Until the events which transpired after the crash of TWA 800, I generally had faith in my government.  Although I was fully aware that various non-elected bureaucrats were having a greater and greater influence on my day to day life, I felt that my elected representatives were keeping those agencies under control through their constitutionally mandated roll of oversight.  I was quickly disabused of that fantasy by the actions taken by the FBI, CIA, FAA and NTSB during the investigation which commenced within hours of the aircraft hitting the water.

In the years that followed, I was much more alert to the lack of proper procedures and methods which were being allowed to creep into these time honored institutions.  I could give many examples of these occurrences, but in the interest of brevity, I will list only two.

In January of 2002, after I retired from TWA, I was hired as a pilot for an air ambulance operation based out of Albuquerque, NM.  That company had experienced a very unusual incident shortly after 9/11 which involved an attempted hijacking of one of their aircraft by persons unknown.  It occurred late at night at an unattended airport close to the Mexico – New Mexico border.

It was standard procedure for the pilot to remain with the aircraft while the medical team went to the hospital to access and accept the patient for air transport, generally back to Albuquerque.  On this particular night, the female pilot suddenly felt a knife point at her throat as she sat dozing in the pilots seat.  A heavily accented voice (and not in Spanish, which she was very familiar with) said: “Start the engines.  I will give you the destination when we are airborne”.   It was apparent that there were at least two hijackers, since she heard the cabin door being shut while the knife was still pressed against her throat.

She started the engines and taxied for takeoff.  Since the events of 9/11 were still vivid in her mind, and New Mexico has many very important top secret government facilities, including White Sands Missile Range at Alamogordo,  Sandia Labs and Los Alamos to name a few, she feared her aircraft might become a terrorist weapon used to attack any of them.  She has no idea what or who had been brought aboard prior to closing the door.  To her credit, she decided that she must do something to thwart a potential use of the aircraft in that manner.

So as she rolled down the runway she suddenly ran the aircraft off the side at fairly high speed.  One of the hijackers viciously clubbed her head prior to leaving the aircraft, leaving her bleeding from several head wounds which took many stitches to close.  The ambulance arrived shortly thereafter, to find her off the runway, semiconscious and bleeding in her seat.  Incredibly, FBI agents interviewed her in the hospital and later filed a report accusing her of making up the incident.

Incident number two involved our next door neighbor, who was the manager of a local sheet metal supplier in Albuquerque.  He had advertised an opening for a truck driver position.  One of the applicants, a man with a thick Middle Eastern accent, had only one question about the position.  Would he be given access to the military side of the field with the companies truck?  The manager was so troubled by this bizarre question that he contacted the local FBI field office to report the incident.  The agents arrived, took a few notes, and left.  He had the feeling they were dismissing him, as he never was contacted again.  Remember, this was only months after 9/11, and the military side of the Albuquerque airport has direct access to the top secret Sandia Labs which have substantial quantities of nuclear materials. 

The recent revelations about FBI abuses of protocol extending from Director James Comey on down have added fuel to the fire of my suspicions concerning willful misuse of that agencies considerable power to destroy an individuals life and reputation if they choose to do so.  It is apparent that there are some very bad apples at the top echelons of the agency, and they aren’t new.  If the higher-ups in Washington had listened to the concerns of a female field agent in Phoenix prior to 9/11, the dots might have been connected, and that national tragedy averted.  They didn’t.

Now, it is becoming apparent that Robert Mueller, James Comey and other current or former FBI officials colluded to bring, at the very least, insufficient and misleading data to the FISA court in order to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump Administration officials and indeed entrap General Flynn.  Comey’s leaking of information to an individual who then leaked it to the media which then started pushing for a Special Council to investigate allegations of “Collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election is beginning to come apart at the seams.

Only a thorough non-biased housecleaning at the FBI will remove the rotten apples before the whole agency loses all credibility with the public, which would be a gross disservice to the honest, hardworking agents who work behind the scenes everyday to keep this country safe.