Tue, Dec 04, 2007
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.
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