NASA Administrator Will Review FOIA Request

Sounding a bit like the farmer surprised to discover eggs in his henhouse, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin expressed apparent shock Monday over the furor surrounding the agency's apparent attempt to quell a damning air safety survey, for fear of damaging passenger confidence in the nation's airlines and air traffic control system.

"Since becoming NASA administrator, I have been an advocate for openness and transparency in the pursuit of NASA research and analysis," Griffin said in a prepared statement Monday. "As a general practice, I believe that NASA research and data should be widely available and subject to review and scrutiny."

As ANN reported, NASA tasked a contractor to conduct the phone survey of roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years, until the start of 2005. The agency then shut down the project... and refused to disclose the results publicly. Last week, NASA took the additional step to order the contractor to purge the survey results.

The Associated Press has tried to obtain the results of the survey for the past 14 months, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.) To date, those requests have gone unanswered... a situation Griffin swears he was not aware of.

"I have just been made aware of the issue involving information from a NASA survey of airline pilots regarding safety issues being withheld under the Freedom of Information Act," Griffin asserts.

"I am reviewing this Freedom of Information Act request to determine what, if any, of this information may legally be made public. NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public -- not on how we can withhold it. Therefore, I am asking NASA's Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Research, Lisa Porter, to look into this situation, including ensuring that all survey data are preserved, and report to me as soon as possible."

FMI: www.nasa.gov