Word: butterfields
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When he revealed the existence of Richard Nixon's tapes, Alexander Butterfield doomed the President. A former White House aide, Butterfield was only truthfully replying to the questions of Senate investigators, but he incurred the enduring hatred of Nixon loyalists, who thought that he should have covered up for his old boss...
Nearly two years later, Butterfield is still being hunted down by hard core Nixonians. Now head of the Federal Aviation Administration, which is under attack for neglecting safety standards, he has been hampered by the undercutting and sandbagging of Nixon allies in the Department of Transportation, the parent body of FAA. What is more, Butterfield has been getting midnight phone calls from old associates who have berated him for coming clean about the White House tapes. One call came from Rose Mary Woods, the former President's longtime secretary, who angrily assailed Butterfield as a "son of a bitch...
Taped Voice. By law, the NTSB cannot order the FAA to take action, but it can prod hard. On Oct. 8, NTSB Chairman John H. Reed sent Butterfield an official letter about the "unprofessional conduct" demonstrated by a few U.S. flight crews. To document his concern, Reed cited a number of horrifying incidents resulting from sloppy flying in recent years-a DC-9 striking the water and then bouncing safely into the air while nearing Martha's Vineyard; airliners running into trees, cottages and a sea wall while approaching airports; a DC-9 hitting the runway so hard...
...addition, Butterfield last week took steps to require the airlines to adopt in 1975 a device that sounds an audible warning when the leading-edge flaps on a Boeing 747 do not deploy fully-the apparent cause of a Lufthansa accident in Nairobi, Kenya, on Nov. 21 that killed 59 people. Again, Butterfield is open to criticism for not having acted sooner. There had been enough cases of flaps not extending on 747s well before Nairobi to cause British Airways to install such a warning device in 1972, even though none of the failures had at that point caused...
...conscientious and energetic man, Butterfield is respected by his peers on the NTSB and by the pilots themselves for his attempts to crank some new life into the sluggish and unwieldly bureaucracy he inherited. "If we can get tough, tough as hell," he says, "and not favor any segment of the aviation community, we are going to gain the respect we deserve." On that point, Butterfield clearly has the firm support of a constituency of nearly half a million Americans -the number that fasten their seat belts daily in U.S. airliners...