NASA To Release Results of Airline Safety Study - After Scrubbing Data

WASHINGTON - Abandoning its secrecy claims, NASA promised Congress on Wednesday it will reveal results of an unprecedented federal aviation survey which found that aircraft near collisions, runway interference and other safety problems occur far more often than previously recognized.

The agency's chief also said, however, that before any release NASA would scrub the data to make sure none of the 24,000 pilots who were interviewed anonymously could be identified, taking until the end of the year to do what a survey expert told Congress could be done in a week.

Well this is par for the Bush Administration course. A study designed to point out flaws in a Federal system that has the potential to affect 10s of thousands of people is being held up for political expediency by the Bushies.

Why NASA conducted this study and not the Federal Aviation Administration is beyond me but it was done and it was done with Federal tax dollars. Seems only right that the people paying for the study (that would be the middle class who didn't get tax breaks from Junior) should be able to see the results.

Want to bet that by the end of the year when the scrubbed results are supposed to come out the Bushies come up with yet another plausibly deniable reason not to let us see the truth about airline safety?