jpg3196@tahoma.UUCP (James P. Galasyn) (01/13/90)
Reprinted out of boredom from the Chicago Trib, 12/2/89. A story produced for NBC's TODAY show, saying that General Electric Corp. used shoddy nuts and bolts in airplane engines that it builds, was edited to delete all references to GE, it was confirmed Friday. The editing was confirmed by several people at NBC, including a Chicago reporter who did the piece. NBC is owned by General Electric. The three-minute story, which aired Thursday, summarized a three-part series done by Chicago's WMAQ (Channel 5), which NBC owns, and the station's investigative reporter, Peter Karl. The series aired last week. Karl's series focused on faulty nuts and bolts used in a wide range of important construction including bridges, airplane engines, nuclear missile silos and the NASA space program. It suggested that of the 200 billion bolts used anually in this country, as many as 60 percent are substandard and lack proper certification. The series included mention of a California company that is under investigation for falsely certifying the safety of critical parts sold to the airplane and aerospace industries. Almost every airplane engine in this country is affected, including those made by Pratt & Whitney and General Electric. WMAQ had its series checked by libel attorneys before it ran. It not only was broadcast in Chicago, but also by NBC stations elsewhere, including in Denver, Cleveland and Seattle. The section of Karl's story that was edited by TODAY stated: "The victims are some of the largest industries in America. Recently, General Electric engineers discovered that they have a big problem. One out of three bolts from one of their major suppliers was bad. Even more alarming, General Electric accepted the bad bolts without certification of compliance for more than eight years." In both the series and the non-edited TODAY piece, no comment was included from General Electric. According to Karl, he sought repeatedly to get comment from the company's engine-making division in Cincinnati, General Electric Engines, in preparing his series, but it never responded. His three-minute version was sent to New York late Wednesday. Concerns about the mentions of General Electric were raised and, unknown to Karl, the piece was edited, prompting anger among producers and staff members in New York and Chicago. "I can't believe that NBC would pull any reference to General Electric without talking to me first," Karl said. "I just think that, as an organization, this places us in a very difficult position." NBC has repeatedly maintained that its relationship to General Electric does not affect its news coverage. [gag -jpg] Tom Brokaw stated in a recent Chicago speech that when GE is mentioned in any news story, the broadcast goes to extremes to make sure the mentions aren't deleted due to the relationship. [cynical snort -jpg] By late Friday, Karl said he had not been given an explanation of why his piece was edited. Tom Ross, a senior vice president at NBC, told The Tribune Friday night that "The reason it was pulled was that the TODAY show made an editorial decision on the grounds that the matter was underreported." Ross said that Karl has been asked by TODAY to do another piece on the same subject, but to include mention of General Electric. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Reproduced here out of further boredom from the Independent Harbors News, June 15, 1989. On January 11, I was listening to a local radio program, Carol Hemingway, KGIL, AM/1260, on my portable cassette player, when I heard those immortal (or one might even say immoral) letters, GE. No sooner than the G was out of Carol's mouth was my finger on the record button. I must say I had no idea what I was about to hear. What was unfolding before my ears was a dastardly tale about the taxpayers being bilked for millions and millions of dollars and the Justice Department's involvement in keeping it from the public. According to Carol's guest, an attorney from Cincinnati named Jim Helmer, GE had been certifying internal jet engine components at its jet engine manufacturing plant in Seattle that HAD NOT been tested. These components are pressure relief valves that are designed to prevent explosions. In late May, 1988 lower level personnel discovered that the testing equipment designed to test these pressure relief valves were broken. They reported the discovery to Anthony DiVencenso, a 30-year man who was the plant manager. DiVencenso contacted the home office in Cincinnati, informed them of the situation, and started his own investigation. The Cincinnati plant got back to him in short order, told him to stop the investigation, go home, sit by the phone and wait for them to contact him. Several weeks later DiVencenso was notified that he was being transferred to, of all places, Cincinnati. On June 2, 1988 legal counsel Robert Anderson of GE's Group Government Compliance System wrote the Inspector General of the Depart of Defense, informing him that the testing equipment designed to test the pressure relief valves used in F-404 jet engines had not been operational since sometime in 1983. Anderson went on to say that the test used to check the valves had not been performed "prior to July 1987" and "operators may have falsified internal test records." In addition, "as many as 2,200 F-404 engines" may have been involved. (The F-404 engine is used in the F-18 Hornet, the $30 million Navy fighter plane.) The test was reinstated in July of 1987 according to Anderson's letter. After DiVencenso got to Cincinnati, he contacted Attorney Helmer and an investigation was begun. In the course of Helmer's investigation it was found that not only were the F-404 engines suspect, but also thousands of other jet engines contained these falsely certified parts. Blackhawk helicopters, military transport aircraft, and the work horse of domestic shuttle flights, the Boeing 737, all use engines with these unvalidated valves, according to Helmer. The Army ordered an additional 72, UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, for the fiscal year 1988. Cost: 6 million per unit. Helmer said that the Department of Justice made a criminal investigation into the charges about the falsification of testing certificates on the untested valves and then ordered the Federal Court in Cincinnati to seal the case, effectively concealing it from public scrutiny. However on Friday, January 6 he had convinced the judge that it was in the public's interest that this investigation be unsealed, and so the case is now a public record. But the biggest bombshell was Helmer's statement that the Boeing 737 belonging to British Midland Airways that crashed on January 8, killing 47 people on board, was equipped with GE jet engines that contained these untested valves. Helmer went on to say that on Sunday, January 8, his office was flooded with calls from the English, Italian and West German press, and that on Monday you couldn't pick up an English newspaper without this story leaping off the front page at you. Carol Hemingway had made a comment that NBC would probably not have covered this story and Helmer agreed, saying that NBC is owned by GE. He also said that he was contacted by the two other networks, CBS and ABC. After hearing this incredible story, I began to monitor the nightly network news broadcasts to find out more about it. For two weeks after January 11, there was absolutely no mention of this particular aspect of the British Midland crash. What the networks did mention was the usual stuff about the checking for cracking in the fuselage or the engine supports, or the possibility that the pilot MIGHT have shut down the wrong engine in a state of panic. Faulty wiring was also mentioned as were things only an aeronautical engineer could love, but not word one about what might have gone wrong INSIDE the engine. The local paper of record parroted the prevailing stories on the local and network newscasts, and likewise no mention of this angle. After about two weeks of the "regular" stuff, I called the L.A. TIMES and spoke to a reporter by the name of Art Berman and asked him if he knew when and/or if the TIMES had any plans to run this story about the untested parts winding up in the British Midland Airways 737 jet engine. He said to me he didn't know anything about it so I began to tell him about the story. He was interested in what I was saying and started asking me questions about it. I wasn't prepared for this, as past experience has taught me to expect a series of clever explanations as to why a story wasn't printed, or why the facts about a story were left out, or why the story was printed the way it was. I told him that I had the whole story on tape and would get it and call him back with the most important details. When I got back on the line 15 minutes later, he told me that he had done some checking and had discovered that one of the wire servies had run a piece about the jet engines but didn't detail anything. So I gave him the attorney's name, the name of the plant manager, the location and legal description of the lawsuit, when the case was sealed and unsealed. I couldn't believe how interested Berman was in what I was telling him. He told me he would check into it. Feeling like the cat that ate the canary, I hung up and waited for the explosion. A month later, nothing. Another month, still nothing. finally on Tuesday, March 21, page 26, upper right hand corner, 3 paragraphs about GE settling out of court for four lawsuits, totalling $3.5 million. The story I have been writing about got a whole paragraph -- 28 words informing the taxpayers they have been snookered. It's not quite finished yet. I spoke to Art Berman on three separate occasions, I then spoke to Doug Jehl in the Washington Bureau, as Berman told me he had turned the information over to him, but Jehl didn't seem to know or remember the information I had given to Berman. I also gave the full story to Assistant National Editor Jim Bell with whom I spent a half hour on the phone. I made two calls to Ralph Vartabedian, most recently the week of March 13-18, because I was told that he handled aviation-related stories. Vartabedian informed me that because the story was not "in his backyard" he wasn't going to do anything with it and suggested I call the Cincinnati papers. I then mentioned that there was a little something about the story that had to do with "his backyard." An attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm that represents the L.A. TIMES, became a GE director in 1986 -- William French Smith, Ronnie Reagan's first attorney general. Vartabedian asked me if I thought the reason the TIMES wasn't running the story was because it's a "conspiracy" or something? I replied that I didn't suggest it was a "conspiracy," only that it was an interesting point. Vartabedian just couldn't fathom that a regular old person would go to all this trouble to try to get a story like this printed. He insisted that I was an interested party with something to gain by having this printed. I asked him if being a concerned citizen wasn't enough? I told him that I was fed up with being ripped-off and that I was sure that a lot of people felt the same way. It's we, the people, who pay for the cost overruns, and we have a right to knowabout this kind of thing. Obviously he didn't think so, as he's written nothing about this aviation story. In the Tuesday, March 21 issue, the TIMES ran two stories, one on GE and one on the British Midland Airways crash. In the first, GE settled out of court for a mere $3.5 million on four separate federal "lawsuits alleging fraud in military contract." In the second story the British Aviation Department determined that the pilot shut off the wrong engine. In either story there was no connection made between GE's testing procedures and British Midland crash. The British Midland story revealed further: "Immediately after the crash officials said it appeared both engines on the 12-week-old aircraft had failed -- against odds of several million to one." I guess those odds might apply if all the components were tested as GE policy requires. So why is GE on my mind? I figure I've spent an easy three and a half hours on the phone to these various TIMES people plus all the secretaries and assistant whoevers, not to mention the time put into the television news departments and not a word about the GE-British Midland crash connection. So GE settles out of court for $3.5 million on four lawsuits. I wonder how much GE made on all those untested valves? I wonder how those GE inspectors who certified those untested valves sleep at night? I wonder how many 737s and F-18s and Blackhawk helicopters have crashed because of these untested valves? I wonder how many crashes have been written off due to "pilot error?" I wonder if British Midland Airways or any of the victims' heirs will sue GE? INFACT, an activist organization that is currently sponsoring a boycott of all GE products, has described 22 lawsuits against GE since 1911 ranging from bribery of a foreign official to defrauding the US government. It's reassuring to know that the Justice Department cares enough about us (we who pay the salaries of the people who work at the Justice Department) not to want us to worry about such trivialities as jet engines and tax dollars -- so they make sure we don't find out about such things. And they did! As for the crew over at the TIMES, never let it be said they didn't do the least that they could do. But the Aliens who run the show are too stupid and too poor to cover up a penny-ante conspiracy like this. Warren and Iverson are obviously subversive drug-using Noriega-sympathizers who should be garroted with an American Flag, by Christ. Obviously Boeing is not related to these opinions at all, because they are the apotheosis of Ethical Conduct(tm). Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, murdered President Kennedy. . DEATH . .. The United States is not mining . . . the harbors of Nicaragua. . . . . Caspar Weinberger, 4/8/84 . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .