fault. The pilots' union didn't have a financial stake, but it always fought hard to protect the reputations of its own.
''It was a strange system. The detectives would include the people who flew the plane, owned it, built it, and maintained it. Critics said the approach gave parties too much influence. It was like a homicide investigation where the killer is invited to work side by side with police, given access to all the evidence, even encouraged to suggest who the real killer might be.''
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I know that is only one person's description of this, but I am a little bit concerned about, again, the perception of an independent—and I use your word, ''independent,'' and I would say, ''impartial and fair evaluation,'' where you have a crash where you have such high stakes and, today, these liability questions.
I am not a newcomer to this question and the problems with the crash in July of 1996, and I would ask the chairman to make these part of the record. I wrote Administrator Hinson about this in January 24, 1997; I wrote Acting Administrator Daschle; and I have a series of questions to Garvey, so I followed it pretty closely. But I am concerned about, again, the independence. I guess we will hear more about that.
And then the problem we have is converting your recommendations or recommendations of your investigators into actions with the FAA. And I find that that does not take place. In fact, your chief investigator—and I had written about comments that were made—let's see, this is to Daschle in 1997, I said in July, I wrote the FAA administrator and the subcommittee expressing my concern about the rollover problem. I am pleased that several steps has been taken including revision of the 737 manual and initiatives recently announced by Vice President Gore for Boeing to recall and retrofit these aircraft.
And then your investigator said, and this is from the article in late February 1997:
''Haueter,'' this is the chief investigator, ''had a hard time sleeping. He was worried that another 737 might crash. Lying in bed, he again imagined getting hauled before Congress and being grilled about why he hadn't acted sooner.
''It had been almost 2 months since Gore had said Boeing would fix the rudder valve, but Haueter had seen little action. Where was the urgency? Boeing and the FAA were taking a leisurely pace. We have some information that we are sitting on, he said. If we don't get it out then one crashes, holy mackerel, then we are really in trouble.''
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I read you this and ask for your reaction in a constructive fashion because, how do we get the system, one, to be independent; and then, two, how do we get the information from you to FAA and make certain that there is action and not rhetoric to correct the problem? It was a long question.
Mr. HALL. Well, let me touch on it several ways if I could, Congressman. First of all, I would welcome, if you would want to submit for the record some questions directly to Mr. Haueter about what he was thinking or what his concerns were. I have read that article, and obviously——
Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, this is interesting, and you all allowed the reporter to go in and follow this process.
Mr. HALL. And let me just say, that the process, as I was explaining to Congressman Traficant, is a matter of checks and balances. Our investigators are aware of the interests of the parties, and the purpose of their being there is to gain from their technical knowledge. It is the role of the investigator and the Board to guarantee the independence of our investigations.
Now, our investigations, like all human endeavors, involve human beings with different opinions. And whether you have an automobile crash in which there is a fatality, many times you will have a dispute over whether it was the fault of the operator of the vehicle, or the road conditions. As I pointed out to Congressman Traficant, the thing that is different about an aviation accident is usually the number of people killed, the consequences of the crash, and obviously the financial implications of the decision. So that is why I asked the RAND Corporation to take a look at this to ensure.
But Congressman, I want you to know that the present structure, I believe, serves the country well because I believe if we were in the position of making recommendations and also implementing recommendations, that would put us in the position of being the regulator. We would then have a vested interest in our decision and would no longer be independent.
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So I think that the system works well. The problem we have had many times with the modal agencies which this committee is aware of, is getting their proper attention on our recommendations, and many times Congress has to step in and actually pass a statute for that to happen.
I must compliment Jane Garvey. The recommendations that she just announced that she is going to implement Monday are recommendations that the Board has submitted since 1995 or 1996, I have run out of memory time on that.
So we have tried for a number of years. I thought it was most inexcusable to have two accidents with the same aircraft in our country with loss of life and not know the cause of it. And if we had had proper recorders aboard those aircraft, we could have at least monitored them adequately so that we could be sure that we are examining incidents that would prevent any future accidents. But I think the system itself has worked well. I think that is evidenced by the aviation safety record in our country. But I understand your concerns and have tried to address them through the RAND Corporation study.
Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Mica.
Mr. Baldacci.
Mr. BALDACCI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Hall and the Board and the staff; and I would like to echo the comments of Representative Traficant in the confidence and professional way which you are discharging your duties. I just want to focus on a couple of areas and just get your responses to it and explore it later between staffs.
One is that there was a SwissAir that went down and it ended up being handled, I think, in part by another country. And it is good that Mr. Arslanian is here and you are having relations and working with other countries and their staffs. But it was kind of complicated to me to try to search out what was going on, as I was being turned in many different directions, to get to a source to find out exactly what was transpiring and who was responsible for determining that.
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And as the RAND Corporation study depicted the increase in foreign aircraft, it also talked about the increase in foreign air travel. And I was just wondering what your organization was doing to establish a protocol with foreign countries as it pertained to these accidents, especially on our borders both with Canada and with Mexico.
I know that you are trying to enter into some type of technical assistance in terms of training and upgrading the staffing, but in terms of the investigation itself?
Mr. HALL. Congressman I would like to provide a more extended answer for the record because it would take some period of time to cover it all. But let me briefly touch on the fact that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada was modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board of the United States. It is an independent Board and it is responsible under the international rules for the investigation of SwissAir 111.
We were very aggressive from the moment of that accident because, as you are aware, there were more citizens of our country on that aircraft—many carrying SwissAir tickets, some carrying Delta tickets—than any other nationality. So we sent investigators. We had a large number of investigators.
Dr. Loeb, do you remember the exact number? I know it was in double digits.
Mr. LOEB. We have upwards of a dozen people involved in the investigation.
Mr. HALL. The chairman of the Canadian Board and I are members of the International Transportation Safety Organization, which has seven countries now that have independent safety boards. We have worked very closely in trying to get independent safety boards in countries around the world. In fact, I went down to Mexico 2 years ago in an attempt to convince them to get an independent accident board in their country for aviation as well as for the concerns abount NAFTA and heavy truck traffic in our country.
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So we are very, very aggressive in that area. We have training schools for accident investigators, and we have many, many different countries that routinely come to those schools.
In the interest of time, I would be glad to come to your office with my staff and brief you on the status of SwissAir 111 and give you more information on what we are doing internationally, because it is a growing area. [Safety Board staff met with the Congressman on June 30, 1999]
Just 2 weeks ago we had a Boeing accident in Turkey with a Turkish airline. Their aviation officials were in our laboratories. We had an MD–11 accident in China with Korean Airlines. We had Korean and Chinese officials in our lab. So international cooperation is very important in this area and something that we are very aggressive on.
Mr. BALDACCI. And also, when you do come to the office, we will want to talk, because in Maine we have the Parents Against Tired Truckers, and the oversized trucks along our southern border have been a major concern, to discuss that.
And then one other issue is—I don't know, and maybe you can help me with this, but I know you cover fatal—accidents where there are fatalities that may be involved, but I was reading also that you do investigate other nonfatal accidents too. And if a scheduled airline aircraft loses an engine in its flight and is forced to return to a particular airport, does the fact that that engine failed, does that somehow make its way to your board and your files so that you are aware of that and your group is aware of that?
Mr. HALL. Congressman, we can again give you the detailed information, but let Dr. Loeb briefly tell you the parameters under which we get involved.
Mr. LOEB. There is a series of defined incidents that must be reported to the Safety Board and we would then investigate them to a greater or lesser extent. A single engine failure is not one of them, although we do follow engine failures closely, unless the single engine failure were an uncontained engine failure or involved fire in flight, in which case we would know about it. And if it was a single engine that was uncontained failure, we would investigate it thoroughly.
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Mr. BALDACCI. So an engine failure necessarily, unless it met those constraints, would not be reported to the National Transportation Safety Board?
Mr. LOEB. It would not necessarily be reported. Airplanes are certified to be able to fly with a failed engine, and it is something that occurs with some regularity. I mean, it is not a terribly infrequent, unless there is something else about it, such as if it was uncontained—parts left the engine or struck the airplane.
Mr. BALDACCI. Mr. Chairman, I recognize that I have run out of time. But just let me end by telling you that I have a lot of problems if the National Transportation Safety Board wants to continue to review general aviation, if it is not completely exhausting its review of scheduled airline service accidents. Because I think that if you want to be aware of what is going on even at its earliest point where it pertains to scheduled airline passenger safety in travel, I think there needs to be a little bit more work in that area.
And I thank the chairman for his indulgence.
Mr. HALL. Congressman, let me say that incident investigation is an area I would like our board to be more proactive in, and an area that probably would require some type of action by this committee for us to do so.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. Pease.
Mr. PEASE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hall, as many of the members of this committee know, I fly a lot, and I don't know if it is just my personal observation or if this is in fact the case, that I think I am now flying on more foreign-made aircraft than I used to, particularly European and Brazilian.
Does that present any challenges to the NTSB in its work? If not, fine. If it does, how are you meeting those challenges?
Mr. HALL. Obviously it presents challenges. There are many aircraft that are manufactured overseas that have aircraft parts that are manufactured and made in the United States. Embraer and CanadaAir are examples. In turn, the Boeing Aircraft Corporation relies on many foreign manufacturers for products.
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It is an area that we have to constantly be aware of. There are certification requirements by the Federal Aviation Administration of new aircraft before they enter the United States. I have advised Dr. Loeb that that is an area that the Board needs to address. We have been concerned in the past in several of our accident investigations about the current certification processes of the Seattle certification office of the Federal Aviation Administration. I have discussed that with Jane Garvey. I think she is going to independently look at that as well. But that is an area that we are going to have to constantly be vigilant in as we see this dramatic increase of new aircraft and new types of aircraft.
As I pointed out, we are going to have some 200—and they are hoping to sell 400—of these small, regional jets in the United States in a short period of time. The plane was designed for our market, even though it is being manufactured primarily overseas.
Mr. LOEB. Could I just add that this is one of the reasons for the request for more resource. If an Embraer or ATR crashes overseas, an Airbus crashes overseas, not here in the United States, not a U.S. carrier, we are just as interested in that as if it were a U.S. carrier. We need to understand what happened. And so that means that we need resources to follow those, to get involved in those investigations. And that area is probably the most rapidly growing area that we face.
Mr. HALL. And, Congressman this emphasizes our authorization request and my concern about adequate training.
We have had the introduction of the Boeing 777. The Airbus has new models. CanadaAir has new models. We have the Embraer 145. It is extremely important that my investigators be knowledgeable of these aircraft, so if we have incidents—more than accidents, because I want to prevent accidents through incident investigation—they have a working knowledge. And that requires training.
And that is another reason both—either through training or hiring people--that we have experience in that particular aircraft if we are going to be able to stay up to speed and do the job that people expect us to do.
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Mr. PEASE. Thank you. I appreciate that. I wonder, given some of the work that Mr. Traficant did and points that were made by you in both your written and oral testimony, if there is a system or a protocol, a methodology that is used to coordinate between various government agencies when numbers of them have an interest in an accident. If so, how does it work; and if there isn't, ought we be encouraging it, or in fact requiring it?
Mr. HALL. There is a protocol in place and we are requesting that that protocol be strengthened even more. Right now, if there is an aviation accident, we are the lead agency. And traditionally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or ATF or any of the other Federal agencies would cooperate with our investigation, and the American people would be provided one spokesperson on TV so that they don't hear 10 different people giving 10 different stories.
The announcements are communicated, and that is extremely important because all of these 24-hour networks now all get talking heads and pay them to come on and say outlandish things about what happened. It is very important that the American people have somebody there that is going to report the facts. If the facts are not any good, then the facts are not any good, but they need to be whatever the facts are.
What happens right now, Congressman, is if the FBI gets there and they find there is a criminal act, then the investigation is turned over to them; it becomes a criminal investigation. Up to that point, it is our investigation and they are cooperating with our investigation. We did not do a very good job at TWA, and that created a lot of confusion.
Mr. PEASE. Well, I agree with your position on this.
Mr. HALL. We need the committee's help on this, just to be honest with you, because the people need to have an independent investigation. You have a TV camera, the local sheriff, the district attorney, everybody that runs for public office will show up and want to get on TV.
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Mr. PEASE. And that is my next question. You have addressed the coordination between Federal agencies, but is there a protocol as well between State and local? If not, ought there be?
Mr. HALL. We generally get very good cooperation once we are on the scene. One of the things I did after TWA 800, and I have been very sensitive to Congressman Traficant because his concerns have been very straightforward with me. With TWA 800, I was sitting watching Bryant Gumbel on the Today Show in East Moriches talk about this accident before I had been able to get my accident team there. So we now have a 24-hour communications center. If the FAA can't give us a plane, I start trying to charter a plane immediately, because to have the NTSB there in charge of the scene provides an order that is necessary. Until that happens, we do have some sort of disorder.
I don't mean to be disrespectful of anybody getting on television, and I think the television networks perform a very useful purpose. But the official investigation and the information from the scene needs to be coordinated by all the people that are paid by the American people so that it is not confusing to them.
Mr. PEASE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Pease.
Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to run through a number of issues quickly so we will try to keep the responses short.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your being here today. There was some discussion earlier about 737s and I would congratulate the Board on its persistence. I know part of the problem here is the fact that you can't tell the FAA what to do, and although you may feel strongly that steps need to be taken, such as enhanced recording devices, the FAA, that is still not fully cognizant of the change in the law made a few years ago saying they no longer promote the airlines, they only regulate safety, are saying, gee, it costs too much. So I congratulate you on your persistence in those areas.
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I have a couple of questions. One other area where I know you have been an advocate where I am frustrated is child safety seats. Do you have any perspective on how we might move that issue forward?
Mr. HALL. I met with some flight attendants and I discussed this with Jane Garvey. We have integrated seats right now in automobiles. There is no reason that at least the middle seats on airplanes could not be integrated so that we have some sort of more secure seat than we have for kids.
There hasn't been a proactive effort at the FAA to address this issue, and I am hoping that we will be able to address this issue.
There has been a lot of talk about the care of our children in the last several weeks in our country. It is unfortunate that children are not put first in the safety and design of our highway vehicles. I would imagine that many parents in this country would be shocked to know that they are safer sitting in their driving seat with their seat belt and air bag than their children are, even in the back seat, because the car has been designed for a full-size adult. Child safety has not been first in the design of the vehicles.
In the marine area, this tragedy that we had recently down in Arkansas, it is not clear whether a life vest or a floatation life jacket would have saved their lives, but again it is disappointing to see that we have operations where kids are put out on the water, young kids, little kids, without any type of life jacket or floatation device on.
So I feel very strongly about it, and I am doing everything I can about it, and any help you can continue to give would be appreciated.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I reflected in the past and I have discussed this idea with members of the committee and with the Board, which would be to have some requirement for a much more affirmative response or some sort of response from the regulating agencies like the FAA. If you send a recommendation, they have to document very good reasons why they are not going to follow it, as opposed to just shining it on, which I think they often do. And I will be working with the committee in that in your reauthorization.
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I would like to go quickly to marine. I am curious about the NTSB's interest in this area. I know you don't have a lot of resources to bring to bear, but I am curious how your priority recommendations would relate to the Coast Guard's current role and their ability to conduct enforcement proceedings and investigations. How would those link?
Mr. HALL. It would just put us in a situation with the Coast Guard, the same position we are with the Coast Guard as we are with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, RESPA, Federal Highway Administration on any type of investigation. We would be able to go in and determine, this is an accident we are going to investigate, and it would be done under our rules.
Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. And obviously the Coast Guard has some concerns with that, and I assume they have expressed them to you?
Mr. HALL. Yes, sir, and you know I made this request 3 years ago. I have a great deal of respect for the current admiral and the work that the men and women of the Coast Guard do. To me, it is a simple issue of the integrity of our investigations. If we conduct the investigation, people will see the NTSB's name. I think, hopefully, most people have a great deal of confidence that that investigation is independent. And with the Coast Guard that is just not the case.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I have a lot of respect for the Commandant, too, and I hope we can get the two of you together and work this out and come to an agreement that you will protect their interest and their legitimate role and yet bring enhanced resources to bear from the NTSB, which I think would benefit all of us.
I think that is it, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for the time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Dr. Cooksey.
Mr. COOKSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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As you know, the committee was to address the issue of the FAA's expanded use of their emergency authority in regard to certifications. In the 105th Congress, I introduced a bill that addressed—and it was really a companion bill to Senator Inhofe's bill that established a procedure by which the FAA could show just cause for bringing emergency action to revoke someone's license.
Similar legislation has been introduced this year, again by Senator Inhofe. Last year, the NTSB did provide some testimony on this Inhofe bill, you may remember, and then you subsequently submitted some comments about his current bill.
My question to you is—well, first, the current bill includes a new approach to the same issue, and I assume you have had a chance to review it. But if you do address this issue, which version of the legislation will you take? Will you take the one that was introduced last year or the one that was done this year? And I have read your letter where you suggested some language change in this bill.
Mr. HALL. I have asked our counsel, Mr. Campbell, to follow this issue very closely, and I would like for him to respond. But it is an issue we have taken very seriously and spent a great deal of time on.
Mr. COOKSEY. Good. Thank you.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Congressman, as you will recall from last year, it was not NTSB's position that it was either opposed to or in favor of it, and we simply wanted to work with Congress to make sure that if Congress were to adopt such legislation, that was something that we would be able to do what Congress had asked of us. So we had some procedural issues that we wanted to have addressed.
My understanding of the present posture is that there is a bill on the Senate side and a bill on the House side. I have not actually laid the two of them together and asked the Board to pick a preference between them. I have attempted to work with committees on both sides to make sure that none of the issues in there would create for us an unworkable situation, and I think that I can say that that is the case for both bills. And if you would like, we could provide for the record a written response as to whether or not the Board has a particular preference between one or the other.
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Mr. COOKSEY. Good. I think that would be helpful.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Certainly.
Mr. COOKSEY. You are receptive to accepting this responsibility on these emergency losses of license then?
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes, that was the position of the Board last year and remains so.
Mr. HALL. We are always receptive to what this committee wants us to do, Congressman. If we have a resource concern, we want you to be aware of that; however, at the time, we accept the responsibility.
Mr. COOKSEY. Good. Thank you, Mr. Hall.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This periodic get-together with the National Transportation Board is always beneficial for us, the public, and I hope occasionally for the Board. But I would like to, as I have done many times in the past, take this opportunity commend the Board and hold it up as an example, a shining example of how government works best. Your job is safety. You take it seriously. Your staff takes it seriously. The Board members take that responsibility seriously, and our transportation systems, our various modes, are the safest and the public is better protected because of the work that the Board has invested, for so many years, this high level of integrity.
And you exemplify that level of integrity, Mr. Chairman, you, Bob Francis, the other members of the Board; all are a great credit to our country.
Mr. Chairman, are we going to have a second round of questioning opportunity?
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Mr. DUNCAN. Because of your interest in this and your position on the committee, you just go ahead and take all the time you need, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I will try not to take a lot of time, but do I have a number of questions.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Lipinski might object, but I won't.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Coming back to the TWA 800, I know there was quite some discussion of it. The role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation did complicate the Board's role in the accident investigation. The FBI claimed primacy because of the suspicion of a crime, and the criminal investigation took precedence procedurally over the accident investigation and complicated the ability of the Board to square with the public about information that it had, that it knew, and that was important to the public.
Now, without going into any further discussion of that matter, taking that matter a step further, I think it is important, as you suggest in your testimony, to clarify the primacy of investigative responsibility and authority in marine incidents and with the Coast Guard. And I have wondered about this matter for some time. You have raised it squarely. I think the committee in its authorization bill should provide clarity on that issue and give the Board the lead role and the prime responsibility and establish the relationship with the Coast Guard in the same way that the Board has with the FAA. And we should resolve any other discrepancies with other modes of transportation.
Second, the Board makes findings, conclusions, and recommendations, and I have always urged the Board to be, as it is, and to stand firmly for being normative. The Board's job is to say this is the standard, this is the norm that we think should apply to safety, whether it is in manufacture, whether it is in structural analysis, whether it is in safety or security or other areas.
But when the normative recommendation goes from the Board to the mode, or the modal administration—and let's specifically zero in on the FAA—the FAA has to respond to a different set of standards, specifically benefit-to-cost analysis and public review process, in going forward on the recommendations of the Board.
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I have always felt that in safety, we ought to come down on the side of the benefit unless there is an egregiously high cost, but I have frequently expressed the view that if the airlines don't want to make the investment to meet that standard of safety, then they ought not to fly. That is a rather hard judgment, but I think it is the one that the Board repeatedly brings up to our consideration, and to the public consideration.
How would you recommend that the requirement of the benefit-to-cost-ratio analysis of the FAA be changed?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Oberstar, that is a big question. The cost-benefit analysis, as we all know, you can't really talk about the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA without talking about also the Office of Management and Budget and their rules and regulations that they have generated in regard to cost-benefit analysis and the role that plays in the rulemaking process.
It is difficult for me to give you an answer on that because it is not an area that I have studied. I do think that it is an important area, and it is one that Congress obviously should be concerned about. My main concern has been that many times the cost-benefit analysis has just been used as, I think, a cover not to properly address a legitimate safety concern in a responsible way.
Mr. OBERSTAR. And is used by other parties to stretch out the process by which the FAA conducts its work. May I just suggest that you pray on it for a while and then we get together.
Mr. HALL. I will do that. And if you would indulge me for 1 second, I think that is an important issue for this committee in all the modes of transportation, because we just finished a 3-day symposium on transportation recorders. The technology that we are going to have available to us in the next 10 years for safety in our country is amazing, and getting that on the existing equipment, as well as new equipment, is going to be an area that both this committee and those of us who are interested in safety in the Federal Government and charged with that responsibility need to be attentive to.
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Mr. OBERSTAR. When I think about the difficulty that this committee had, when I chaired and Mr. Mineta chaired and others chaired in the past, of getting ground proximity warning systems installed onboard commercial aircraft, the difficulty we had getting TCAS I, II or III installed, Mode C Transponders installed or general aviation aircraft that wanted to fly in the terminal control area of airports. Each one of these was held up to months, even years of debate and rulemaking because of benefit-to-cost issues.
And your crusade to get the more advanced flight data recorders is another example. And a further point that you raise in the appendix to your statement, video recorders for all modes of transportation. Are you aware of the Lufthansa experiment about 12 years ago? Lufthansa—this was reported in a safety seminar by Jurgen Weber, who was then president of Lufthansa, and he had the chief pilot who testified about an experiment they conducted using television recorders in the cockpit to verify that when the pilot said pull back, he actually put hand on the throttle and pulled back or pushed it forward to full throttle, that he actually did all of these things. And they found that there were several discrepancies. They used this video in the training program for their flight deck crews as a means of improving their professionalism; not as a means of penalizing them.
But I think you should take a look at that experiment. I think we ought to take a look at it on a test basis, installing video recorders in cockpits in the flight deck under very careful conditions, but as a prelude to taking further action.
Mr. HALL. We will do that, Congressman.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I have just recently proposed, and I have been discussing quite some time—I made a public proposal in a talk a couple of weeks ago about safety audit of foreign code share partners of domestic airlines. I think that while there are some carriers who are already doing this flight safety audit with their code share partners, others are not, and all are concerned that there be some standards established. And what I suggested is that the FAA and DOT together, working with ICAO, Joint Airworthiness Authority, Flight Safety Foundation, establish a framework, and also with the participation of the NTSB.
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I would like you to give some thought to this subject and make some recommendations. As we extend further, I heard comments raised by my colleague on the committee just moments ago about numbers of foreign aircraft being sold and used in the United States. Extend that a bit to foreign airlines flying U.S.-built aircraft maybe not being maintained to our standards, and Americans flying on a code share partner in Nairobi which one of our carriers won't even accept as a code share partner, for example.
So as international aviation grows 7 to 8 percent a year, and our domestic aviation growth is flat at around 3, 3.5 percent, we are going to see the profits are in international aviation. The flow will be to increasingly to international aviation. And I think that is an area to which the NTSB ought to direct its attention.
I am somewhat concerned, and I would like your response, that you are in your budget proposal for the next 3 years understating personnel needs. We gave NTSB civil penalty caseload authority, and I just wonder whether that caseload has put a stress on your personnel resources, together with the family counseling role that we have given. It just seems to me that you have been overly modest in your request for personnel requirements.
Mr. HALL. Congressman, you may be right in that. We have fully staffed the family assistance area. OMB had expected us to take that responsibility without additional people. Thanks to the action of this committee and your counterpart in the Senate, we have seven additional staff, and we feel that that is working very well for the major events we are covering to this point.
Mr. Campbell might comment on the civil penalty aspect.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. Oberstar, I think you recall that the Federal Aviation Administration wasn't happy with our receiving that. I don't know whether that is reflected in the fact that that has never developed into much of a workload item for us. Civil liability.
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Mr. OBERSTAR. It is the appeals process that goes to the NTSB.
Mr. CAMPBELL. I think that the staffing needs of the agency really are directed into the investigatory functions, and that is where we need the assistance.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I will leave it there for a moment. Just maybe a 45-second wind up on the 737. Every 6 seconds of every day, a 737 takes off somewhere in the world; 91 million hours of operation of that aircraft and two accidents and one significant incident involving the rudder control system.
This comes to the party issue that you have raised. Without the $130 million input from Boeing on engineering, the $20 million in spare parts and the $30—$35 million spent by FAA, by Parker Hannifan, the producer of the power control unit, and the millions that the Board has spent, we would not be at the point that we are today. I don't think that you can do without the party system so long as the primacy of the NTSB in the end prevails in making the recommendations.
Mr. HALL. I agree with you absolutely, Congressman. And the Boeing Corporation, all the parties to the Pittsburgh investigation did an outstanding job. And the only thing that gave me any cause for concern from the very beginning was once we had two unexplained accidents, I felt the manufacturer and the government should immediately use the technology available to monitor that aircraft so we could be tracking any incidents to prevent any future accidents or understand that system better. I applaud Jane Garvey for this week announcing that she is going to accelerate the installation of those recorders on what is one of the world's safest airplanes.
Mr. OBERSTAR. And the adaptation of the power control units, larger ports, and perhaps even more—how shall I say, temperature-resistant fluid in the control unit. It did not fail until it was reduced to 30 times below the temperature at 6,000 feet at which the aircraft operates.
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Mr. HALL. I have a great respect for the engineers. When they told me, Congressman, that it couldn't fail, that is when I said, well, let's put some hydraulic experts together. David Hinson and I looked all over the country and came up with the world's best hydraulic experts. I think Boeing was as surprised as anybody when there was a failure mode for that rudder. When that happened, they took it very seriously and moved aggressively forward.
Mr. OBERSTAR. But also the lesson of the 737 rudder issue is that, as in most aviation accidents and incidents, it is multifaceted; not just the technology, it is the weight vortex issue, which we have discussed many times. It was in this case a 727 that caused the wake initiated, and then there is the pilot responsibility and the training of the cockpit crew to jump on the problem immediately and not wait 20 seconds.
Mr. Chairman, you have been most generous, and this is much too serious an issue to discuss in 45 seconds, but I appreciate the opportunity to do so.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Oberstar. We do have a vote going on, and we will break very briefly, and then we will go straight to Mr. Sherwood as soon as we come back.
[Recess.]
Mr. DUNCAN. We will go ahead and resume the hearing at this point, and we will go next for questioning to Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't really know if I have any particular questions for this panel. As I mentioned at the opening of these proceedings, several hours ago, I hold the National Transportation Safety Board, the staff, and the Chairman Mr. Hall in very high esteem, and I am always happy to see them come here because it seems to me that they have an awful lot of good answers, and there is always an awful lot of very interesting questions which you handle extremely well.
I really don't have any particular questions for you. If I have any question that I want to bring up, I can certainly do that privately. We don't need to do it at this meeting. You have been here a long period of time. We have two more witnesses, and, Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to turn back my time, and maybe we could move on to the next panel.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Let me ask just one more brief question. In today's Wall Street Journal, there is a story and headline that says: ValuJet Safety Review by FAA Was Flawed Inspector General Reports.
There are some people who believe that the NTSB should have an inspector general as so many other departments and agencies do now? What do you think about that, Mr. Hall?
Mr. HALL. If we had an Inspector General like Mr. Mead, I think it would be wonderful. I think he does an outstanding job.
Whatever Congress feels that the agency needs in oversight would be fine with me, Mr. Chairman. I know of nothing that has caused any concern. Mr. Keller, if we get into a situation, don't we call somebody in at this point? Would you care to comment on that?
Mr. KELLER. Yes, for our audit oversight what we do is enter into a contractual arrangement with even the Defense Contract Audit Administration, and sometimes we will have the IG's help over at DOT. Just to point out, 80 percent of our budget is dedicated to people, so there is not a whole lot of flexibility as far as abuse or fraud or whatever takes place.
Mr. HALL. But that would be up to the committee. I have no problem. As I told you, Mr. Chairman, the most important job you have given me is the responsibility of handling the taxpayers' money, and anything this committee wants to do in that area we would stand ready to do.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I am not necessarily advocating that. I really was asking the question.
Let me ask you one other thing. There has been some concern about accidents involving public aircraft, and there is a dispute between the law enforcement community and the small business community over the safety of public aircraft versus small commercial aircraft. Does the NTSB have any view concerning the relative safety or any concerns about public aircraft?
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Mr. HALL. I would like to let Dr. Loeb, if he could, give you the statistics on the work we have done in the public use area. Actually, Mr. Chairman, I think we have an appropriate role there. I think we are exercising that role.
The area that concerns me is when I see our State Department personnel and others get on United Nations aircraft without any type of safety program or enforcement that our State Department is requiring. I think any U.S. citizen deserves one level of safety; that their government ought to be trying to be sure that if they are exercising particular responsibilities on behalf of their country, that somebody is paying attention to their safety.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, you know, that is interesting to me. I went with three other Members of Congress to the Balkans area about 2–1/2 years ago, well, 2 years ago January, and we flew—we were Belgrade and Croatia and Montenegro, the whole area over there. But one day they flew us on a Ukrainian helicopter, flew us on a U.N. helicopter to Vukovar, where some of the worst fighting of the war had gone on, and just 3 or 4 months later, that same helicopter crashed and all—I think 15 people were killed or something. I remember that.
Did you have a comment, Dr. Loeb?
Mr. LOEB. I guess as an answer to your question, there are not exposure data that are collected that we are aware of that we have tried to look into that. There is no database, national database or even State databases into which the number of flight hours or the number of sorties or whatever conducted by public-use aircraft.
What I can tell you, though, is that in the last 7 or 8 years, which crosses over the boundary and which the public law was changed to give us more authority in the public-use area, we haven't seen a significant change in the number of fatal and serious accidents. So we have not seen what I would believe is any kind of a degradation in the safety of public use. What we do is in each and every one of the accidents that we get involved in, we try to make recommendations that not only go to the specific accident, but that may help public-use transportation in general.
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Mr. HALL. And generally, Mr. Chairman, we get excellent cooperation. You may remember there was a TVA helicopter that crashed while trying to do some loading, and they welcomed and asked for our assistance so that they could be sure they learned from that lesson and prevent it from happening again.
We had a helicopter loss up in Massachusetts with the Boston Police Department, in which there were safety issues that needed to be addressed. All the public officials welcomed that input and, to the best of my knowledge, have followed through on our recommendations.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Chairman Hall, thank you very much for coming, and I am very—I understand that this is a comprehensive hearing, but there is something that I have to zero in on. And TWA 800, 21 of those people were from a small town in my district. There were 15 kids going for an educational trip and 6 chaperones. And I am not a conspiracy theorist, I don't want to get going in the wrong direction here, but there are a few thing we know, and we all go back to our own experience, and I have 30 years experience in surface transportation crashes, and my take on that is they are 95 percent operator error and only once in a while something else.
But this big plane is flying across through the sky, and it explodes in midair, and that doesn't sound like operator error. Something unusual went wrong. And I realize that you have had the largest aircraft reconstruction in aviation history, and everybody has been looking over your shoulder, and the television cameras have been running, and it has been a hard deal to manage, but your average time for a report, I read, is 12 months, and this will in 2 months will be 3 years, and I understand that you are not going to have a report out for a while after that.
And while I think that those folks in Montoursville under the circumstances have been eminently reasonable, they are asking me to press for closure. They want to know what happened, and I think the country wants to know what happened. That is why I asked to put some questions in for the record, because we have read all the stuff, and we know all the possibilities, and when will you have a report?
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Mr. HALL. Congressman, as you know, the Board has determined that there was a fuel air explosion in the center fuel tank. What is taking the time now is to continue to work through the investigation to determine the ignition source for the explosion. We are conducting research in the areas of electrical wiring, electromagnetic interference, and the FAA has already put out a number of directives in terms of wiring and other issues that have been raised during the investigation.
We are working on finalizing our work on the eyewitness statements. I have asked Dr. Loeb, because I know personally many of the individuals from your district and many of the individuals that are referring to, and I have asked Dr. Loeb to try to have this investigation completed by the end of this year so that we can have a Board meeting and a final report before this year is concluded.
I don't know if there is anything else to add to that statement, but I would be glad to offer Dr. Loeb or any of our staff to come either to your office or to your district and brief any of the individuals that have a concern on the current status of the investigation.
Mr. SHERWOOD. I would be glad to have you come to my office so that I understood it a little better.
Mr. HALL. OK, sir.
Mr. SHERWOOD. What worries me is that if we do not arrive at a definitive answer, and you cannot arrive at one before you have it, I understand that, but I am afraid maybe—and I say this pretty respectfully, but that the enormity of this disaster has overwhelmed our ability to manage the investigation. And I think we need to talk about that a little bit, because the longer we get from the fact, I realize facts that are established don't change, but people's recollections and all those things in investigative procedures, the farther we get away from the incident, I think the more of a stretch it becomes. Three years is quite a while.
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Mr. HALL. Yes, 3 years is a long investigation. We just concluded the Board's longest investigation on the USAir 427 accident that, of course, occurred in Pennsylvania. And what has, I think, prolonged this investigation to some degree, Congressman, is the concern I have had in being sure that we have addressed all of the possibilities of what could have ignited that fuel air explosion.
The lack of adequate recorders and information on the plane has lengthened our investigation. What I have tried to be proactive on most since I have been the Chairman, and I came in here with sort of an open mind on what we needed to do and how we needed to do it when I joined this Board, but there is no reason with the type of recorders that are available to be on our aircraft in our country to have unexplained mysteries that then people want to bandy theories about.
So I would be glad to bring you up to speed on it, sir, on any aspect that you are concerned about. And I am going to try to do everything I can, urging Dr. Loeb to get it concluded this year.
Mr. SHERWOOD. What is the current thinking on why we don't have the scavenge pump?
Mr. HALL. Well, Dr. Loeb, you want to address that?
Mr. LOEB. I can't answer the question directly other than to say that we have done everything we can to find it, diving and trawling. We expended considerable energy, the Navy did. And we just have to assume that it is buried under the sand on the bottom somewhere, and as a result we haven't been able to find it.
Mr. SHERWOOD. How much of that plane—I mean, I see the reconstruction. How much of it haven't you found? It looks pretty complete.
Mr. LOEB. We have probably certainly better than 90 percent, maybe 95 percent of it by weight.
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Mr. SHERWOOD. And that is the thrust of my question. I don't believe in coincidence, and the part that we are talking about is the part we can't find.
Mr. LOEB. We are looking at every potential ignition source. We have not eliminated the possibility of the scavenge pump, and we are looking at all the potential ignition sources.
What I can tell you for certain is what the Chairman said. This airplane broke apart because of a fuel air explosion. It was ignited by something in that tank, something that got the energy into the flammable vapors, and that is what we are spending our time on now.
In addition, as the Chairman said, we are also finalizing the work on the witness group. The reason this investigation is taking as long as it is is because when the public comes up with thoughts and ideas, and they are expressed in the media, we have to spend time looking at it and trying to rule it out. And that is what we have been doing. That has clearly extended the life of this investigation.
Mr. SHERWOOD. But you are saying that the cause of the crash was a fuel—air fuel explosion in the wing, in the center tank the wing?
Mr. LOEB. In the center wing tank.
Mr. SHERWOOD. And that would blow the wing off, and you would have a huge other part of the plane catapulting to the earth?
Mr. LOEB. There is no question it would blow the plane apart. We have demonstrated that in England and in other tests here in this country.
Mr. SHERWOOD. And do your eyewitness accounts square with that theory?
Mr. LOEB. We haven't completed the work on the eyewitnesses.
Mr. SHERWOOD. How is that possible, Dr. Loeb?
Mr. LOEB. Because it is a very complex event and we got the witness reports from the FBI only a year ago. It has taken us a long period of time to make certain because we have the parties involved. We have TWA, ALPA, Boeing, and the FAA, and we are working to get full agreement of all the parties as to what these witness accounts are saying so that at the end of this investigation, we will not have people saying that it was not thorough, that we didn't look at every aspect. But what I can tell you from the work that is going on so far, it is consistent with our view of how the airplane came apart.
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Mr. SHERWOOD. You didn't have the eyewitness accounts available from the FBI until 18 months after the crash?
Mr. LOEB. That is approximately correct.
Mr. HALL. That is correct.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Was that pretty distressing to you?
Mr. LOEB. We had been able to see the reports. They were in New York. My people could see them and go through them in New York, but they were not available in a way in which the parties to the investigation could see them or have access to them. That we only got about a year ago.
Mr. SHERWOOD. So you had access to them, or you didn't have access; I am confused.
Mr. LOEB. We had access to them in the offices of the FBI in New York.
Mr. HALL. We didn't have physical control over them, and the only access was to NTSB officials and not to the party investigators.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Well, but the parties—I think I understand that. Your party system has to be collaborative? You don't do anything without them?
Mr. LOEB. It does not have to be collaborative, but it is the way we work. Because of the issues that were raised regarding what the witnesses may have seen, we believed that it was appropriate to include the parties in our factual review of the witness statements, and indicating this witness saw a streak of light go up, and this witness was at that location and that far away and so forth, so that the analysis could then be done by us, the Safety Board.
Mr. SHERWOOD. But I think this interchange we have had in the last 2 minutes is a little illustrative of why there are people listening to some crazy theories.
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Mr. HALL. That is correct.
Mr. LOEB. Yes, sir.
Mr. HALL. That is correct. And that is exactly what Congressman Traficant was concerned about. And as I say, the procedures are being reviewed. We are trying to review and follow the recommendations to be sure that some of the mistakes that were made are not repeated in the future.
You will remember, sir, this incident occurred within a week of the opening of the Atlanta Olympics. Security forces of the country were on alert. When the event occurred, the FBI acted aggressively in terms of investigating the matter.
Mr. SHERWOOD. I think that is to the FBI's credit.
Mr. HALL. That is correct. But to pinpoint the area where we did have some difficulty in cooperation was the area of the eyewitness statements, which should have been done and I assume will be done in the future jointly in those situations, and we would have had access to the witnesses. We were restricted access to the witnesses in the initial part of the investigation.
Mr. SHERWOOD. It is pretty hard for me—and I will be done—to explain to my constituents that they do not have an answer to the death of their families because the government, our government, is bickering about turf. That is a pretty hard sell.
Mr. HALL. Yes, sir.
[The information received follows:]
On June 15, 1999, Safety Board staff met with Congressman Sherwood regarding this matter. In addition, the Board arranged for the Congressman to travel to the Calverton, New York, facility to view the TWA flight 800 wreckage, reconstruction and personal effects.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
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Ms. Johnson.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hall, let me thank you for being here, and thank you for your service to the country.
You did allude to the crash of USAir Flight 427 that occurred in 1994. Your report had recommendations that there might be redundant systems and rudder problems might have resulted in the crash, and how the aircraft—and it has been reported that FAA is reluctant to order these changes, and I would like to know the status of the negotiations or if there are any going on that will result in some change being made.
Mr. HALL. I had a meeting, Congresswoman, with Ms. Jane Garvey and her top officials at the Federal Aviation Administration in my office last week on the status of the current recommendations that we made as a result of the final report. Monday of this week, Ms. Garvey announced that she is going to accelerate a recommendation that the Board made several years ago concerning the enhancement of recorders on 737s. The work is proceeding on the retrofit of the power control units on all of the fleet, and she has assured me that she was going to be aggressively moving forward on all the recommendations the Board made out of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Loeb, is there anything else we should add in that regard?
Mr. LOEB. No, sir.
Ms. JOHNSON. Since 1967, the record reflects that the Board has investigated more than 100,000 aviation accidents and more than 10,000 others. Do you feel that the recommendations that you come up with are implemented or at least evaluated to the point of whether or not to implement them?
Mr. HALL. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. JOHNSON. They are, OK.
In Texas we have an influx of Mexican trucks, and many of these trucks do not meet the same safety standards. And I know when we passed NAFTA, there was a period of time which they were given, and I think that time is here. Have you found any indication that this influx of Canadian and Mexican trucks has had an adverse effect overall to truck safety?
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Mr. HALL. No, ma'am, we have not seen any statistics in that area. As you know, NAFTA has not been fully implemented. I have concerns in this area, and we are going to have a hearing in the State of Texas or in one of the border States later this year on that subject. I hope we will get participation from both the Canadian as well as Mexican safety officials to see what needs to be done to ensure safety in the United States with the entry of these trucks.
They are of concern to me, Congresswoman, because many of our arteries are already over capacity. We are bringing additional heavy trucks in with the capacity we presently have, which is going to put additional strains and pressures, and I think it is going to take aggressive oversight and action at the State and Federal Government level, working with the international authorities if we are going to do this without more accidents and more loss of life.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.
I–35, which is the designated NAFTA highway, has more of that highway in Texas—it runs from Canada to Mexico—than any other place. And it would be good if you could just take a look at the traffic on that highway.
The other thing is Texas has a little bit of every other part of the Nation, so you pick any spot that you want to see in the Nation and find a spot just like it in Texas, so you can have your choice and have your hearing there.
Mr. HALL. We are still proud that Sam Houston was Governor of Texas after he was Governor of Tennessee.
Ms. JOHNSON. He found a better place.
Mr. DUNCAN. Chairman Hall, thank you very much. We have spent longer with you than we usually do, but we have had a lot of interest, and we do need to move on to these other witnesses, so we will conclude this panel now and move on to our next witness. Thank you very much.
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Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Our next witness is Ms. Cynthia C. Lebow, who is associate director of the Institute for Civil Justice, with the RAND Corporation. And she has been in charge, I think, of the major study that has been done of the NTSB. And, Ms. Lebow, we will let you present a summary of your findings and your testimony at this time. Thank you very much for being with us.
TESTIMONY OF CYNTHIA C. LEBOW, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CIVIL JUSTICE, RAND CORPORATION
Ms. LEBOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also wanted to state my Tennessee credentials, that my father was born and raised and spent much of his life in Tiptonville, Tennessee.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, very much.
Ms. LEBOW. I am sure that most of you are familiar at this point with the RAND Corporation, one of the Nation's largest and most diverse think tanks headquartered in Santa Monica, California. RAND is known for its independence and its nonpartisanship. As a not-for-profit entity, RAND assures its independence through extensive peer review and open publication of its research. I mention this today because of the preliminary or draft status of the report I am going to discuss with you.
Our findings are still preliminary, subject to change. When our final report is completed and published later on this spring, at that time we will be drawing some specific conclusions and making recommendations that we will be very pleased to discuss with you in detail.
It is no secret in the aviation community that for the past 8 months or so we have been engaged in a study commissioned by the NTSB to examine two interdependent aspects of NTSB operations. The first is a study of NTSB practices and policies with regard to the training of aviation accident investigators. This has included an analysis of future technological developments in aviation that will impact the technical capability of NTSB investigators.
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The second task has been a review of the party process as a means of supplementing NTSB skills and technical knowledge, including an examination of the liability environment in which the NTSB and the party system operates.
We have carefully considered the current and future workloads, staffing and training of NTSB personnel, particularly those who staff the Office of Aviation Safety and related divisions. We have employed a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including case studies of recent NTSB investigations, analysis of data provided by the NTSB and other sources, and extensive personal interviews with dozens and dozens and I would say perhaps a couple hundred NTSB employees and representatives of outside interest groups and stakeholders. We also administered a detailed survey to the NTSB technical staff.
My limited comments today are directed towards certain trends in aviation and the workload and training of the NTSB staff, those issues that are most relevant to the reauthorizing legislation before you.
Overall, the fundamental concern is the quality and independence of NTSB investigations. This is true with respect to every mode of transportation, but it is of great consequence to the traveling public in the context of major commercial aviation accidents.
The NTSB's mission is simple and straightforward: To determine the cause of accidents and to write safety recommendations to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. The NTSB's unique safety role is contingent on the ability of the Board and its staff to conduct independent, timely and accurate investigations.
Ms. LEBOW. As the NTSB prepares for the future, significant challenges can be anticipated. Our research suggests that while there may be fewer major aviation accidents, those that do occur will be far more complex.
TWA 800 and USAir 427 are not anomalies outside the normal pattern of the NTSB's investigative work, as some people have suggested. They are representative of the worst case, but potential and even probable accidents of the future.
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The potential for tragedy grows as passenger loads increase. Today, a Boeing 747 may routinely carry 400 passengers, and very large transport planes are in the planning stage. A single event in which hundreds of people are killed will receive overwhelming public and media attention, stretching current NTSB capabilities and leaving few remaining resources available for other investigations.
The NTSB must also respond to the rapid growth and systems complexity that is characteristic of the new generation of aircraft, large and small. Here the most significant trend is the interconnectedness of systems that will drive a fundamental reordering of investigative management and processes, the complex systems accident, such as USAir 427. A large number of failure scenarios will have to be evaluated and even researched.
In addition, evidence of the failure mode may often be missing. NTSB investigators and others have told us that it will no longer be possible to find the cause of accident just by looking at the debris and broken parts of the aircraft. Increases in accident complexity emphasize the importance of training.
Accident investigators must be trained in a broad multidisciplinary routine matching the systems that they are called on to analyze. But adequate training is contingent on balancing the NTSB's workload on the one hand and adequate funding for training on the other.
Our research has revealed that the NTSB operates at a continuing excessive workload, making it very difficult for the staff to find the time to do the necessary training. There seems to be a particular problem for the more senior staff. At the same time, the costs of private-sector training courses that would be appropriate have frequently exceeded the available training budgets. This will become highly relevant as the NTSB grapples to become familiar with increasing numbers of foreign aircraft, aging aircraft, complex integrated systems, human factors, cockpit automation, and emerging national airspace architecture and operations.
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Finally, NTSB investigations can only be as good as the investigators who do them. Our research points to two areas of difficulty here, the aging of the senior investigative staff and the ability of the Board to attract the best possible personnel with a salary structure that may not be adequately competitive with the private sector or even other government agencies. Workload, staffing, and training are interrelated issues at the NTSB that deserve immediate attention if the agency is to maintain its critical independence and meet its growing and changing and very challenging responsibilities.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be happy to answer any questions you or other members of the committee have.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
How much did the NTSB pay RAND for the study, Ms. Lebow?
Ms. LEBOW. It is a $400,000 contract between RAND corporation and NTSB.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Pease.
Mr. PEASE. You caught me off guard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Lebow, I want to thank you for the work that you are doing and the time that you spent to be with us. One of the questions that it raises in my mind, though, and I don't want you to misinterpret this question because I am grateful for the very professional work you are doing, is this: Most government entities have an inspector general. This one doesn't.
And the question is, if it did, would they need you?
Ms. LEBOW. Well, Mr. Pease, I am going to draw a little of my prior experience from the Justice Department and other places to answer your question. As I understand the Inspector General Mandate and Inspector General Statute as I have worked with it in the past, that generally is to look at malfeasance within an agency, fraud, some type of inappropriate conduct by the employees of the agency or inappropriate contracting or something like that. That is really not what our study is about.
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Chairman Hall determined that it was an appropriate point in time to take a very self-critical look at the NTSB and its operations. Clearly at this point, the Board has been challenged by the TWA 800 investigation, by the USAir 427 investigation, and by others as well. He felt that it was time in the 30-year history of the agency to bring an independent evaluation to the operations of the NTSB in how possibly they could do things better.
As I understand what an inspector general would do that is really not their mandate. They are not looking at how to improve the processes or management of an agency, but really looking at whether something has gone wrong or a crime has been committed.
Mr. PEASE. I appreciate your response as it deals specifically with the question at issue. Moving to the broader question about why there is not an inspector general at the NTSB, do you have an opinion on that?
Ms. LEBOW. I really don't. That is not a question that we have looked at.
Mr. PEASE. You have heard, I am sure, a reference made earlier to one of the proposals which was to address part of the personnel situation through a program of overtime compensation. Do you have an opinion on that?
Ms. LEBOW. Well, overall, we have looked at the issues of overtime. We have a graph, a little speedometer meter looking at where the NTSB is in terms of its overtime. We have looked at an industry average in terms of what the NTSB technical and investigative staff, the time that they put in versus aerospace engineers and other professionals in the industry.
The NTSB staff is generally way over the average. They are way over the industry average, they are way over the normal 40 hour workweek. Certainly in these extraordinary situations where ValuJet and TWA 800 and Swissair and so on occur, they are routinely putting in more than 60 hours a week and, as someone from the agency mentioned, 70 and 80 hours in some instances.
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We feel that our research has very much validated the notion that there is a great deal of overtime, much of it not compensated I might add, to put in.
Mr. PEASE. Would you differentiate the appropriate response on this subject of overtime between the general overtime that is done in working through the—I don't want to say routine, but the work that the agency does every day and those specific emergencies, disasters, where one would, I suppose, expect there to be long hours.
Ms. LEBOW. This is actually—you are touching an on area, Congressman, that is something we are going to be discussing in more detail in our final report. But it really goes to some of the information generated within the NTSB in terms of its ability to answer some of the questions that you are posing here today.
They do not have a method of recording how much time is devoted to a particular accident, so that it is hard for us to measure, it is very difficult for us to measure the particular time hours that went into an investigation. You can tell how much time a person is spending and how much time they are working, but whether they are working on accident A, B, or C, or writing a report or exactly what they are doing is very hard to tell.
I would suspect when we finalize our report we are going to be making some recommendations about some of those personnel management issues that would help them out a great deal.
Mr. PEASE. Aside from the overtime issue, you made reference to compensation in general, and whether this agency may be competitive with—there is nothing exactly parallel, but similar agencies. Have you completed that work yet?
Ms. LEBOW. We have, and again I am perfectly happy to discuss this on a preliminary basis.
The NTSB has to hire a number of senior people and experienced people. It is very difficult for them to bring people into the agency who, for example, just graduated from college. So they tend to be bringing people in who have 10, 15 years experience.
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We looked at the NTSB salary structure in comparison to the salary structure again in the industry of the aerospace industry and used aerospace industry association data on this. We found that it is in exactly that critical middle-level hiring, which is the most important hiring that the NTSB does, that they are essentially the least competitive with the private sector.
There are also issues related to the fact that the NTSB is not on the same salary structure as the FAA and even some of the investigative agencies that they work side by side
with.
Mr. PEASE. Thank you very much.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Based upon what I have read of your testimony and what I have heard you say, I would like to get an evaluation from you on—it seems like you do advocate that the National Transportation Safety Board needs an increase in funding.
Would I be correct in assuming that you think they need an increase in funding?
Ms. LEBOW. I think the critical issues are, Congressman, again the quality and the independence of the agency. The RAND Corporation is never in a position of recommending funding or a specific funding level.
But we looked at the operations of the agency, both in terms of the personnel and the staff that they have, how they are trained, what the budgets are and so on for that. And also the functioning of the party process, which I really didn't get into in so much detail today. But we believe that the resources of the NTSB need to be leveraged in a variety of ways.
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Some of that—and your committee will have to draw its own conclusions about the dollar figures to be attached to increasing staff or additional resources. Some of the leverage can come from additional use of outside resources, liaisoning in a more constructive way with other government agencies, with outside consultants, academic experts, and so on.
But overall because of the trends in aviation, the complexity and so on that is occurring, and also some of the issues that are related to the functioning of the party system, we do believe that the resources of the NTSB that they can draw upon probably should be increased to some degree.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Since I got you to state that, based upon the increases that they are proposing at the present time, do you think that—with everything else that you propose that they do, do you think those increases would be ample and sufficient to allow them to function at peak proficiency?
Ms. LEBOW. Again, we have not looked at specific dollar figures.
We haven't tried to estimate slots or what types of personnel would have to be brought into the specific positions within the agency. We have tried to look more broadly over all of the functioning and the management of the organization. I am really not in a position to say whether it would be ''X'' millions of dollars one way or the other, but just as a general notion the fact that the resources of the agency need to be leveraged.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You talked about them utilizing outside professional people and perhaps some other people within the governmental structure.
Don't you think that if they were to do that to a significant extent that they might be losing their independence, their objectivity? If they wind up utilizing some people from the FAA, and I have nothing but admiration for the FAA—but if they wind up using some people out of the FAA, I think that you might have individuals who are working at somewhat cross purposes.
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Ms. LEBOW. We are not necessarily talking about using individuals that come from the other regulatory agencies such as the FAA. We are interested in their use of NASA resources, DOD resources, the fabulous national scientific laboratories that the United States has at its disposal, as well as other organizations, well-known academics and so on to bring additional information to the NTSB and supplement their own knowledge and their own expertise as well as that of the
party.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much.
That is all I have, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. Mr. Sherwood?
Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you. Did you feel that your examination was met with candor by all? Was it easy to dig out the information that you needed?
Ms. LEBOW. Well, first of all, let me say, Congressman, that I and all of our research team were absolutely astonished at the candor of the agency, their openness with us.
Literally, we were living at the agency and have been to a considerable degree over the last few months, as well as the candor and openness of people from outside who deal with the NTSB on a regular basis. I joked, but it is really true that I would set up interviews anticipating an hour or two and at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon people would still be saying to me, do you have more time, could you stay a little longer. So there is a lot that people wanted to say about the NTSB, and I think the industry as a whole as well as the staff of the NTSB has been enormously helpful to us.
We are going to be discussing the issue of information management within the NTSB. There were points of collecting data and analyzing data that were difficult because of the capability of the NTSB to do that. We are going to definitely be making some recommendations to them about how they could do that better.
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Mr. SHERWOOD. Was the party system of crash investigation something that you analyzed?
Ms. LEBOW. Yes, we did.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Did you have a recommendation on that?
Ms. LEBOW. We are going to, again, be making some conclusions and recommendations. Overall, the party system is something that is essential for the functioning of the NTSB given its size and its mission.
It is not going to be possible for the NTSB or its 149 members of the aviation safety staff to know how you would design a Boeing 777, or how you would operate an American Airlines. That is just not possible. But there are issues within the functioning of the party system, that the parties come to these investigations very well-intended with an important safety motive on one hand. But, at least in the corporate offices back in the corporate board rooms, there are many agendas going on with the parties. I think that it is something that just cannot be ignored. It is really fairly obvious.
The liability issues are very visible as well as the notions of corporate responsibility, maintaining market share. This is a very competitive industry whether you are an airline or a manufacturer, so there are a lot of agendas that these folks or their corporate management, at least, come to the table bearing when they participate in an investigation.
Mr. SHERWOOD. My concern was not for the necessity of having the broad spectrum involved. I understand that.
It was just how you manage it such that one of the parties doesn't have a hand in convincing what the evidence suggests. Do you understand what I mean? I understand that you need to bring all of that pool of knowledge together, that makes all of the sense in the world. But I would think managing it would be difficult.
Ms. LEBOW. Managing the party process and the investigation process as a whole is again something that we are going to be addressing. Ultimately, I think it relates to quality and independence of the agency. The better informed, the better trained, the more knowledge the NTSB investigators have, the more they are able to know two basic things. And that is whether they are being told accurate information and they are going to be able to ask the right questions because one of the things that has been told to us in our study is that if the NTSB doesn't ask the right question, they are not going to get the answer.
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Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. Traficant.
Mr. TRAFICANT. I just have one question and I would like to submit it to the record.
This question is very similar to what has just been asked. You have just completed this review of the party system and I would like to know if you would submit it in writing: The exact findings of that review, the recommendations you made, and what, if any, recommendations you made were incorporated into the policy of the Board.
Ms. LEBOW. Congressman, there is a major report in the works. RAND has this review process. It is our open publication process. Chairman Hall has suggested that he would like to have book-signing supporters, but there will be a major report that will be produced from our research.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right, Ms. Lebow, thank you very much.
It has been an honor and a privilege to have you here with us today. Thank you for being here.
Our third and final witness will be Commander William S. Donaldson, III, U.S. Navy retired, an aviation mishap analyst who is here to make some comments concerning the NTSB and its organization and particularly its investigation of the TWA 800 crash.
Commander Donaldson, thank you for waiting, thank you for being here with us today, and you may begin your testimony, sir.
TESTIMONY OF CMDR. WILLIAM S. DONALDSON, III, USN, RET., AVIATION MISHAP ANALYST
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Commander DONALDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel a little bit like a Daniel in the lion's den after listening to the testimony. If you will pardon me, let me get a little bit of water here.
I would like to—you are going to see that I am going to make some very startling comments. I know that plenty of you have read ahead. I want to make it clear that I bear no animus to anybody in the room, outside the room, NTSB, or anywhere else in the government.
In fact, my primary source of income is retirement from the Federal Government. And I have been on these crash scenes. I have picked up bodies. I have picked up pieces. I know what it is like, and it is not pretty. So I want to start that way.
I guess I also want to do a disclaimer here because some people can read my testimony as if I was either directly involved in supporting TWA's position or Boeing or any of the other parties, and I am not. I have not received a penny from any of the interested parties nor would I take it. My motive, as an individual, is to follow through with what I did in 1965 and that was swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.
I have testimony that I cannot give in the open, but I would be glad, too glad to pass it on to the chairman. What I am going to show you here today, I think, will get enough people's attention. The fact is that aircraft, Flight 800 was shot down, it was the 27th civil aircraft shot down by MANPADS missiles worldwide.
It is a major aviation concern. And while all of the good offices that we have been listening here to today, the word missile is like cancer. If you are a patient in a hospital, you don't want to hear it.
I want to point out that this administration was forewarned. Right here in the State of Maryland at Westminster, October 11, 1994, a fully armed French Mistral missile was found on its tripod laid over, on the side of the road. The state police were informed by a passerby. They picked it up, and it was subsequently destroyed.
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Now, an interesting aside, when one of the journalists that I have been dealing with called the NTSB about this incident, they said that it didn't happen. All it took was a phone call to Westminster and the state police to confirm that it did happen.
One other quick instance, this is not my statement, but I wanted to set the stage. I was stationed in Italy for three years on the Sixth Fleet. I know of an incident in which the Italian Federal Police managed to capture terrorists, if you want to call them that. I call them surrogates for other nations, captured them surrounding the airport with these types of missiles. It is a real threat. It is a real threat worldwide.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this administration knew. They were forewarned. They knew it when the aircraft was shot down, and the good offices of the President were used across the Board to shut this thing down as a terrorist act. Now, if I could, let me take a sip, this statement is about 6 minutes long, and then I will be at your mercy, sir.
Mr. DUNCAN. Go ahead.
Commander DONALDSON. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, based on the performance of the NTSB while investigating the unexplained loss of Flight 800, I no longer believe that the NTSB is capable of fulfilling its aviation mission. Its abuse of power used to muzzle witnesses and interested parties simply to promote the administration's agenda proves that it has become so politicized that the Board itself has become an aviation hazard.
The solution would be to recast the NTSB as an independent body staffed only with aviation professionals and overseen by a joint committee of Congress. At a minimum, the current leadership should be replaced and portions of title 49 and title 18 used to intimidate interested parties must be reformed.
Under the current law, the NTSB leadership has misled the American people. They did this through unfettered access to the media, unending pursuit of junk science theories without budgetary constraint, common sense, or air crash protocol. They have used aerodynamically impossible CIA cartoons, fraudulent videos of hydrogen-filled tanks exploding, and fear-mongering appearances by officials pitching a nonexistent flight hazard.
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It all goes unanswered by parties, all very severely constrained because of their highly regulated industries. Their bottom line depends first on government bureaucracy's good will. Current sanctions invite political abuse by barring more competent independent investigations or even public statements by parties until after the NTSB final report.
Silence by the parties is misinterpreted by media and the public and easily exploited by partisan politicians. In this incident 15 weeks before the 1996 election, Mr. Clinton had motive to cover up a missile attack that he had clear forewarning of as early as October, 1994.
The abuses are unprecedented. An author of three books and his wife, James and Elizabeth Sanders, are now felons convicted in Federal court for receiving worthless passenger seat fabric. Captain Stacey, a no-nonsense TWA Flight 800 crash investigator, gave them this material for analysis. He admitted in court that he had lost all faith in the integrity of the NTSB and FBI and didn't believe his action was illegal.
As a past fleet nuclear war planner, it is disappointing that the same Justice Department that allowed our trillion dollar special weapons technology to be compromised by China because it refused to wiretap a spy before the election, didn't blink when a Federal judge found Jim Sanders suffered unconstitutional searches and seizures or blush when Mrs. Sanders, shackled behind the back, was dragged through a media circus on the way to arraignment. She lost her airline career, her house fighting the charges, and now faces the possibility of a 10 year prison sentence. Her crime was a phone conversation with Captain Stacey that neither party understood to be illegal.
This rabid behavior to get Stacey and Sanders with the arrest a week before NTSB's public hearing was planned for maximum intimidation. In fact, Mr. Hall wanted Linda Kunz, another exceptional TWA crash investigator, arrested after she pointed out NTSB employees were changing passenger seat location data to conform to NTSB's theory. Linda had the presence of mind to use two state police officers to photograph evidence.
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TWA attorneys sent Mr. Hall a letter citing these facts, but she was still forced out. Acting as defense consultant for Mr. Sanders, I asked him for photographs of the few remaining parts of the center wing tank, left side body wall. When the trial judge allowed photographs during discovery, I viewed those pictures and determined the few military experts that examined the cash debris were right.
The number two main tank exploded into the center wing tank, not the other way around. I then called the NTSB and left a voice mail message asking where to find the microscopic fracture face-edge analysis of these side wall parts. I received a call back from the attorney informing me that it hadn't been done.
Ladies and gentlemen, the analysis wasn't done because it would prove the loss of the aircraft was caused by an explosive event in the number two main tank. I informed that attorney that if the NTSB final report comes out without an analysis of the side wall edge metal and without warhead detonations in the number two main tank and missile shots at that same tank recommended by the military in their report, he could expect me to file criminal malfeasance and misprision of felony homicide complaints.
Every time NTSB officials have spoken publicly about TWA 800 they have lied or shaded the truth.
I will close with physical evidence of one of the bigger deceptions. At the same time Mr. Hall's letter to the editor was published in the Wall Street Journal in April of 1997, titled, It Wasn't a Missile, he was playing—I am sorry—he was paying for the covert recovery of the very missile parts that he denied existed.
The Scallop boat, Alpha Omega, found and discarded overboard the first stage of the shoulder-fired missile in October of 1996 two miles from Flight 800's explosion point. This is near the spot where Islip's radar recorded a boat traveling away from the exploding aircraft at 30 knots.
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Through questions submitted for us by this committee, and we are thankful to Mr. Traficant and his office, we forced the FBI to admit that they failed to identify that boat. As Mr. Hall's letter was being being written, Special Agents Hanson, Petry, Bowen, Lane, Francis, Pica, Mauzey, and Bokal were manning the four scallop dredgers scouring the ocean bottom for missile parts.
My assistant, Tom Stalcup, up here is up from Florida State. He is chasing a doctorate degree in physics, and he is helping me here. If you could hold up that manual.
Here is the FBI trawler operations manual replete with diagrams of missile parts and an operational order with highlighted instructions to hide these parts from crew and other interested parties. Boeing, TWA, and the Congress of the United States are other interested parties.
And the map that Tom has got here, here is a precision map used by these men clearly indicating the primary purpose of the operation was to recover missile parts.
I want to take an aside here. There were three items that were considered special interest. One of them, Mr. Sherwood, was that last pump that the NTSB was looking for. The instructions in that manual applied to it as well as the missile parts. In other words, if it was found, I cannot sit here and tell you in good faith that the American people know it yet. But I can't say the obverse, either.
Most of the area dredged did not have the crash debris but instead fell within the assumed range of a Stinger missile from the explosion point. The existence of this map is one of the several reasons Mr. Hall wouldn't let the Navy supervisor of salvage take questions at the public hearing.
I have access to 119 eye witnesses on 18 boats, 4 aircraft, and 31 locations ashore that surrounded the missile launch. None of these witnesses were allowed to testify at the NTSB hearing. Instead they played a laughable depiction of a noseless 747 climbing 1,700 feet, an aerodynamically impossible event.
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Even so, it hardly would appear to be streaking like a flare or a rocket as described by these witnesses. The sad thing is that the media bought it because it was a slick video and perfect for television. Ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to hold special hearings in the lost of TWA 800, take the actions recommended to reform the NTSB.
That concludes my prepared remarks. I would be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. DUNCAN. Do you want to go ahead?
Well, I was going to let you go ahead first, and then I got the message that maybe you want to wait a few minutes.
Well, Commander Donaldson, let me ask you a couple of things. I spent 7–1/2 years before coming to Congress as a criminal court judge trying felony criminal cases. I have seen and heard and read about many overzealous Federal law enforcement officers and Federal prosecutors who have broken rules and been guilty of prosecutorial excesses.
While that is not true in the majority of the cases, it is true far too much. Then also, I know that many, many judges who try criminal cases very much lean toward the prosecution. It is just easier that way, and the fact is that most people who are tried, a very high percentage of them, are guilty. So I am a little skeptical of the prosecutors and some of the judges and so forth.
I still have great faith in the judicial system because all of the defendants are allowed to have lawyers who generally fight really hard for them. Then also after 7–1/2 years of trying jury trial cases, I have become convinced that in about 98 or 99 percent of the cases the juries come back with the right decision because they are called in at random, and it is pretty hard to convince 12 ordinary citizens with their common sense that somebody is guilty if they are really not. All you have to do is have one on there that you don't have to convince.
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What I am wondering about is, I noticed in the material that you submitted to us that you were a consultant to the Sanders and their lawyer or lawyers. What I am wondering about is how—why do you feel they were convicted? I am sure that all of these questions that you have raised——
Commander DONALDSON. They were guilty. That is my point. They were guilty of the fact that they actually had these small two and three square inch pieces of fabric.
The law—I am not sure when it was changed, but it was upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony. It is because of the actions of the Congress, I am supposing, or whoever allowed that change. What you have done is transfer power to people that want to abuse a captain—Captain Stacey.
Let me tell you what he had to do. He was the real target. He was the toughest TWA investigator in the field, in the hangar. He was getting sick of the investigation, and he risked the last 5 years of his career, which would cost him a million dollars out of his own pocket, if he lost his job. But he took that risk anyway.
Well, Sanders, who wrote the book wouldn't turn on him. So Sanders ends up with a worse deal. They are going to prosecute him with a felony and let Stacey, the captain, off with— he still hasn't been sentenced, but he is still going to keep his job. My point is this: It is the power that you gave this Board or, in this case, the Justice Department, I guess, to—really, there is no reason to even have the law except to stop people from pilfering things.
When you turn it against the best investigator that TWA had in the field and that is used to throw him out of the investigation, it is a wrong application of law. Technically, that jury—I walked out of there thinking that the jury was going to nullify it, but they didn't.
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I guess that is the best way that I can answer that.
Mr. DUNCAN. So you think that the jury felt that even though the Sanders had no real criminal intent or motives——
Commander DONALDSON. I believe firmly that neither party had any idea.
If you were the senior captain of TWA and you see that stuff was going that upset him, you see a red stain on seats that you think is suspicious. It may or may not—I am not standing here saying that that proved that there was a missile that hit the airplane.
That is not what the military said, and I am going their way now. The point is the fact that they set that crash scene up like a nuclear weapon depository. They had an outer defense system which was manned by the local police and the FBI in the hangar. A guy like me going in there— and I go right to the parts. If Stacey could have walked out legally and gone to an analysis group and handed stuff to them on his own under his own recognizance, nobody would have ever been in trouble.
I am wasting time here——
Mr. DUNCAN. I am so limited in my time. Let me move on quickly to just a couple of other things. You submitted with your material a letter dated April 5, 1999, that you sent to Phillip M. Condit, the head of the Boeing Company, and Mr. Jerald L. Gitner, the head of TWA.
Would they not have great, great incentive to support you economically, or to go along with you or hope that you found some definite proof so that there wouldn't be any question that their company was not involved in any way or at fault in any way.
Commander DONALDSON. Mr. Chairman, I have been associated with aviation my entire life. My father was an Air Force officer.
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When you get to a corporation the size of Boeing, what they are really trying to do is put the safest product out on the road that they can. I can say this with a straight face. I don't even own stock in the company. I can't conceive that a professional aircraft producer would produce a faulty product, and then when it caused the death of people try to hide it. Because every day after that they are putting billions of dollars, literally, of equipment, the same equipment in the air every day and risking millions of lives.
Sure, you are going to risk a big lawsuit. I would trust the party, particularly Boeing or any other major aircraft production outfit, to do the initial investigation and then let the government look at it the whole way, but don't let the government run it. Because in this case the government was a party. I am telling you, I can't tell you everything here that I do know, but I know this administration had extremely urgent pressure to change the subject before the election.
Mr. DUNCAN. What did you think about what Chairman Hall said, that if there was some sort of conspiracy, it would have had to have involved hundreds or even thousands of people.
Commander DONALDSON. Mr. Traficant made the same point very eloquently.
The best way to explain that is if you don't have access to the evidence, you don't have a conspiracy. You don't have to hide anything. What happened here—you have to look at this from the top. The administration, and I mean the White House, by using the Justice Department with a thousand agents in the field— in fact, I think they might have even bumped the NTSB people trying to get to the scene with FBI agents.
The FBI agents went in there with a flood. What they did is they clamped the lid down on these eye witnesses. I have got two air crews that I want to get to and I can't find. They are so damned scared probably because of what the FBI told them when they interviewed them that they are not going to talk to somebody like me.
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So Justice took the entire weight of eyewitnesses off the Board. I am going to tell you when you talk to them eyeball to eyeball, it takes two or three of them to convince you. Mr. Al Gipe, all of 14 miles away—he is the chairman of his own board. He is an engineer. He was a World War II gunnery officer. He gave me a perfect description of a Stinger missile launch. He gave me the angle that it rose from the surface. He gave me the time of flight. When I matched it up against what the military was saying happened to the airplane, it was dead-on.
Mr. DUNCAN. When you have an incident like this, do you think this was some sort of terrorist group? I mean, somebody usually claims credit for something like this.
Commander DONALDSON. Yes, sir, and I think the credit was there.
If you would check closely, there was an Arab newspaper in Washington and one in London that received a communique about 6 hours before 800 was shot down. It was a really weird one. They took credit for the Riyadh bombing using some new name, they always come up with a new name, which had happened in November of 1995. And then in two sentences they took a shot at President Clinton calling him silly or something.
And then they said the American people are going to be shocked at where we attack next, where and when we attack next, we are going to attack at dawn, and isn't dawn near? The airplane went down at 8:30 at night but in Mecca, it was dawn. And it was dawn the next day. That is a coded—there are people in this—I don't want to get—take too much of your time, but the bottom line is the President of the United States is the most informed person in the world. I am sitting here personally telling you that I believe that he knows things that he hasn't been honest to the American people about, about Flight 800.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Lipinski.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Commander, is it your view that if the administration, the Justice Department, the National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA, the FBI, if they said that this was a missile attack that it somehow would have been detrimental to the reelection campaign of President Clinton?
Commander DONALDSON. I do, sir, because you have to make the connection.
Obviously, in the first administration there were a lot of events, Waco and other things that were terrorist events not connected directly with this. But in this case, I believe that the media would have figured out pretty quickly that there had been an advanced warning.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Advanced warning to who?
Commander DONALDSON. To the administration, the government.
Mr. LIPINSKI. In this newspaper that you are talking about?
Commander DONALDSON. No. I am talking about, for instance, the missile that was found in Westminster was right under an airway. That missile, all that had to have been done was set it up right and fired as an aircraft went over it.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Yes, but we have an awful lot of aircraft flying in and out of this country. I don't know how we would have known that it was going to be this plane that was going to be attacked.
Commander DONALDSON. That is not what I meant. I am sorry, sir. I do know that. When I say the ''event,'' I didn't mean Flight 800 specifically. I meant that the threat was there, and I do believe that there was an attempt by the administration thinking that—I believe they thought there were at least three missiles in the country. The London Times, in August, right after the crash, 5 or 6 weeks after the crash——
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Let me assume that the administration thought there were three missiles in the country. For the sake of argument I will give you that.
I don't understand why if a TWA American plane is attacked by a missile that that is detrimental to the President's reelection campaign.
I don't understand that. What is the connection there?
Commander DONALDSON. Because he is the commander in chief. There are only a few agencies that would have privilege to this information. Those are the agencies like CIA that provided that video.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Why would he want to cover it up? How does it hurt his reelection chances if people know that the plane was shot down by a missile?
I don't understand that.
Commander DONALDSON. What you have to follow up is what is the game plan. If the surrogate state was Iran, which I believe probably was, you are not talking about Kosovo. We are talking about a nation with 40 million people, with their mind set challenging them could make the situation a lot worse than it was leaving it alone.
Mr. LIPINSKI. But you are saying that the cover-up is because it was advantageous to the administration, to the President, to cover this up, not reveal to the American people that it was a missile to enhance his reelection campaign, correct?
Commander DONALDSON. To allow the campaign to go as it was going.
Mr. LIPINSKI. It would seem to me that if I was President of the United States and if a U.S. plane got shot down by a missile from some surrogate that was representing Iran and I had that information, based upon the history of this people in this country and the way that people react, I would certainly announce that to everyone here showing that this country is under attack, and it usually enhances the person that is in office as far as all of the public opinion polls go.
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And he probably could have even gone out and shot a few more rockets into Iran that would have increased his popularity with the American people. That is the connection that I can't make. I don't know why the President of the United States would choose to cover this up in an election campaign when, it would seem to me that based upon our history, it has always been advantageous for the president of this country to be under attack during a presidential election campaign.
Commander DONALDSON. Let me make a quick analogy with Pearl Harbor. Twice as many civilians died on Flight 800 as died at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. I think the number was 111 civilians. There were almost 2,000 military or whatever.
But the point is—an attack like this is not just a normal terrorist attack. That is a major act of war. And all of a sudden you are running up a—you are getting me to speculate on what the President should or shouldn't have done. I am just telling you that I have other information that I can't talk about that I can relay to you in private.
I think that I can prove to you that he was extremely personally agitated, and he wanted to control the event right away. That gives me a seque into something that I didn't have in here, but it is upsetting to me as an American. The reason the Navy got assigned to recover that crash debris was because the President of the United States wanted control. I know that for a fact.
Mr. LIPINSKI. The reason that who got assigned to it?
Commander DONALDSON. The Navy. The Navy should have never been involved in that. The reason is Weeks Marine had capability on scene the next day.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Who had?
Commander DONALDSON. Weeks Marine, Inc. They had the biggest of salvage equipment on the East Coast, anywhere in the Atlantic. They were there. They could have supported 50 divers the next day.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. So you are saying that the President wouldn't—we haven't figured out yet why this would be advantageous to the President for a story not to come out that it was a missile.
In fact, my position is it would have been advantageous to him for it to come out. You, for some reason, don't believe it would be. But now you are telling me that the President put the Navy in charge of recovering the pieces from the crash because he could control it; correct?
Commander DONALDSON. Yes. Let me tell you that was egregious because it meant the bodies stayed underwater an extra week. It meant that the wreckage was underwater for much longer than that.
Weeks Marine was capable of—they were superior to the Navy's ability. Not only that, but the entire debris field had been mapped by Captain Debow on the Ship Rudy. He told me, in testimony to me, that within 11 hours of being on the scene—and he was there at dawn the next day, he had radioed in to NTSB all major debris locations, had the general debris fields outlined.
That means if—Weeks Marine, with some of the biggest lifting and salvaging equipment in the world, was there. They got there and they anchored. They sat there for 3 days after the FAA had contracted them and after the Coast Guard had contracted them verbally to start the salvage. That mission was aborted, and all of these families were told that we are doing everything that we can do to bring them up.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Let me ask you—you already stated here that the Navy is in on this conspiracy and the National Transportation Safety Board is in on this conspiracy——
Commander DONALDSON. I am not saying—I don't have proof that anybody is in on the conspiracy. What I am saying is people are following orders. There is a chain of command that comes down from the White House.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. If there is conspiracy, there is more than two people saying that it was a missile so it is a conspiracy. I am just trying to establish how many people you think might be in the conspiracy.
Commander DONALDSON. I am not an attorney. I tell you what, I would duck the conspiracy question.
I can tell you that the only military experts that did a report put seven recommendations out to the FBI, and the first one was to fire live warheads in the number two tank. The second recommendation was to fire live missiles and inert missiles at the same tank.
The reason is there is 45 square feet of missing forward spar in front of the number two tank and there is also an indication that the whole left wing was overpressurized from that hit. There were no fragment hits in the aircraft because the missile detonated inside 6 feet of fuel. Within 2 feet, these little fragments are going to stop in the fuel.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Excuse me, Commander, but how many military air crashes have you participated in as a lead investigator?
Commander DONALDSON. Lead investigator, one or two.
Mr. LIPINSKI. How many overall?
Commander DONALDSON. Because of the way that the military is structured, I have supervised probably a dozen. I go through and critique in the superior—the wing safety officer, for instance, reviews every squadron crash in detail——
Mr. LIPINSKI. So as lead, one or two, and you were involved in 12 other ones. Have you ever participated in an official investigation of a civil air crash?
Commander DONALDSON. No.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Who funds your research?
Commander DONALDSON. No one has funded my research. I have had direct reimbursement for bills for rental cars and for motels, and that is about it, through Accuracy in Media.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Accuracy in Media?
Commander DONALDSON. Right.
Mr. LIPINSKI. They are interested in your theory, apparently?
Commander DONALDSON. In fact, I came to them when I saw the Navy being tagged in Mr. Sanders' book for shooting the airplane down. I have run too many missile exercises. I have been a fleet observer. I knew that that didn't happen, but I also knew that the airplane was shot down.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Your contacts in the military have given you this information; correct?
Commander DONALDSON. No. In fact, I can tell you there are two fleet commanders right now that I flew with, and purposely—I have informed them of everything that I have written. Just so they don't get blindsided, I sent them a copy.
But I can't get an active duty officer involved in this. They would get eviscerated.
Mr. LIPINSKI. So your information has come through the military?
Commander DONALDSON. Yes, it did.
It came through Mr. Traficant's office on 21-page report from China Lake. It had seven recommendations on how to handle this problem if it was a missile.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Is any of that information classified?
Commander DONALDSON. No, sir.
It is on my web site. Mr. Traficant was good enough, and Mr. Marconi, even though we had separated at the point, I have to applaud them. They followed through and they sent that report to me.
Mr. LIPINSKI. My time is long exhausted. Thank you very much, Commander.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Pease. Mr. Traficant.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to welcome Commander Donaldson here.
I made available to you everything that I had because at some point people were being branded as a part of a massive cover-up.
And I am not going to question your motives, but I am certainly going to question the outcome of what your analysis is, and I would like to make a few points. At one point working with us, you expounded a theory that the missile could have been from a Canadian frigate.
Hear me. Let me finish.
Commander DONALDSON. OK.
Mr. TRAFICANT. And at a second point you tried to impress our investigation that you believed it was two missiles that were involved.
Commander DONALDSON. Correct.
Mr. TRAFICANT. One, a U.S. Navy missile from an Aegis Cruiser, in fact, that was patrolling, looking for supposed terrorist activity in the region who had then identified the launch of a terrorist missile and did themselves then launch a second missile to intercept and that this went awry causing the problem.
Number three, if I am not mistaken, you maintain now it is a stinger missile that was responsible, a Chinese-made vanguard shoulder-type launch.
I just want to let you know that you were not just giving me that information. We painstakingly analyzed objectively everything that you and everybody else, including the Board, made available to us. And as an old sheriff, believe me I did that.
Now there are several things I just want to say here. Jim Kallstrom, the FBI agent in charge for 2 weeks, led this Nation to believe that there may have been a missile strike here and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. So in the beginning, the theory that somebody was covering up does not wash with me. And quite frankly, I think Mr. Kallstrom and the FBI did a great job in this investigation.
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Now, we have come to learn that, yes, there was an awful lot of exclusion from this site because when the Feds took it over, they believe there could have been foul play and they put the clamps on this site to the point where they may have excluded our Board. That could never happen again.
But for there to be accusations on the competencies or integrity of Chairman Hall completely flies in the face, and that is why we parted ways, frankly, our investigation.
We have investigated everything you talked about. Here is a point that I would like to make. Everybody that was involved communicated with us. We had nobody that closed the door except one person whose name I will present to the Chairman later who was a significant individual and had an eyewitness, supposed, account who stated to his commanding officer after the flight that he had seen nothing.
But several periods later—I forget the exact period of time—made a statement that he saw what he thought was a missile. Under hypnosis, supposedly, this revelation came about, and we further later in our investigation came to understand that he had hired a Hollywood agent and was preparing some type of activity, and we discounted that theory.
Here is the only point I want to make: 95 percent of this craft has been recovered, one of the greatest bits of investigation piece work perhaps in our history. And in that 95 percent, every expert, both domestic and international, concurs that this was an internal explosion, and there was not one iota of damage to 95 percent of this craft that has been recovered from the outside.
So we looked at a heat seeker. We looked at a device that might explode without hitting. We looked at the possibility of a missile entering the center wing fuel tank. And there can be, to our opinion—and you are probably more professional and knowledgeable than we are—but from looking at the information, we find it unreliable to conclude that anything other than the center wing fuel tank and an explosion therein was responsible.
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Second of all, the manufacturer clearly now agrees with the fact that it was a center wing fuel tank explosion. They don't know what the cause was. They don't know and I don't believe to this point we have truly identified the exact cause.
But the question I make to you now is with 95 percent of the plane having been recovered, with it being documented by every and all sources that this was an internal explosion—it was not caused from without—how do you maintain that it was a missile that shot down TWA Flight 800? Because we think you are wrong, sir.
Commander DONALDSON. I appreciate the comments, and I thought at the time of that earlier stuff you mentioned. What I was doing was for the benefit of the committee. I thought that I was working directly with your office; and I was feeding everything, including the Canadian theory. I interviewed an individual that had been a government official in Canada who honestly believed that one of their ships might have been involved, and I passed that information on.
Now for you to sit here and attempt to discredit where I am now——
Mr. TRAFICANT. Let me intervene. I am not attempting to discredit you. I am just letting you know that everything that you presented to us was, in fact, investigated thoroughly.
Commander DONALDSON. And I want to say it was shared candidly, honestly; and I told you I didn't know all the facts. I didn't. You have to remember, especially when you are on the outside, you have got to fight, you have got to do everything you can to get to the facts. And in the last 3 or 4 months, the facts have been overwhelming.
I have interviewed these people on boats all the way around that engagement. I am as positive as I am taking my next breath that aircraft was engaged with a missile. It was seen by dozens of extremely credible people.
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Mr. TRAFICANT. What particular evidence do you have——
Commander DONALDSON. It is in the military report that China Lake put out. There is a lot of waffling in there because it is not a popular position. The point is that in the graphics that you see a stinger missile or a copy of the stinger, SA–16, 18, Chinese Vanguard, the steering for the hot vents underneath the center wing tank. There is 450 degree air that comes out of those air handlers. The military did imaging and gave it to the FBI. The FBI agents in the field knew, I think, that they had solved the problem.
That missile was fired—I have got the military computer runs that show that there is a 93 percent probability of hit. When you fire a missile from where that dadgum radar contact was out there—I think you remember that it was your office, and I think it was you, sir, that asked the questions of the FBI and we forced them to admit that they dropped the investigation without identifying the boat that was closest to the disaster.
Let me finish, sir, if I can. I am going to tell you exactly what happened. The stinger missile has technology that as it approaches a high speed target, as the angle rate increases rapidly, it is getting closer, it suddenly will steer forward because they don't want the missile to fly through the engine exhaust plume.
The evidence appears to me that firing from that boat, with witnesses that gave me the dadgum same angle of ascent, the same time of flight for the missile, that missile was steered for the center and would have steered forward and then you jump to the China Lake report that said that in the unlikely attitude—this is their verbiage, in the unlikely chance that a missile hit coming straight in at the wing, all of this is possible.
And check—because they have—they really have put the blinders on to the damage on the left wing. None of that damage is found in normal crashes. It only occurs when there is ordnance involved. Only the left wing was overpressurized. The left side of the center wing tank was blown into the center wing tank, and the center wing tank did explode.
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One of the reasons they kept the debris field secret from Stacy, didn't let Captain Stacy listen to the tape of the cockpit more than once, was because the evidence becomes self-evident to professionals. And in other words, if you don't do—if the boss doesn't say give me the best dadgum run on that left side wall you can and I want to know how much pressure was on it when it failed.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Commander, let me conclude my questioning. I don't want you to misconstrue or misinterpret any of my questions or my behavior as being critical to you as an American. I believe you are a patriot and a fine one. I believe you are very capable, and I want to thank you for all that you have done.
Commander DONALDSON. Thank you, sir.
Mr. TRAFICANT. The last couple questions I have, just yes or no. Did you personally inspect any of the 95 percent remains of this craft?
Commander DONALDSON. No, only photographs.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Number two—I want the committee to know this—on the 95 percent recovery, which was absolutely amazing, there was not one iota of evidence of any penetration from without.
Number three, every agency that has had the opportunity to personally inspect and analyze the data and the remains of 800 are absolutely positive without doubt that it was an internal explosion that downed 800.
In furtherance, of all the eyewitness reports over a period of time, none of them saw all of it. And from all the theories that have been advanced, there has been one scientific fact that has been concluded. On or about the time of that explosion, it would propel the craft even higher in altitude; that anyone who saw this would, in fact, not know what they were looking at but would be bombarded by many different sensations as a result, the interpretation varied very much.
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The FBI painstakingly moved to investigate a missile, Commander, and here is the point I am making. There was no evidence of damage from without at all. And that craft and those parts are still available. Now, my last question to you is this: at some point we sort of parted ways, when you maintained that the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board was so off base, he was acting as a traitor.
Commander DONALDSON. I don't think I used those words, Mr. Traficant.
Mr. TRAFICANT. I think we advised you to not use those words. You were prepared to send them in a letter. That bothered us. And that is one of the areas why maybe we didn't go much further with you.
But I want to say this to you: many of the questions that you asked, nearly all of them, were included in the Traficant questions to the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board, every tough question you had. So I just want to conclude by saying I don't know what the conditions are here and what the conclusion will be by this committee, but I want to say that we had one of the most exhaustive investigations in aviation history in the United States of America, Commander.
And I am going to conclude by saying this: I want to commend Mr. Hall; I want to commend the National Transportation Safety Board. I want to commend the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I want to commend the Navy, and I want to commend the Central Intelligence Agency. And I don't know if I have ever gone on record of doing any of that because I believe that it was a center wing fuel tank explosion from within.
But if there still remains any doubt, and Commander Donaldson is a worthy advocate of his theory, then I would not be opposed to any furthering investigation that would benefit his cause. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, very much. Any final comments Commander Donaldson?
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Commander DONALDSON. No, sir, I knew this was going to be a tough appearance. But I guess I would say just for a minute, I want to put it on record what I think actually happened. I think that somebody came in our waters. I think the boat that wasn't identified by the FBI probably contained the shooter.
I think a missile was fired, that we have dozens of people that agree with the flight time of the missile, where it came from and where it went. I think it steered for the center wing tank. I think it veered forward and entered the number two main. There is 45 square feet of front spar missing in front of that tank.
The FBI did explosive testing that is secret on that same area. The FBI took live ordnance out to those boats and showed the captain what a stinger ejecter can looks like, first stage, looked like. They did that based on testimony. When they got out there, the guy on the boat said I already found that and threw it back, and he did that in October.
I don't know what was shared by the FBI. I doubt very much. And I apologize to Mr. Hall or Dr. Loeb or anybody else if they were not privy to this information. I had to dig and dig and dig and finally just go find the people to find this out. What I am telling you is consistent with what the only military people that looked at this and wrote a report said.
I would beg this committee to take seriously the seven recommendations that China Lake put on the table and spend the extra few bucks and do the test if you can. And I will be the first one with my hat in my hand; and I will do a back flip, and that is tough for a 300-pound fat guy, and I will apologize to these people.
But to do it is our duty. It isn't about people; it is about the Constitution, and it is about abuse of power. I am a citizen, not supported by anyone else. I am doing my duty. And that is all I can do.
Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much. That concludes this hearing.
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[Whereupon, at 1:13 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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