Posted on 07/11/2002 10:51:45 AM PDT by Paul Atreides
Conflict of interest questions are swirling around the wife of Senate Plurality Leader Tom Daschle, prompted by the top Democrat's demand Sunday that President Bush order the Securities and Exchange Commission to release its full investigative file on Bush's 1990 sale of Harken Energy stock.
Despite the call for full disclosure, the Daschles refuse to make their tax returns public, reports New York Post's Deborah Orin, including details on income earned from Mrs. Daschle's lobbying on behalf of a company that foisted defective bomb detecting scanners on the Federal Aviation Administration.
Apparently Mrs. Daschle is unconcerned that she may have jeopardized the safety of the flying public by pushing the faulty equipment, manufactured by her client L-3 International, even though she spent several years as a senior FAA official - and even ran the agency briefly during the 1990s.
"You can fuhgeddaboutit if you want to know how much money the Daschles rake in from her lobbying as a co-chair of the 'public policy group' at the law/lobbying firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell," says the Post.
"Unlike lots of senators - not to mention presidents like Bush - Daschle refuses to release his own tax returns, which would 'just let everybody see' what his wife makes as a big-business lobbyist. ..."
"The conflict-of-interest question gets even more delicate when it comes to L-3 because it involves potential risks to airline passenger safety," notes the Post.
As NewsMax.com reported in January:
Mrs. Daschle's lobbying client was awarded a contract forcing the FAA to purchase airport baggage scanners which proved so defective that airlines refused to use them.
According to a report in the Washington Monthly, "a provision in the 2000 transportation budget ... required the FAA to buy baggage-scanners from one of Daschle's clients, L-3 International."
"The [Department of Transportation's] inspector general has found the L-3 equipment to be substandard," contended the magazine, "yet the FAA now has no choice but to purchase one of L-3's scanners for every one it buys from an L-3 competitor."
The L-3 machines are so poorly constructed, claimed the report, that the one at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport leaked radiation.
"Most others purchased by the FAA have not been installed," the magazine revealed.
The inspector general cited the defective scanners purchased from Mrs. Daschle's client as one reason the DOT won't be able to meet the federally-mandated requirement to screen all luggage for terrorist bombs for many years to come.
The Washington Monthly report, headlined "Tom Daschle's Hillary Problem," also probed Linda Daschle's role in the scandal some critics of the Washington power couple have dubbed "Daschlegate."
In 1994, a plane chartered by the Indian Health Service crashed in a snowstorm in Minot, North Dakota, killing the pilot and three doctors on their way to an Indian reservation clinic, the report says. The charter company was owned by Murl Bellew, a friend of the Daschles who had taught the senator how to fly.
"For several years, Forest Service inspectors had been raising serious questions about the safety of Bellew's operation - issues that the FAA had overlooked - and had argued that the company should be disqualified from seeking government contracts."
But the magazine reported that the Daschle friend wanted to get rid of the Forest Service inspections. "Sen. Daschle obliged by pushing legislation to eliminate the Forest Service's inspection role altogether, leaving his wife's agency as the sole overseer."
Senior FAA officials later told investigators that Linda Daschle had also worked to quash a proposed program to train Forest Service inspectors to conduct FAA inspections.
An FAA inspector testified that she had been ordered to shred possible evidence implicating the Daschles in the decision to quash inspections of Bellew's planes.
"Linda Daschle insisted that she had recused herself from any decisions on that issue, and the IG later absolved her of any wrongdoing," the magazine said.
Read a transcript of the "60 Minutes" interview where three Daschlegate widows blame the top Democrat for their husbands' deaths.
Yep...
and it's about damn time! Speculation is they make millions off the same big businesses that Dashole denegrates publically.
Looks like another job for Larry the caped lawyer Klayman. ......
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