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LACKING VIRTUES

Page 19

by Thomas Kirkwood


  These frightening prospects convinced Warner that he’d better occupy center stage at the White House meeting to which he had been summoned – a meeting rumored to have as its sole purpose Warner’s dismissal.

  His only hope, he thought, was to catch the administration’s hatchet men off-guard at precisely the moment they were trying to make a media event of his beheading. The meeting, which had just begun, was already forcing him to control his temper. He beamed his rage at the window behind Jeff Galloway, the President’s Chief of Staff. Now was the time for self-control; the time for self-defense would come soon enough.

  “Anyway,” Galloway continued, “what the President, everyone in this room and, I dare say, everyone in the country, is asking right now is why you, Mr. Warner, have not been able to tell us what is causing these crashes. In addition to killing a lot of people and wiping out a Ford plant, they have terrified travelers and thrown the ailing airline industry into an even deeper crisis. If they are allowed to continue, we’re going to start seeing major damage to our economy. We can’t stand idly by while this happens. So what’s your problem, Mr. Warner? I want to know what is causing these crashes. Why are you unable to tell us?”

  Warner would have preferred to leap across the table and punch Galloway in the face. Instead he looked down at his notes. “Let me make a minor correction to your statement, sir. Thanks to the dedicated work of hundreds of men and women who serve the NTSB in one capacity or another, I have been able to tell you the cause of three of the four crashes, and to supply a probable cause for the fourth. If you’ll give me a minute to go over the results of our investigative work, I think it might help all of us proceed from a factual rather than an emotional point of view. May I?”

  “Go ahead,” Galloway said grudgingly. “But it appears you still don’t get it.”

  Warner stood up abruptly. “I get it, Galloway. I know that you, the President, everyone in this room and everyone in the country want to know what is causing these crashes. Fine. Let’s go over the results of my work again. The 767 crash in Atlanta was caused by a defective engine mount. The 757 crash on the Hawaii track appears to have been caused by degradation of the O-rings that keep oil from leaking out of jet engines. Those engines are five thousand feet beneath the Pacific now, so the cause remains probable. The 767 crash in Pittsburgh was caused by four defective engine mounting bolts – bolts which have nothing to do with the engine mount that failed in Atlanta. And the Seven Five crash in Chicago was caused by the failure of a lock on a pressurization valve that sent one of the engines into reverse thrust during take-off.

  “We have completed these investigations in record time, and with conclusive results. That’s our job at the NTSB. So don’t try to make us scapegoats, Galloway. This isn’t the right issue for you and your people to play politics with. If we intend to find out why so many crashes are occurring, it’s going to take the cooperation of all Federal agencies represented here today – the FBI, the CIA, the FAA, and the NTSB. Leadership has been lacking, I agree. Not my leadership but the leadership needed to coordinate and direct the work of these agencies. And that, Mr. Galloway, means the leadership of your administration.”

  Warner didn’t know if it was standard practice for those seated in the Cabinet Room to applaud, but they were applauding when he sat down. Galloway cleared his throat to make a rebuttal, but for the first time in anyone’s memory he could find no words. Whether this was good or bad, Warner wasn’t sure. Galloway was known for dirty tricks and an almost pathological vindictiveness.

  FBI Director Bill Daniels took advantage of the lull to speak his mind. “Frank, thanks for putting things in perspective. If we’re going to go around apportioning guilt, I’m prepared to take some of the blame. Until that last crash, I simply could not bring myself to believe foul play was involved.

  “Now I’m willing to consider the possibility, thanks to the convincing case your man, Simmons, made yesterday. I’m sure Jeff Galloway and the President realize that your skills are invaluable to us right now. You’re the best in the world. You’re in constant demand from other governments whenever they can’t solve a crash of their own. I know this administration isn’t foolhardy enough to consider asking the best to resign at a time like this. And just to make sure everyone understands what I’m saying, let me state my position even more clearly: if Warner goes, I make my disagreement with the administration a matter of public debate.”

  Papers shuffled, glasses of ice water clattered, a throat was cleared, Galloway’s.

  “Thanks, Bill,” Warner said modestly.

  Secretary of Commerce Cathy Williamson said, “My agreement with Mr. Daniels is total. If Frank Warner is forced out, I will also go public with my opposition.”

  Secretary of State Olsen, one of the most skilled negotiators of the postwar years, jumped in to rescue a rapidly deteriorating situation.

  “All right, all right,” Olsen said. “That’s enough. Bill, Cathy, your position is understood. The important thing for us now is that we approach this mess rationally. We will all be losers if we have a palace revolt when we’ve got a national crisis on our hands.”

  Warner felt a surge of relief. He was getting the support he had hoped for, and getting it from some very important members of the administration.

  Secretary of State Olsen went on. “If it was Jeff Galloway’s assignment today to come here and ask for Mr. Warner’s resignation – and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was not – then I’m sure, now that he better understands the feelings of some of the top members of the cabinet, that he will work hard to convince the President to change his mind.

  “If, on the other hand, it was Mr. Galloway’s assignment to set in motion a coordinated investigation, which I hope it was, then I suggest we drop the rancor and get on with our agenda. Will you buy that, Jeff?”

  “Yes, of course,” Galloway said. “And the record should show that Mr. Warner’s attack was uncalled for. We are not interested in scapegoats. We’re united in our – ”

  “I’m pleased you’re not interested in creating scapegoats, Jeff,” Olsen said, deftly taking control of the meeting. “So let’s move on. Who would like to speak next?”

  Warner nodded at Hal Larsen. He knew the Boeing CEO had been invited as window dressing, a symbolic presence from the private sector who would add legitimacy to the Warner beheading. But now it was beginning to look as though Galloway had made another mistake. Circumstances had conspired to give Larsen the chance to speak, and judging from what Larsen had told Warner on the phone, he had a lot to say.

  Warner nodded at him again, urging him to grasp the moment.

  Larsen got the message. “If I may,” he said.

  “Of course, Mr. Larsen,” Olsen said. “In fact, it will be refreshing to hear someone’s perspective who is not caught up in the political fray.”

  Thank God for a few good men, Warner thought. Instead of being a political farce, this morning’s meeting had acquired the potential to get an effective investigation off the ground.

  Larsen, managing to show none of the discouragement Warner knew he felt, began his presentation with his usual board room authority. “I want to thank all of you for inviting me to this closed session,” he said. “I am aware of what the appearances are, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Galloway. As you know, the parts implicated in these crashes were all new parts that had been installed during recent servicing procedures. Our private research has confirmed that the parts were indeed manufactured by Boeing or its suppliers.

  “This looks incriminating, I agree. But what you do not know, what nobody knew until I spoke with Warner this morning, is this. The results of independent tests, copies of which I’m going to make available later, show beyond a shadow of doubt that some of these parts were manufactured years earlier than their serial numbers would indicate.”

  There was a chorus of murmurs in the room, punctuated by the staccato of Galloway’s pen hammering like a tiny gavel on the tabl
e top.

  “Go on, please,” CIA Director Willis said.

  “The tests involve molecular analyses of surface metals and show degrees of harmless but telling corrosion that can date the origin of these parts quite accurately. The tests were conducted by different labs who did not know their work was being duplicated. In one instance, the part in question is at least seven years old, but according to its serial number, it was manufactured in January of 1999.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Larsen,” FBI Director Daniels said. “But you are saying that you, as an engineer, are convinced these tests are correct.”

  “Exactly, sir. I hope you’ll run tests of your own. I assure you, you’ll come up with the same findings.”

  “What, in your view, does this mean, Mr. Larsen?” FAA Chief Shelton asked.

  “Simply this. That the parts that have failed and caused the recent sequence of disasters had been extracted from the production lines before they were stamped with serial numbers; that the parts were then modified to make them defective; that the defective parts were then somehow exchanged for good parts and given serial numbers matching those of the parts whose place they took in parts stream.”

  “All right,” Galloway said. “This is a great-sounding hypothesis that would explain everything. But with all due respect, Mr. Larsen, how the hell is anyone in his right mind going to believe your scenario? The only way it could be true is for someone to have started a massive sabotage operation against us years ago.”

  Larsen took a sip of water and raised his eyebrows. “That is correct.”

  CIA Director Willis said, “I think you’re grasping for straws there, Mr. Larsen. If parts were modified, and if these were parts lifted from your assembly line several years previously, this means that the foundation for the present sabotage – if it is sabotage – was, as Mr. Galloway suggests, laid long ago. But who back in the seventies and eighties had a motive for sabotaging our commercial airline fleet?”

  Larsen said, “The Soviets. The KGB. Whenever there’s a war, we use those commercial aircraft to ferry our troops to and from the front. They obviously knew of this practice from Vietnam, if not before.”

  “That’s correct,” Galloway said. “But the East Bloc no longer exists. Hell, there’s not even a Soviet Union. These crashes we’re talking about did not begin until 1999. Therefore you have an inconsistency between motive, which you place with the Soviets in the Cold War period, and deed, which I gather from your written statement you place with the Iraqis in the present.”

  “Respectfully, sir,” Larsen said, “there is an inconsistency only if you permit your thinking to be limited by a static view of the world. If there was a sabotage network in the States aimed at our civil aviation industry, then the individuals responsible for setting it up did not necessarily disappear with the collapse of Communism. If you fear our ex-Cold War enemies might sell nuclear warheads to countries such as Iraq and Iran, why is it far-fetched to think that Iraq might have bought the end product of an old KGB plot to sabotage our commercial fleet?”

  The room erupted in whispering and buzzing. It was clear to all those present, Warner included, that Larsen, left to fend for himself by official Washington, had been waging an intense private battle to understand the calamity that had befallen his company.

  He might not have all the answers, or even be on the right track; but he was at least opening up new avenues of inquiry. This was sorely needed. Warner hoped Larsen’s example would inspire everyone, himself included, to rise above the assumptions that had defined until now the outer boundaries of their thought.

  ***

  Driving home late that afternoon, listening to NPR on his car radio, Warner reflected with satisfaction on the results of the meeting that had been convened to end his career. Rather than being fired, he had received a vote of confidence.

  And he was going to get some badly needed help. Bill Daniels, the director of the FBI, had decided to throw his agency’s vast resources into the investigation.

  Even the sluggish FAA had come to life. Agency director Jack Shelton had accepted Warner’s request to ground all Boeing 767s and 757s operated by U.S. carriers, and Boeing had volunteered to issue Air Worthiness Directives to carriers beyond the authority of the FAA, instructing them to return at Boeing’s expense all Boeing and Pratt and Whitney parts ordered on or after the date of the Iraqi break-in.

  Not bad for a day’s work.

  The traffic was horrendous. Stalled, he watched overhead as jets from National Airport climbed and banked steeply to the right. People were still flying; they had to. But he doubted they would ever board an airplane again with the same peace of mind.

  A National Public Radio reporter, usually so knowledgeable, was talking nonsense about the NTSB’s failure to answer everyone’s question of why. It seemed to Warner as if they wanted him to be some sort of mythical Hollywood hero: air crash detective, cop, spy.

  Sorry, but real people had limits.

  Irritated, he switched stations just in time to hear the new Delta Airlines commercial. They were being responsible, they were looking after their loyal customers, they were building a new fleet whose acquisitions would be limited to the world’s safest jets, the state-of-the-art aircraft of Airbus Industrie. And just to make sure everyone understood that Boeing was out, the commercial went on to describe the orders Delta had just placed for 90 new Airbus 330s and 340s.

  Ninety!

  Warner knew from Hal Larsen that this was coming. But there was an aspect to Delta’s strategy he hadn’t grasped. By placing orders rather than options with carriers other than Boeing – orders that would cover the airline’s needs for the next decade or more – and by making this fact public, Delta might force its competitors to do the same.

  American, Northwest, TWA, U.S. Air and Continental had already canceled or postponed extensive orders and options with Boeing. Warner had assumed they would come back to the corporation that had served them so well in the past as soon as the problems causing the recent crashes were found and remedied.

  But now, given Delta’s bold step and the short-range planning mentality of American business, the other U.S. carriers might feel constrained to make similar deals with Airbus. If they held off, Delta could rake them over the coals for being wishy-washy on their commitment to change. It would be like a price war over air fares; one airline would start the insanity, the rest would be forced to follow.

  The implications of such a possibility sent a chill down Frank Warner’s spine. It would mean that leadership in the manufacture of commercial aircraft would go to the Europeans, an unimaginable scenario just a short time ago. He didn’t want to think about the drastic political, economic and symbolic consequences of a passing of the torch of this magnitude.

  As Warner pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring, the sun was setting in a wreath of pollution. He sat in his car a while, stunned. A thought had just taken possession of him, body, mind and soul.

  Could it be that Airbus was behind the crashes? The company certainly had a motive, and the French government hadn’t gone to any great lengths lately to hide its contempt for the U.S. There was also a precedent of sorts. French intelligence agents had been caught last year spying on Hughes Aircraft. Could economic warfare have reached such despicable heights?

  He knew Jean Duvalier, the director of Airbus. He had never met a more principled man. Airbus involvement, he decided, wasn’t even a remote possibility.

  Or was it?

  He felt thoroughly baffled. He simply did not know. The international scene had changed so drastically in the last few years he had lost his sense of the ground rules. The French had been caught spying at Hughes Aircraft. Didn’t this say enough about the extremes to which supposedly friendly countries would go?

  He experienced a moment of self-doubt. Maybe Galloway and the NPR reporter had a better case against him than he realized. Maybe he had remained too rigid in his thinking, too unwilling to take a leap into the grotesque. Sure, he’d give
n Simmons the go-ahead to look for irregularities. But what had he himself done? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. He had continued to cling fiercely to the belief that his job was to view each air crash as an occurrence in its own right, not part of a larger mosaic of crime. His friend, Hal Larsen, had changed with a changing world. Warner had not; not yet.

  ***

  He got out and slammed the door of his government Caprice. In his home office, he poured himself a scotch, sat down at his desk and lit a cigar, his first in months. It was time for him to move in another direction. He knew someone in France who might be able to help. He would begin with her.

  He had renewed his acquaintance with Sophie Marx several years ago when he spotted her during one of her rare visits to the States while he was taking his noon walk on the Mall. She was besieged by a group of enthusiastic young Washington journalists. He couldn’t get close to her so he called out, “Sophie, is that you?”

 

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