**GLOBALHAWK
NEWSREPORT
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Shuttle Cover-Up?
There was one odd item in the Washington Post story Sunday
about the shuttle crash. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card
was up at Camp David with the president. They had originally
planned to have Tony Blair up there, but the foggy conditions
prevented helicopter flights. So Friday afternoon the two leaders
had their meeting in the White House residence instead.
Then the Bush party went up to Camp David for the weekend.
Saturday morning, according to this story, Card was “watching
NASA TV at Camp David when the accident occurred.” He then
immediately went over to Bush’s cabin, Aspen, and told the
president what happened.
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The fact that the White House chief of staff is even watching
the landing of a space shuttle on a Saturday morning - while
at Camp David in the middle of the Iraq crisis - raises a big
red flag.
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Was he previously informed that NASA was worried about
tile damage from the launch?
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How much internal chatter about a risky landing was there?
Did NASA expect trouble on an otherwise routine landing?
How many other officials suspected trouble Saturday morning?
Did NASA tell the astronauts and their families of the extra
risk with this landing?
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These and many other questions are hanging in the air as
NASA tries to figure out what happened.
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It seems possible that right after the launch NASA officials grew
worried that there may have been serious damage. Perhaps
they then had high-level meetings about their worries and, as
a potential CYA measure, informed Andy Card.
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It is odd that the White House chief of staff would watch a shuttle
landing. Such a routine event - early on a Saturday morning, in
the midst of Blair, U.N. inspections, Colin Powell’s upcoming
intelligence revelations to the Security Council - seems to be
something that a White House big shot would pay no attention
to.
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If he had a heads-up that something might have been amiss,
then we need to be told. And it will come out, eventually.**
I cannot vouch for the source of this article (it was sent to me via email). However, if it is correct, is it unusual that the White House Chief of Staff would be watching the shuttle landing on NASA TV at Camp David? Is it possible or likely that NASA were more concerned about debris damage on lift-off and risks on re-entry than we have so far been led to believe?
More likely than anything else, they thought it was a good place to plug NASA TV at (bless their hearts) so inserted it in as PR.
Semi-likely is that they have a bank of TVs tuned to multiple channels (CNN, NASA TV, etc) and have staff paying attention to it - and I think this is especially likely with a shuttle launch/re-entry. Those puppies are expensive, and I’m sure they monitor it reguarly.
Semi-likely (to combine the above two) is that they were watching CNN and saw, and switched the cite to NASA TV as a plug.
Semi-likely (but less so, or it is a reinforcement of the above 2) is that NASA did alert the Bush Administration to the possibility of damage, and they figured they’re watch it.
Andrew Card is an Engineer. He was also a VP for intergovernmental affairs for General Motors, which has conducted experiments aboard the Shuttle, and as likely as not, aboard Columbia itself.
Can’t the guy just be a geek like the rest of us? I’m a researcher–historical–and I watch the NASA channel whenever my girlfriend isn’t around to change the station.
Disclaimer: Don’t take ANY of this as gospel, but it seems reasonable to me.
It is well reported that NASA was aware of the possiblility of damage to shuttle wing.
They DID go through the trouble of doing damage analysis after reviewing the liftoff footage.
Their assessment appearently put the risk of failure into the “unlikely” category.
It would seem that this assessment may have been wrong.
These assessments are nothing more than GUESSES, based on data they had available. Guesses perhaps is too strong a word, lets says they assign a probability to a serious failure using the data they had.
I have no reason to doubt that their best guess of the probability of failure was very low.
Still, it is completely reasonable to expect that any time there is a situation where there might elevated risk of any kind, there will be at least some concern and it will be watched more closely.
I have no way of knowing if anyone on the White House staff might have been informed. It certainly implies nothing sinister to me that they might have been briefed.
7 lives were at stake, even a small elevated risk is an elevated risk and is worth keeping an eye. Even if the Chief of Staff was watching, how does that spell out cover up? There are many things that happen everyday that deserve close observation. That someone within our gov’t would be observing says they are doing a responsible job, to me. The vast majority of these items come and go with no disaster, this one did not.
I would put a significant amount of money on the proposition that: If it widely considered a major risk to the shuttle the President would have been watching live personally. Still, nothing sinister, just doing the job he should be doing.
That’s my take. Besides, all that:
I have no way to estimate the veracity of the claim that he was in fact watching NASA TV.
Even if he was, it might not have been related. The guy might just have a personal interest in the program, I certainly do.
For all we know, he was brushing his teeth and had CNN on in the background, saw something was amiss and switched channels. Or maybe Card is a space buff, and likes to watch NASA TV, or as Zagadka says, they might have 20 TVs going at any one time.
Even so, where is the cover-up? Maybe they did know there was damage, where they supposed to boradcast this to the world? Not telling people every detail of what is going on =! conspiracy.
My personal beliefs would tend toward seeing Card as a space geek who simply enjoys watching such stuff (and rarely gets to, since we don’t schedule returns for liesurely Saturday mornings, very often).
However, there would also be a legitimate interest in a member of the White House staff keeping an eye on the event, just for the purpose of having a witness to any good or bad events–the presence of Ilan Ramon, as the first Israeli in space, flying on one of our firecrackers.
I would have thought that if there was going to be some big cover-up, then NASA would have made a point of not mentioning the insulation debris at any time, to say nothing of setting themselves up for a fall by announcing that the event occurred, that they had decided it was a low-risk situation, and then having to announce that they may have made a grievous error in that estimate.
Actually, I’m sure Andy Card is one of the lizard kings, and he was watching NASA-TV so he could get independent verification of the shuttle’s destruction after he pushed the missile-launch button on the orders of the space-raccoon overlords in their invisible moon base. Yes, I’m sure that’s a much more likely scenario than the totally ridiculous explanation that his background gives him an interest in the subject and he had one of his dozen command-center televisions tuned to the NASA channel as a matter of course. I mean, do they think we’re gullible or what?
According to a different article I read, Card was channel surfing when he came upon NASA TV and decided to watch the landing, which they were about to show.
This whole “Shuttle Conspiracy” garbage is just that- garbage. When you hear the sound of hoofs, don’t look up and expect to see unicorns.
One thing that strikes me is this:
As if this story even needs debunking, I’ll throw this out there - the fact that the President didn’t know is an indicator. There’s a saying in the military that probably applies more so to politics: Never be the senior guy with a secret.
Don’t ya think it possible that NASA knew something was amiss, but decided to land the shuttle anyways since there was no other option, hey— maybe it would of made it.
I admit this thought has crossed my mind, but I honestly don’t think so. From what I know of NASA, they are unlikely to (and probably unable to) keep something like that a secret. While NASA tries to find options to save the astronauts, hundreds if not thousands of engineers will learn about the situation. Those are not military personnel trained to keep secrets - they are regular engineers working for NASA and its contractors.
Also, all the communications with the crew are public. Most of it is shown live on NASA Select TV. Even if the crew were doomed, NASA wouldn’t be so cruel as to deny the crew a chance to say goodbye. Also, you’d want the pilot and commander to know everything about the problem to maximize their chance of survival. And remember that they never tried to cover up the Apollo 13 situation.
A shuttle cover up is kinda like a box of peas, if you don’t seperate the orange ones from the round ones your gonna end up wth blow-by. And noone wants blow-by when they are dealing with packaging the size of western Japan do they?
