Top Official Rebuked For Comments To Congress

A union that represents NASA employees has criticized agency administrator Michael Griffin for his assessment of its work on a highly-publicized federal air safety project.

As ANN reported, NASA came under fire in October for holding back the results of the survey, out of fear there would be a backlash from the traveling public.

International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers union disputed Griffin's criticism of the program that interviewed literally thousands of commercial and private pilots.

"Our primary concern is that the American taxpayer will be deprived of the fruits of millions of dollars and years of valuable aviation safety research and development because of repeated judgment failures by NASA's senior leadership," the union said in a letter sent late last week to the House Science and Technology Committee, according to the Associated Press.

The union said his comments to Congress during oversight hearings in October reflected that pilots might report more safety fears to NASA than are recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Union officials said, "Griffin's testimony October 31 was 'shocking' and its own investigation found-"no valid scientific basis for the administrator's technical criticism"-of the National Aviation Operations Monitoring System.

This marks the union's fourth probe since the Associated Press investigated and wrote that NASA had closed the project down, and was withholding data from the study.

Griffin disagreed with a decision by NASA's explanation to the wire service denying them access to the material-that doing so could undermine public confidence in the airlines and could negatively affect airline revenues.

NASA has now agreed to release some of the additional material from the study before the new year.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.ifpte.org/index.htm