Whistling in the Wind

By Sam Graham-Felsen, AlterNet. Posted January 18, 2006.

Gabe Bruno is a 29-year veteran of the Federal Aviation Administration. A dedicated, faithful, and -- in retrospect, he believes -- "naive" public servant, Bruno learned the hard way that blowing the whistle within the federal government is at best, a futile endeavor, and at worst, a career-destroying choice. He agreed to share his story with AlterNet under the safeguards of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

In 1998, Bruno, a field manager at the FAA's Orlando, Fla., Flight Standards District Office, was assigned to oversee safety standards during the merger between Valujet and AirTran, shortly after the former airline suffered a tragic accident that killed all 110 passengers on board. In the aftermath of the Valujet crash, the FAA carried out a 90-day safety review and created a new inspection program for all airlines to comply with. To Bruno's amazement, however, the FAA never applied this new program to AirTran (which had absorbed Valujet) itself. Bruno made numerous attempts to address the problem, but was "actively denied" by the FAA.

Meanwhile, in a separate incident, it came to light that over 1,000 FAA-certified mechanics had fraudulently obtained their credentials -- literally buying "A" grades on a paper certification test from a long-time FAA-designated examiner. After the examiner was criminally prosecuted and convicted, Bruno demanded that all mechanics be retested. This time, Bruno required mechanics to demonstrate hands-on skills on real airplanes; 75 percent failed. Yet, in the spring of 2001, Bruno's newly appointed superiors cancelled his re-examination program, offering scant rationale for the decision, and repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to re-install the program.

Fearing a repeat of the 1996 tragedy, he requested a face-to-face meeting with FAA Associate Administrator Nicholas Sabotini. "Instead of taking my concerns seriously and making the necessary changes, he treated me as some sort of disgruntled employee," said Bruno. "Next thing I know, after 26 years of outstanding performance evaluations, I've lost my management job." Bruno, who had spent over half of his career in management, was re-assigned to a lower-level runway safety position. He now works from home, isolated from his colleagues, "where I can voice my concerns but no one can hear me," he said.

After failing to correct the problems "from the inside, like a good soldier," Bruno took his fight to the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) -- an independent federal agency responsible for aiding and protecting whistleblowers within the government. Initially, there were signs of hope. Elaine Kaplan, the Clinton-appointed special counsel found "substantial likelihood" that Bruno's case had merit and ordered the inspector general (IG) of the Department of Transportation to carry out an investigation. The IG found no wrongdoing within the FAA, despite the fact that Bruno had provided a huge amount of documentary evidence to support his claims.

Kaplan demanded a re-investigation after Bruno provided point-by-point rebuttals to the IG's findings. Again, the IG reported that they had found no problems. "I could tell that the IG was pretty experienced at this, that there were a lot of midnight-oil meetings behind closed doors where people were saying, 'How are we going to respond to this, how are we going to respond to that?'" said Bruno. "None of my documentation changed, but their stories seemed to be evolving as the investigation went on."

But Kaplan remained convinced that Bruno's case was meritorious, ordering yet another investigation. By now, though, it was 2003, and Kaplan's five-year tenure as special counsel had expired. President Bush appointed Scott Bloch -- then deputy director of Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives -- to replace her and, soon after, everything would change.

All of a sudden, no one would take Bruno's calls at the OSC. When the IG's fourth report came back and dismissed Bruno's charges, he once again provided a comprehensive and detailed written rebuttal. Yet, no one at the OSC -- with which he had been closely working for months -- responded to his letters or emails, and his requests to meet Bloch in person were never answered. The OSC closed the case, failing to address Bruno's claims of far-reaching corruption and coverups, and determined that any alleged wrongdoing on the part of the FAA was unintentional. Bruno's first charge -- that the FAA's post-Valujet safety program had not been applied to AirTran -- was completely ignored. And although the OSC asserted that the fraudulently certified engineers should be retested, it made no mention of requiring hands-on examination -- the very core of Bruno's complaint. "Basically, they misrepresented and soft-pedaled on everything that was wrong about the FAA," said Bruno.

The silencing of Gabe Bruno and the whitewashing of FAA corruption is far from an aberration; under the tenure of Scott Bloch, such treatment has become standard practice. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), whistleblowers are coming forward in record numbers, yet the number of whistleblowers who have been helped by the OSC has plummeted.

Sam Graham-Felsen is co-author with The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel of the weekly online feature, Sweet Victories.

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