Final Approach (57 page)

“Absolutely not.”

“You were defending him on principle alone?” Putnam half laughed, half sneered the question.

“Yes, believe it or not … that, and because he was panicked,” Walters replied. McIntyre remained silent.

“There's another loose end,” someone said. The voice was muffled, but Putnam and Walters recognized it was coming from McIntyre. He looked up at them and sighed a ragged sigh. “When … I sent them the records of the exams I doctored up? From Canada, you know?”

“Yes.” Putnam almost hissed the last consonant.

“I pulled the records of another pilot about the same age and weight, and I carefully took his name off and put Dick's on it. So they had a full set of exam results for all those exams.”

“So what's the problem?” Putnam asked, no less harshly.

“I … I didn't check some of the vitals, like eye and hair color, and blood type. They may not catch it, but they didn't match.”

Putnam looked at the remorseful physician with utter contempt. “Don't worry, Doctor, I'm sure they caught it. I'll wager you your goddamned job that they've been trying to ask you about exactly that!”

January 8 dawned unexpectedly balmy for a winter's day in the nation's capitol, and NTSB Chairman Farris was enjoying the 60-degree temperatures. He had never had the opportunity to sit before a Senate subcommittee and expound on the serious and important work he supervised, and he was looking forward to it. Beverly Bronson had briefed him that the bill stood little chance of passage, especially if the subcommittee members were left with the impression that the NTSB was running like a precision watch. That would impress the White House as well, and they undoubtedly would be watching. Dean turned to Beverly as they sat in the back of a taxi, headed across the quadrangle to the Senate office complex, where the hearing was already underway. “Who'd you say is televising this, Bev?”

She looked at the chairman and smiled, a picture of calm and self-assurance. “C-SPAN is broadcasting it live, and taping it too. I think all the networks will be there on tape, and I don't know who else. The newspapers stirred it up.” Beverly watched him turn toward the front of the cab, a serene smile on his face. The
Washington Post
had broken the story just after Christmas, but the morning edition carried a lengthy piece on the inherently divisive problems of an aviation accident investigative agency trying to solve bus and pipeline disasters too, and the
New York Times
had done a front-page article on the past conflicts between the Board and the Air Line Pilots Association over quality of investigations. No one in the media had devoted any ink to the possibility of internal scandal. None had seen the stormclouds on the horizon. And, fortunately, none of the briefing papers which would be sitting in front of the subcommittee members had leaked.

Dean Farris took his seat at the witness table as Beverly took a chair beside him, facing the curved, single-tiered dais which at varying times during the typical Senate hearing would accommodate from one or two senators up to a dozen, with waves of staff members ebbing and flowing behind them in accordance with the daily tides of Senate business.

The Air Line Pilots Association's president had already testified, supporting the bill, as had the Air Transport Association and the Regional Airlines Association. Executives from two commuter airlines had added their stories of truncated NTSB investigations due to budgetary constraints, and a senior vice-president of Amtrak had submitted a written statement in lukewarm support.

But the star the media had been waiting for—had been told in confidence they should wait for—was Dean Farris. And after some introductory niceties and Farris's formal statement, which had been drafted by Beverly and several other staffers, Farris looked up at Kell Martinson and four other senators. “I'll be happy to entertain any questions at this time.”

“Chairman Farris,” Kell began with a friendly smile, “first of all, let me call you Mr. Chairman, and for the sake of not getting us all confused, instead of you calling me Mr. Chairman, just use Senator, okay?”

“Certainly Senator,” Farris replied, smiling. This was going to be easy.

“I might also add”—Kell looked to his left and his right, making eye contact with the three other senators present—“thanks to the generous agreement of my colleagues, and having studied this issue extensively in preparation for submission of this bill, I am going to do all the preliminary questioning, then give the other subcommittee members their chance.” Kell looked back at Farris. “Now Mr. Chairman, are you familiar with the Independent Safety Board Act of 1974?”

Farris answered that he was, and outlined the general aim of the act as Beverly had carefully briefed him.

“Mr. Chairman, would you say that the NTSB as it operates today fulfills the promise and intent of that act?”

Farris looked puzzled. “I'm afraid I don't understand, Senator.”

“Well,” Kell began, “we agree the legislation tried to keep the Board from being influenced by outside political forces, or any other forces. It tried to make sure that interested parties would have no ability to sway the decisions on accident causation. So, Mr. Chairman, you're the head of the thing? Does it work that way?”

Farris smiled and nodded. “Certainly does, Senator. Our decisions are our own. There is no ability on anyone's part, whether in the political arena or the corporate community, to push us.”

“Does anyone try?” Kell asked.

“Well, I'm sure from time to time in the middle of an investigation, since we have so many civilians actually working with us on these investigative groups, people attempt to argue from a parochial point of view, but in the end, with a well-balanced panel, we still get the truth.”

“Do you now?” The sharpness of the question echoed like a rifle shot. Something about Senator Martinson's tone triggered a warning bell in Farris's mind, slowing his response ever so slightly. “Yes, we do.”

“Well then, Chairman Farris, there are some things which have come to the subcommittee's attention which I'd like to ask you about, and the first concerns the tragedy in Kansas City, the North America crash.”

“Okay.”

“North America has a company doctor named McIntyre, is that correct, Mr. Chairman?”

“I believe he is a company doctor, yes, Senator.”

“Now, within a week of the Kansas City crash, some of your investigators contacted Doctor McIntyre, I believe, and asked him for certain records. Is that right?”

“Well, as I recall, probably.”

“And Doctor McIntyre apparently asked his company to block that request, and at one point North America threatened to go to court to get an injunction against the NTSB's seeking those records, which, if I have it right, were the medical records for the captain that crashed Flight 255 in Kansas City, that captain also being the airline's chief pilot and a staff vice-president. Is all that correct?”

Beverly had been watching Dean Farris as the blood began to drain from his face. She could see his vocal muscles constricting, and she forced a look of puzzlement when he glanced in abject alarm at her as Kell continued in an even, friendly tone of voice. “Now, Mr. Chairman, obviously your investigators wanted to see those records, which was probably a logical thing to want to do, and North America officially did not want to give them up, or they surely wouldn't have taken the extraordinary step of going to court. In a case such as this, isn't it important for the Board and their investigators to be unrelenting? Isn't it important that the public know they cannot be scared away from a legitimate inquiry when innocent passengers have died in a mode of public transportation? In other words, if the investigators in their wisdom think they need to see those records, shouldn't we have the assurance that no one will be allowed to block them?”

“Yes … uh, of course. I don't understand—”

“Bear with me, please, Mr. Farris. Now …” Kell shuffled some of the papers in front of him and made some notations, letting Farris sweat. “Do you recall a few years back when there was that terrible Amtrak accident north of Washington in which the Conrail engineer, who was found to be under the influence of drugs, ran in front of a high-speed Metroliner?”

“Yes, Senator, everyone does. What does that have to do with North America?”

“Well, let me just ask you a hypothetical question, Mr. Chairman. If you had been chairman at that time, and the president of Conrail had called you—which I do not suggest he ever would, this is a hypothetical question—but let's say he did call and said, ‘Dean, please call off your dogs. You have my assurance that Conrail's personnel did nothing wrong. Don't harass the poor engineer anymore.' Now, would that be wrong, Mr. Chairman?”

“Of course. The man was, as you say, found to be on drugs, he—”

“Yes, but—” Kell smiled and held up a hand to stop Farris, whose voice had risen in pitch a bit, “what I'm asking, sir, is whether it would be wrong for the NTSB chairman to actually agree to do what the railroad leader was asking?”

Farris knew where he was being led, but it was like sliding on ice; he had no traction, no way to stop. “It would, of course, be wrong, Senator, for him to actually stop his people from investigating, but in the normal civility of a conversation, you know, the railroad man might have the impression he had come away with some concession when he hadn't.”

Kell tapped his chin with a finger and squinted. “You mean, he might make the railroad president think he'd back off, but not really do it? He wouldn't talk to his investigators?”

“That's right.”

“I gather it would be wrong for him to actually talk to his investigators and say, ‘Back off'?”

“Yes, of course it would.”

“Would it be wrong of him to even relay the conversation to his investigators, knowing they might take that as a signal to back off?”

“Your hypothetical situation is getting rather deep, Senator. A Board chairman like myself can't know for certain how someone is going to interpret something.”

“That's exactly my point, though, Mr. Chairman. Since the investigator who has to poke around this railroad may be too impressed with the power of the railroad's president for the investigation's good, wouldn't it be taking a risk to even mention the phone call to an underling because that could influence him to pull punches, not ask for records, not seek depositions, or even stop pushing for medical records central to the case?”

“Perhaps.”

“Just perhaps?”

“No, I mean I do agree,” Farris said.

“Good. I'm glad you do. But that, then, troubles me.”

Farris gave Kell a puzzled look. “I beg your pardon, Senator, was that a question?”

“No sir, but this is: Isn't it true that among the many telephone calls you got in the days after the North America crash, one of them was from Mr. David Bayne, chairman and CEO of North American?”

Seconds passed with Farris frozen in place before he leaned into the microphone to answer. “Yes, Senator, Mr. Bayne called me. That's not at all unusual.”

“His airline had two planes in that crash, of course, and his chief pilot might be the cause of it, and he calls you, and that's normal?”

“It's not abnormal.”

“What did you two gentlemen talk about?”

“The general progress of the investigation, of course.”

“I see. Did he mention Doctor McIntyre?”

“Yes.”

“Yes he did, in fact. In fact, he asked you to call off your dogs, didn't he? He asked you to tell your people to stop harassing the poor doctor, who by that time they had sent on a hurried vacation to Canada because he had become so scared. Is that correct?”

Farris put his hand over the microphone and leaned toward Beverly with a whispered command. “Get the staff counsel over here fast.”

“I can't. He's out today,” she whispered back innocently. Farris turned again to the microphone, looking nervously at Kell.

“Senator, I don't know where you got all this but—”

“Oh, Mr. Farris, don't you worry about our sources. They will be placed under oath as necessary and their recollection of what you told them—and I emphasize the plural—will go on the record, too. We're talking about undue influence here. The airline chief calls you, asks you to call off your dogs, and what did you say?”

Farris's mind raced through possible answers. It was obvious he was alone, Beverly had made no move to help him, to whisper in his ear. How could this have happened? He should have brought the Board's lawyer, the staff counsel. He saw the TV cameras and radio microphones. He had seen David Bayne behind him in the audience. Martinson was talking about multiple sources for that story. How could he deny it? He couldn't just lie to Congress. In fact, wasn't it a crime? A glimmer of a possibility locked into his head, and he looked up at the senator and tried to smile, though he was shaking inside. “Senator, obviously some disgruntled employee or employees of mine have come to your staff with some gross misinterpretation, and perhaps misunderstanding, of what occurred. Yes, David Bayne called me, and yes he pressured me rather substantially to back off, saying his physician was really spooked and in a bad way because of the pressure. Now, I warned him I could not and would not call off my people, but I would certainly make sure that they were civil to the doctor. Since this was the very first week of the investigation and there was time, and since we want the general cooperation of the airlines in a crash investigation, I'm not going to tell him to go to hell. I'm going to do what I did, assure him that my staff will treat the doctor properly, or words to that effect.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what, Senator?”

“Did you instruct your staff to treat the doctor properly?”