Latest News and Efforts from the Government Accountability ProjectCommentary: NASA shuttle whistleblowers

3 Feb 2003 20:45:01 -0000

Commentary: NASA shuttle whistleblowers

Martin Edwin Andersen
<b><i>Is it deja vu all over again?</i></b>

The immediate aftermath of the death of seven Columbia astronauts is a time for mourning and remembrance, not fingerpointing or "I told you sos." However, reports that this second tragedy engulfing a space shuttle--and the hopes and pride of several nation--could have been prevented point to an inescapable conclusion: Not much has changed for NASA's public-sector whistleblowers.
 
 
When, on Jan. 28, 1986, a leak in one of its two reusable solid rocket boosters ignited the main liquid fuel tank and caused the space shuttle Challenger to explode just 73 seconds into its tenth flight, present in the horrified viewing audience was the man who foretold the tragedy. Roger Boisjoly, a veteran expert in mechanical design and structural analysis, had warned his bosses at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol that the space shuttle was not ready for launching. As a technical troubleshooter on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, he vigorously defended his position in a teleconference session with NASA managers. In recommending and defending the original no-launch decision about the spacecraft, Boisjoly found himself at odds with four Morton Thiokol senior managers. After taking over the meeting, the gang of four voted to launch the Challenger in spite of his continuing objections.
 
 
Despite the fact that whistleblower Boisjoly's testimony served as the cornerstone for later exposures of organizational misconduct at Morton Thiokol and at NASA, his prescience did not spare him the fate of many others who "dare to commit the truth." Both Morton Thiokol and NASA immediately launched reprisals against him, going into what Boisjoly called "cover-up mode." He was placed on an investigative team in an effort to keep him and his disclosures out of the limelight. Years later, he still was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- the kind of gut wrenching usually associated with overstressed combat veterans. 
 
 
Now, after the Columbia's long groundward fall and searing legend writ in the skies, Britain's Observer newspaper is first past the post in telling us that another whistleblower's pleas were ignored, with the second shuttle crash as a possible result. According to the account, NASA chiefs "repeatedly ignored" safety red flags, causing a former NASA engineer to plead with the White House that President George W. Bush issue a presidential order to halt further shuttle flights in order to prevent "another catastrophic space-shuttle accident."
 
 
The last 11 years of 36-year NASA veteran Don Nelson's career were spent as a
mission-operations evaluator for advanced space-transportation projects. Nelson, the Observer reported, warned the president last summer that
NASA management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel had failed to heed
growing warning signs of another shuttle accident even as, in the last four
years, the spacecraft experienced a growing number of incidents that suggested it was a tragedy waiting to happen.
 
 
Nelson's entreaties were ignored by the White House and later, in October, the rejection was reaffirmed by NASA. "I became concerned about safety issues in NASA after Challenger," Nelson told the Observer. "I think what happened is that very slowly over the years NASA's culture of safety became eroded. But when I tried to raise my concerns with NASA's new administrator, I received two reprimands for not going through the proper channels, which discouraged other people from coming forward with their concerns. When it came to an argument between a middle-ranking engineer and the astronauts and administration, guess who won?"
 
 
NASA, of course, is very good at one kind of damage control: public relations. After the Challenger disaster, its safety discourse became a kind of mantra, even as the facts were proving to be something quite different. Tight budgets, political and client pressures, it continually affirmed, would not be placed ahead of safety as NASA's primary concern. As NASA's then-director of space flight, Fred Gregory, told the House Space and Aeronautics subcommittee last year, "We will never launch when it is unsafe." 
 
 
It is often said that whistleblowers are like miners' canaries, warning of
impending tragedies that others cannot sense. Experience also shows that,
particularly in "can-do" workplaces like NASA's, whistleblower complaints
reflect otherwise hidden or unrecognized agency pathologies. For example, in
the early 1990s, senior officials at NASA's Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) -- the guardians of an agency's correctness -- were themselves the
targets of accusations that they were asking their employees to lie about
illegalities they witnessed in the inspector general's office. The NASA OIG
also was accused of "signing off" on a $1.7 billion contract so that a
contractor would have reduced oversight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
These and other revelations were brought to light by whistle-blowers, often
at considerable risk to their professions.
 
 
Ironically, following the state-of-the-art whistle-blower language Sens.
Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) managed to attach to the
Sarbanes-Oxley [Corporate Accountability] Act signed into law last year by
President Bush, the space program's future private-sector whistle-blowers,
possibly modern-day Boisjolys, will enjoy real job protection. However, as
GAP legal director Tom Devine notes, NASA employees have the same low level of protections shared by federal workers across the government. 
 
 
This is because a hostile federal circuit court of appeals, with sole
jurisdiction on whistle-blower cases, has systematically thwarted the intent of Congress when it unanimously passed the Whistleblower Protection Act(WPA) in 1989, and strengthened it, in 1994, in order to try to force the activist court into making fairer and more rational interpretations. Today, NASA's whistleblowers -- people who make a difference -- must avail themselves of a law that is little more than a Trojan Horse against their interests.
 
 
Throughout the land, Americans gather to honor the Columbia's fallen heroes.
Surely cities and towns around the country will soon have their share of schools, parks, planetariums and other public works named in the astronauts' honor. It is fitting that they do so.
 
 
But there is a precious honor Congress can bestow, too, and that is to give
federal workers -- including those at NASA -- a fighting chance to do the right thing at the workplace without having to risk professional suicide. If a real whistleblower protection law is passed -- one that mirrors the good news of the Grassley-Leahy amendment for the corporate sector -- maybe we will not soon have to mourn a third space-shuttle catastrophe.
 
 
Martin Edwin Andersen is GAP's media director. In 2001, Andersen was awarded the U.S. Office of Special Counsel's "Public Servant Award" for extraordinary service in protecting national-security information and in rooting out corruption at Janet Reno's Justice Department.

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Commentary: NASA shuttle whistleblowers

Martin Edwin Andersen
<b><i>Is it deja vu all over again?</i></b>

The immediate aftermath of the death of seven Columbia astronauts is a time for mourning and remembrance, not fingerpointing or "I told you sos." However, reports that this second tragedy engulfing a space shuttle--and the hopes and pride of several nation--could have been prevented point to an inescapable conclusion: Not much has changed for NASA's public-sector whistleblowers.
 
 
When, on Jan. 28, 1986, a leak in one of its two reusable solid rocket boosters ignited the main liquid fuel tank and caused the space shuttle Challenger to explode just 73 seconds into its tenth flight, present in the horrified viewing audience was the man who foretold the tragedy. Roger Boisjoly, a veteran expert in mechanical design and structural analysis, had warned his bosses at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol that the space shuttle was not ready for launching. As a technical troubleshooter on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, he vigorously defended his position in a teleconference session with NASA managers. In recommending and defending the original no-launch decision about the spacecraft, Boisjoly found himself at odds with four Morton Thiokol senior managers. After taking over the meeting, the gang of four voted to launch the Challenger in spite of his continuing objections.
 
 
Despite the fact that whistleblower Boisjoly's testimony served as the cornerstone for later exposures of organizational misconduct at Morton Thiokol and at NASA, his prescience did not spare him the fate of many others who "dare to commit the truth." Both Morton Thiokol and NASA immediately launched reprisals against him, going into what Boisjoly called "cover-up mode." He was placed on an investigative team in an effort to keep him and his disclosures out of the limelight. Years later, he still was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- the kind of gut wrenching usually associated with overstressed combat veterans. 
 
 
Now, after the Columbia's long groundward fall and searing legend writ in the skies, Britain's Observer newspaper is first past the post in telling us that another whistleblower's pleas were ignored, with the second shuttle crash as a possible result. According to the account, NASA chiefs "repeatedly ignored" safety red flags, causing a former NASA engineer to plead with the White House that President George W. Bush issue a presidential order to halt further shuttle flights in order to prevent "another catastrophic space-shuttle accident."
 
 
The last 11 years of 36-year NASA veteran Don Nelson's career were spent as a
mission-operations evaluator for advanced space-transportation projects. Nelson, the Observer reported, warned the president last summer that
NASA management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel had failed to heed
growing warning signs of another shuttle accident even as, in the last four
years, the spacecraft experienced a growing number of incidents that suggested it was a tragedy waiting to happen.
 
 
Nelson's entreaties were ignored by the White House and later, in October, the rejection was reaffirmed by NASA. "I became concerned about safety issues in NASA after Challenger," Nelson told the Observer. "I think what happened is that very slowly over the years NASA's culture of safety became eroded. But when I tried to raise my concerns with NASA's new administrator, I received two reprimands for not going through the proper channels, which discouraged other people from coming forward with their concerns. When it came to an argument between a middle-ranking engineer and the astronauts and administration, guess who won?"
 
 
NASA, of course, is very good at one kind of damage control: public relations. After the Challenger disaster, its safety discourse became a kind of mantra, even as the facts were proving to be something quite different. Tight budgets, political and client pressures, it continually affirmed, would not be placed ahead of safety as NASA's primary concern. As NASA's then-director of space flight, Fred Gregory, told the House Space and Aeronautics subcommittee last year, "We will never launch when it is unsafe." 
 
 
It is often said that whistleblowers are like miners' canaries, warning of
impending tragedies that others cannot sense. Experience also shows that,
particularly in "can-do" workplaces like NASA's, whistleblower complaints
reflect otherwise hidden or unrecognized agency pathologies. For example, in
the early 1990s, senior officials at NASA's Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) -- the guardians of an agency's correctness -- were themselves the
targets of accusations that they were asking their employees to lie about
illegalities they witnessed in the inspector general's office. The NASA OIG
also was accused of "signing off" on a $1.7 billion contract so that a
contractor would have reduced oversight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
These and other revelations were brought to light by whistle-blowers, often
at considerable risk to their professions.
 
 
Ironically, following the state-of-the-art whistle-blower language Sens.
Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) managed to attach to the
Sarbanes-Oxley [Corporate Accountability] Act signed into law last year by
President Bush, the space program's future private-sector whistle-blowers,
possibly modern-day Boisjolys, will enjoy real job protection. However, as
GAP legal director Tom Devine notes, NASA employees have the same low level of protections shared by federal workers across the government. 
 
 
This is because a hostile federal circuit court of appeals, with sole
jurisdiction on whistle-blower cases, has systematically thwarted the intent of Congress when it unanimously passed the Whistleblower Protection Act(WPA) in 1989, and strengthened it, in 1994, in order to try to force the activist court into making fairer and more rational interpretations. Today, NASA's whistleblowers -- people who make a difference -- must avail themselves of a law that is little more than a Trojan Horse against their interests.
 
 
Throughout the land, Americans gather to honor the Columbia's fallen heroes.
Surely cities and towns around the country will soon have their share of schools, parks, planetariums and other public works named in the astronauts' honor. It is fitting that they do so.
 
 
But there is a precious honor Congress can bestow, too, and that is to give
federal workers -- including those at NASA -- a fighting chance to do the right thing at the workplace without having to risk professional suicide. If a real whistleblower protection law is passed -- one that mirrors the good news of the Grassley-Leahy amendment for the corporate sector -- maybe we will not soon have to mourn a third space-shuttle catastrophe.
 
 
Martin Edwin Andersen is GAP's media director. In 2001, Andersen was awarded the U.S. Office of Special Counsel's "Public Servant Award" for extraordinary service in protecting national-security information and in rooting out corruption at Janet Reno's Justice Department.

If you no longer wish to receive these e-mails, please send an email with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line. To one of the addresses below.
If you are recieving these emails from <a href=mailto:gap-general-list-request@whistleblower.org>gap-general-list@whistleblower.org</a>
If you are recieving these emails from <a href=mailto:gap-media-request@whistleblower.org>gap-media-list@whistleblower.org</a>