Word: knew
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...knew I could no longer stay in my job. once again, the FAA was manipulating a potential public relations crisis without a thought for the safety issues involved. The Secretary of Transportation's office was assisting the cover-up by insisting the report should be classified, even though the classifiers had already approved it for release. They didn't really care that the airport-security report wouldn't qualify for classification; it would take weeks to figure that out, and by then the Olympics would be over, the goal accomplished, the crisis past...
...expected change, I knew I had to devise yet another strategy to circumvent the FAA, to find a way to offer my concerns about safety and security directly to the public. I had to resign, even though it meant leaving the airport-security report behind and unprotected. The dot was adrift, blown wherever the winds of a media event or crisis carried it. The Secretary offered no leadership, no knowledge or understanding, no accountability. The administrator of the FAA was a figurehead. Neither of them heeded NTSB recommendations; neither followed through on the many reports detailing safety problems...
...weeks after TWA Flight 800 blew up, I sat through interview after interview on television as the country tried to sort out what could have gone wrong. Yet it was difficult for me to reassure the public when I knew about the FAA's sloppy safety and security record. To be sure, many FAA field employees are hardworking civil servants who have devoted their careers to aviation. They fly all the time, and so do their families and friends. Many FAA inspectors helped my office with investigations, reports and testimony before Congress. Senior FAA officials tried to reach compromises with...
Curious and incredulous at the macabre implications, I frequently asked about these elusive valuations and talked to many people who had heard about them or knew someone who knew someone who had heard about them. Yet I never met anyone who had actually seen the official figures, much less helped compile them. In many meetings, FAA officials argued as if they had those figures on the tips of their tongues--"losses," they would explain patiently, from the small number of crashes and even smaller number of attacks on planes just did not justify vast airline investments in safety and security...
...Tombstone Agency. Within the Washington Beltway, agency officials, government bureaucrats, staff on Capitol Hill, aviation lobbyists, airline representatives and journalists all understood the poignant irony of this nickname. The FAA will not do anything until people die. It was a sad, bad, inside joke. Only the public never knew how much truth...