After some long standing personal distractions from the effort I embarked on in September/October 2003 to seek reforms at the FAA as the primary means to end the fraud I had witnessed at my former employer, I am now free to pursue those reforms again.

My former efforts failed when the FAA and my former employer decided they did not want to end that fraud unless they were forced to do so. As they were so powerful, they did not foresee even Congress ever stepping up and trying to interfere with their relationship—a relationship that made FAA oversight of my employer purposely just a charade compared to the unbiased oversight required by the law.

This renegade agency of the U.S. government has recently been proven wrong, however, and newly effective oversight committees in Congress have begun to start to look into the depths of FAA corruption in place today. This corruption subjugates the FAA’s only mission of protecting the safety of the flying public and our military personnel who fly on commercial airplane platforms to the short term bottom line interests of the CEOs of the companies they are supposed to impartially monitor.

As I write, corrupt heads of FAA departments attempt to isolate the “damage” that can be done by this unforeseen round of Congressional oversight to the continuance of the same sort of corruption they know is rife throughout their management. They go to Congress and on TV news shows and lie to them as well as the public that the FAA/airline corruption was an isolated incident, not reflecting in any way on the rest of the FAA.

Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as I and multiple others have unfortunately come to know over the years. And the FAA has proven this by their intentional inaction innumerable times over the years in doing their critical jobs when powerful interests in the companies they are supposed to oversee wanted them to do the opposite.

The first casualties in the name of current Congressional reforms of the FAA should be those very highly placed FAA managers that lied to us so egregiously and so transparently. They did so in order to protect their and other complicit FAA manager’s arses from indictment for their crimes, and to preserve to the greatest degree possible the corruption ongoing in other parts of the agency. Some of that corruption yet to be investigated by Congress is that which has been documented in detail on my website for quite some time.

Nick Sabatini is one agency department head that must be brought to justice and/or ousted. He was instrumental in ensuring my reporting of crimes by my former employer (per my duty per 14CFR13.1) to him and FAA administrators did not result in any actual investigation of those crimes. He also ensured in doing so that the corruption at his arm of the FAA and my former employer that conspired to violate rather than adhere to FAA regulations could continue unabated.

Being a former attorney, I believe, Nick Sabatini should know the illegality of his and his department’s actions. That’s what makes his stubborn insistence on protecting this FAA/industry corruption even more indicative of the need that he be removed ASAP.

Of course, one official’s replacement will not restore an agency rife with corrupt management that insist on doing the opposite of their mandate. It is hard to see that any management in that arm of the agency has been untainted by this endemic and decades old corruption.

Some of the FAA management that, in addition to Sabatini, were “hands on” in throttling the “investigation” of my report to ensure its “death” so that the corruption documented within it could continue have moved on. However, I trust that most of them will ultimately not escape the justice that threatens the corrupt management of the FAA today.

Some of the FAA managers involved in ensuring my report was in fact not investigated have retired. Some have even died. Some have been promoted. I trust that all except those that have died since their exploits will ultimately face justice soon. Retirement especially should be no shield for accountability for past crimes committed while with the agency. Neither should be being promoted for that wrongdoing.

It is up to us to ensure that these FAA managers do not succeed in maintaining the cover for their corrupt activities on behalf of industry and their own personal interests they have been so proactively trying to protect. We need to write to Congress and tell them of the true extent of FAA corruption we are aware of to ensure all corrupt FAA management is brought to justice.

To that end, any ASI that cooperates with a Congressional and/or FBI investigation of the actions of their management should be given immunity for any crimes against the public they were forced to commit by that management as a matter of course. This will encourage knowledgeable people of FAA management corruption to come forward that would be reluctant to otherwise.

And, such ASIs or other non-management personnel should be given prime consideration for newly opened up management jobs at the FAA once the corrupt management is removed, albeit only after all have come forward so as to not have some indict their management for the wrong reasons.

I would strongly urge anyone (such as the ASIs) to come forward now even absent a formal announcement of immunity from Congressional committees, as there is no doubt, I believe, that they will receive such immunity as the other ASIs that have come forward have gotten.

It is critical that the first few ASIs or other FAA personnel come forward in the Transport Airplane Directorate so that the others less inclined to do so can begin to come forward as well. Once enough good people have thusly left the “FAA ship” and are willing to testify against it, the corrupt FAA management left in it can go down with that “ship”. And then the agency can be reborn, working per its mandate of public safety and not against it as it has so consistently done in the past.

And such ASIs and other FAA personnel thinking about coming forward should do so for another reason. They will not have made “mistakes” others have made in their desperate attempts at ending their management’s fraud as they have not come forward before. They won’t have a track record to be “cherry picked” in retaliatory efforts against them, as such efforts to bring the true criminals to justice have been used against others who would not be deterred in coming forward to protect the lives of the public when FAA management would not.

So I urge the public to write to Mr. Oberstar’s committee in particular, and for ASIs and other people with knowledge of past or ongoing FAA management corruption to contact that committee as well. I’ve learned over the years never to put your eggs in only one basket, so to speak, so writing to your Congressmen and/or using other avenues such as the FBI in concert with reporting to the committee may be useful as well.

But avoid at all costs reporting anything to the organization that would seem to be the most logical to do so, as I can vouch that that organization has been corrupted just as the FAA has been. Do not contact the DOT OIG Calvin Scovel’s office. To do so will result in no actual investigation of your report being done, and open you up to retaliation from the corrupt management in your agency. It is no accident the DOT OIG’s office keeps almost no records of its “investigations.” If it did so, it’s own culpability with protecting corrupt FAA management could be exposed. It is much easier for them to deny facts and claim incompetence rather than being exposed as a corrupt extension of the agency when they do so.

At least I’ve learned a few useful things over the years of my “pioneering” attempts at bring FAA/industry corruption to light, some of which are mentioned above.

Although it took some of us years to bring just part of FAA and industry corruption to light, now is the perfect time for those wanting to be on the right side of justice to come forward and do what’s right. Those that do so will have an immediate effect on reforming FAA management, and they will immunize themselves from reprisal as well when they do so.

Don’t let the flailing attempts of corrupt FAA managers trying to cover up and continue the corruption you’ve worked under for years win the day. Ensure in this perfect window that justice prevails, and you will be able in the near future to work for an FAA management that lets you find noncompliances and enforces the regulations, rather than just directing you to find “compliance,” when in fact the opposite exists. Now is the perfect time to comply with 14CFR13.1, as I knew I was also required to do, as well as comply with what your own conscience is telling you. No better time may come. You may be the first to report the corruption of your management, but there will be many others behind you that will follow your lead.

Gerald Eastman