Replies

If no one flies for fear of terror all the peeps at the FAA would soon be defuncted and having to find real jobs. It is understandable that such fears color to the point of making questionable accident investigations. Time for randomly selected and appropriately well-educated citizen grand juries to take over a major part of fact-finding in these cases.

Now suppression of hard, sad and tough truth does at times serve general public goods. Such suppression though is to be extememly well-considered and I am doubtful that current federal agencies -- with a few rare exceptions -- are any more capable of that fine and extraordianry level of discretion and consideration to make such judgements.

And such methods -- truth filtering, PC-ism, political filtering -- all are deviant from fully-informing the public. Very risky. And they backfire greatly -- mightily -- when the truth does come out -- causing a public dissing of government and order. Encouraging cycnism.

And such methods do worse by engendering in officialdom and the potent official forces applied a general disregard for and poo-poohing of fact-finding the public itself of itself performs.

Truth is freedom -- only truth is unownable by one party or another, by one agency or another, by one line of officialdom or another.

If we want to skies to be safe, to be flying in all the glory and beauty of flying again -- we had best get back to the Truth. To trusting in the reaction of a fully informed public and recreating all fact-finding process to put the public back square in the middle of it.

Air Marshalls should at best, be adjuncts to the public safety on board an airliner. Not the sole agents of that safety. Public and crews should be involved -- and ready to be involved.

That's the clear lesson of Flights 63 and Flight 93. The passengers and flight crew are the best line agents of security.

It is their judgement and reactions that deserve respect, deserve leeway in making some occasioned rude action.