Posted on 05/06/2004 11:15:22 AM PDT by Archangelsk
ASHINGTON, May 6 — At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
The inspector general had been asked by Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, to look into how well the Federal Aviation Administration had cooperated with the 9/11 Commission.
The quality-assurance manager told investigators that he had destroyed the tape because he thought making it was contrary to F.A.A. policy, which calls for written statements, and because he felt that the controllers "were not in the correct frame of mind to have properly consented to the taping" because of the stress of the day.
Another official, the center's manager, asked the controllers to make the tape because "he wanted a contemporaneous recordation of controller accounts to be immediately available for law enforcement," according to the report, and was concerned that the controllers would take a leave of absence immediately, which is standard procedure after a crash.
On the tape, the controllers, some of whom had spoken by radio to people on the planes and some who had tracked the aircraft on radar, gave statements of 5 to 10 minutes each, according to the report.
The center manager had agreed with the president of the local union chapter that the tapes would be destroyed once the standard written statements were obtained, the report said.
Neither the center manager nor the quality-assurance manager disclosed the tape's existence to their superiors at the F.A.A. region that covers New York, or to the agency's Washington headquarters, according to the report.
None of the officials or controllers were identified in the report.
Other tapes were preserved, including conversations on the radio frequencies used by the planes that day, and the radar tapes. In addition, the controllers later made written statements to the F.A.A., per standard procedure, and in this case, to the F.B.I. as well.
But when one of the controllers asked if she could review her portion of the audiotape to refresh her memory before giving her witness statement, she was told she could not, according to the report.
The quality-assurance manager destroyed the tape despite an e-mail message sent by the F.A.A. instructing officials to safeguard all records and adding, "If a question arises whether or not you should retain data, RETAIN IT."
The inspector general ascribed the destruction to "poor judgment."
"The destruction of evidence in the government's possession, in this case an audiotape particularly during times of a national crisis, has the effect of fostering an appearance that information is being withheld from the public," the inspector general's report said. "We do not ascribe motivations to the mangers in this case of attempting to cover up, and we have no indication that there was anything on the tape that would lead anyone to conclude that they had something to hide or that the controllers did not carry out their duties."
But keeping the tape's existence a secret, and then destroying it did not "serve the interests of the F.A.A., the department, or the public," the report said.
The report also noted that the official who destroyed the tape had no regrets or second thoughts: "The quality-assurance manager told us that if presented with similar circumstances, he would again take the same course of action."
The inspector general wrote that this attitude was "especially troubling" and that supervisors should take "appropriate administrative action."
Although the matter had been referred to the Justice Department, the report added, prosecutors said they had found no basis for criminal charges.
An F.A.A. spokesman, Greg Martin, said that his agency had cooperated with the 9/11 commission and that that was how the tape's existence had become known at the agency's headquarters.
"We believe it would not have added in any way to the information contained in all of the other materials that have already been provided to the investigators and the members of the 9/11 commission," he said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Martin said that "we have taken appropriate disciplinary action against the employees involved." For privacy reasons, he said, he could not say what those actions were or identify the employees.
Ask PR about that ;-)
Sounds like he nailed it. Someone was treating this as union/management "business as usual" and the procedure that the top manager came up with -- have everybody put his recollections on tape while they were still as fresh as possible -- is a good one. Human memory is poor evidence, and with each passing minute and hour it gets poorer.
Unfortunately, because that procedure deviated from FAA SOP, the QA manager went into CYA mode. This is normal MO for the line trollers, who often feel that management is "the enemy" and "out to get them." Everybody talks the safety talk but when something happens, the bureaucracy as always responds by trying to cover favoured arses and lop off disfavoured heads....
The QA Manager was too simple to see that this was not a normal "deal" (as the trollers call a loss-of-separation incident or procedural violation) or mishap investigation.
I don't ascribe to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by bungling -- especially when dealing with the Friendly Aviation Agency or any other element of USG. This will no doubt become grist for the gubmint-haters, the Jack Cashills out there. But there's no substance here -- a jackass deleted a primary source record, dumb, and left us with another primary source record from the same people. I believe that the tape would have superior evidentiary value to the written statements, but as other posters here have pointed out, we are not talking about the data tapes, or the audio tapes of the comm frequencies or inter-controller phone network, all of which still exist. We are talking about a contemporaneous "oral history" sort of tape. The controllers as far as I know are all still alive and available to investigators.
The QA manager should have his pee-pee whacked for being too stupid to recognise that a four-plane hijacking and suicidal attack on American cities justified a violation of a bureaucratic rule. However, stupidity does not violate any FAA regulation of which I am aware.
As far as not releasing their names, heck, some of the cranks pushing these conspiracy theories are convicted felons -- would you want them creeping through your begonias and peering in your bedroom window? If the prosecutor had found the QA manager's actions to be criminal, not just stupid, then we would know his name. (And the reason we know the names of many of the Abu Ghraib miscreants is that a classified document leaked). But it was actually the overall center manager who violated FAA regs/policy for ordering the interviews in the first place. (IMHO that was an inspired act and he should be commended for it, it showed considerable nerve for a bureaucratic manager to do that, even if it ultimately was fruitless).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The thought process on our side is sometimes underwhelming!
That means the FAA guy is lieing through his teeth. Time to get Congress on his case and find out who the people were on the tape, who the so-called "quality assurance" guy was, and then demand to know their current salary!
As a former army air defense officer [Nike-Hercules], I consider that accomplishment a miracle.
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