Bird-strikes, like torture-memos: Public: The Swamp
The Swamp
Chicago Tribune

If people can see torture memos, Ray LaHood says, they can see bird strikes.

Posted April 22, 2009 3:50 PM
The Swamp

by Mark Silva

People ought to know about bird-strikes on airplanes.

Ray LaHood, secretary of transportation, plans to put it all online this week, on Thursday or Friday, after the Federal Aviation Administration attempted to keep secret all the data it has collected about birds striking airplanes -- the way they did in January, when a flock of geese forced a US Airways flight to make a miraculous landing on the Hudson River.

The FAA posted a notice in the Federal Register, requesting public comment, proposing to bar release of its records on airplane collisions with birds. LaHood says comments have run "99.9 percent" in favor of making the data public.

""I think all of this information ought to be made public, and I think that you'll soon be reading about the fact that we're going to, you know, make this information as public as anybody wants it," LaHood said in an interview for The Washington Post's "New Voices of Power" series. "The people should have access to this kind of information.

"The whole thing about the bird strike issue is it doesn't really comport with the president's idea of transparency," the secretary said. "I mean, here they just released all of these CIA files regarding interrogation, and . . . the optic of us trying to tell people they can't have information about birds flying around airports, I don't think that really quite comports with the policies of the administration.''
. . . .

Digg Delicious Facebook Fark Google Newsvine Reddit Yahoo

Post a comment

(Anonymous comments will not be posted. Comments aren't posted immediately. They're screened for relevance to the topic, obscenity, spam and over-the-top personal attacks. We can't always get them up as soon as we'd like so please be patient. Thanks for visiting The Swamp.)

Please enter the letter "z" in the field below:

Barack Obama
Want to see more photos? Click here

Play "Budget Hero"

Play Budget Hero

Latest polls

News, but funnier

Cartoon

Walt Handelsman

Cartoon

The Lowe- Down

Cartoon

Joe Fournier

Cartoon

Editorial cartoons

Quizzes

Rahm Emanuel

Know the real Rahm?

McCain

Presidential trivia