Sunday, July 10, 2005 Air-traffic whistle-blower talks of ordeal, lingering fears By KATIE FAIRBANK and TERRY MAXON The Dallas (TX) Morning News Watching two fellow air traffic controllers play what appeared to be a game of chicken with a pair of jetliners pushed Anne R. Whiteman over the edge. "Everybody saw it," Ms. Whiteman told The Dallas Morning News last week, recalling how the dueling controllers jeopardized safety by guiding their planes toward the same D/FW runway. To her, it was a dangerous game that epitomized the operation's testosterone-fueled environment. In the end, the planes landed safely, but Ms. Whiteman worried about what might happen the next time. "The supervisor witnessed it and laughed about it," she said. A government whistle-blower inquiry that grew out of Ms. Whiteman's complaints agreed that managers at the Terminal Radar Approach Control for years intentionally ignored and covered up many instances in which jets flew too close to each other. The report from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said the cover-up had been "jeopardizing air traffic safety. ... This was a substantial and specific danger to public safety." Yet Ms. Whiteman, 48, finds herself today feeling neither vindicated nor relieved by her seven-year struggle against a culture that some controllers say allowed a handful of colleagues to shrug off close calls, intimidate her relentlessly and even threaten her own safety. Once, she says, while driving to a late-night shift, she was nearly forced off the road by another controller. Even with fresh federal oversight for the radar center, some disciplinary action and government assurances that the skies near D/FW are safe, the results rankle Ms. Whiteman. She is now a supervisor at the tower, which directs traffic as it lands and moves around Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. But Ms. Whiteman still badly misses her more exciting job in TRACON, which handles all air traffic over North Texas. Ms. Whiteman asks why she was the one moved, and why the Federal Aviation Administration didn't address the real problem - the culture that allowed the cover-ups. "It's the behavior that compromises safety, rather than the proximity of the aircraft," she said. In its report released June 23, the special counsel supported Ms. Whiteman's claims that for years the radar center intentionally failed to investigate or report incidents in which planes flew too close to one another. The FAA denies that TRACON supervisors ignore bad behavior or any conduct that reduces safety. "For us to take action, we require much more substantiation than was provided to us," FAA spokesman Greg Martin said. "Nonetheless she perceived a threat, so we did our best to accommodate her and remove her from the environment." Ms. Whiteman's allegations are largely supported in interviews with nine current and former controllers and a government official familiar with the situation, as well as in two police incident reports. Clyde Ledgerwood, who retired from a management position in TRACON in February, supports Ms. Whiteman. "Anne Whiteman is credible," he said. "I was at D/FW when it worked great. It was top drawer. I care a great deal about the controllers across the board, but there are things that need to be fixed. I just couldn't fight the politics and fix it, so I chose to retire." A number of other controllers corroborate Ms. Whiteman's claims that officials do little to rein in vindictive co-workers. "Very few controllers get fired," said one TRACON supervisor, who asked to remain nameless. "There is never any price to be paid. If you're well-liked or popular, you get whatever you want." FAA feels secure The FAA says the skies are safe over North Texas. "With respect to the quality of the controllers, they're good and dedicated public servants," Mr. Martin said. "They're the best at what they do in the world. Sometimes that pride and confidence that they have is misinterpreted as bravado." Local managers at the radar center did not return calls requesting comment. But Ms. Whiteman and some controllers say the culture in the dark, windowless radar room in a bland beige building at the center of D/FW Airport remains dysfunctional. Some controllers at the site say they still are afraid to say when things go wrong. "Nothing has been done about it," said Ms. Whiteman, whose jaw aches from clenching and stomach bleeds from worry. "This is about a serious problem that even today nobody wants to take serious." In a June 10 letter to the Office of Special Counsel, she lamented the lack of action or concern by federal officials. "I took a huge risk in exposing inappropriate behavior that was condoned by FAA management, behavior that compromises and to this day continues to compromise safety," Ms. Whiteman wrote. "Never for a moment did I think that no one would care." An official at FAA headquarters said that there was disciplinary action taken against controllers involved in some incidents, but that the workers were good at their jobs and the problems were confined to a small group. "The question I've wrestled with is, you'd think they should have been fired. But they weren't," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Does stereotype fit? Some workers said they weren't surprised that no one was fired. Managers refuse to rein in the good ol' boy culture that permeates the place, according to these controllers, all of whom spoke only on the condition that they not be identified for fear of retribution. Movies such as the 1999 drama Pushing Tin have portrayed air-traffic controllers as ego-driven stress junkies. The stereotype isn't far from reality, insiders say, because some controllers can create a hostile environment in which masculine territorialism and adolescent behavior allow bullies to run rampant. Nobody wants to complain because workers are supposed to be capable of handling extremely stressful situations in the high-wire world of air traffic control, directing a ballet of aircraft from tiny propeller planes to jumbo jets. "Nobody wants to be the person that cracks," a controller said. "Nobody wants to be the person that tells." The FAA frowns on workers speaking out, some say. Others say the union discourages them from talking. But most agree that they'll catch grief from colleagues if they talk about what goes on within the TRACON. "People say it's like cops. Cops don't tell on each other. Somebody speaking out is an anomaly. That's not the way we operate," a supervisor said. Most controllers work hard and do a good job, Ms. Whiteman said. But a small clique at D/FW is allowed to run roughshod in the workplace, according to Ms. Whiteman and others. They say the group - nicknamed the Nasty Boys by some or the Testosterone or T-Boys by others - irritates and intimidates dedicated, professional controllers and supervisors who follow the rules. They "are a crew that doesn't mind playing the high school sophomoric tricks on people. They thrive on that," one controller said. "It's like a prison movie," one supervisor said. "There is a culture inside with the people who really run things." Embarking on career Born in Virginia but reared in Germany and South America, Ms. Whiteman began working as an air-traffic controller in El Paso in 1982, a year after thousands of controllers went on strike and were fired. Two years later, she transferred to Dallas/Fort Worth, where she was the first female controller in the regional air-traffic control center. In those early days, Ms. Whiteman recalled: "I got along great with everybody. To the best of my knowledge, I didn't have an enemy." Initial problems Her first conflict with the clique came in 1995, in a dispute over her work schedule. But she says it got much worse in 1997-98 when Ms. Whiteman spent a year as a temporary supervisor. The area manager who put her in that job left the TRACON, and she says her replacement had someone else he wanted in that job. She said that led to a months-long campaign to undercut her. While she was a supervisor, one member of the clique made a number of missteps, including tangling with a private-jet pilot who happened to be a friend of Jane Garvey, then the FAA administrator. Ms. Whiteman wrote a letter of reprimand and went to deliver it. She remembered being shocked when she looked in the door: Her immediate supervisor "had this controller on the floor in a headlock, rolling around on the floor, and said: 'Boy, did you [expletive] up this time. She's got you this time. I told you boys that she was out to get you guys.' " That behavior got the manager points within the small group, and enmity toward her, Ms. Whiteman said. She ended her one-year supervisory assignment in early 1998, unhappy that she didn't get promoted, but not wanting to work for a manager who clearly didn't want her. Then mysterious things began to happen, she says. Ms. Whiteman found her seniority number constantly changed in the FAA computer, hurting her ability to bid for work schedules. Her name was taken off the overtime list, depriving her of chances to make extra cash. She complained to Ms. Garvey in August 1999. That October, Ms. Whiteman got a letter at work saying the administrator had been assured that the problems had been resolved - even though they hadn't been. Upset by the letter, Ms. Whiteman said she asked to leave work and was given permission. But later managers claimed she had abandoned her station and her airplanes, she says, an accusation she also vigorously denied. Ms. Whiteman claims she was told that the flight surgeon had ruled her medically unfit for duty and that she couldn't return to work. She hired a lawyer. She checked with the flight surgeon. He had never disqualified her. Then officials told her she couldn't return because she had filed a charge of a hostile work environment. "It was a hostile work environment at best," she agreed, "but I hadn't filed one." About a month later, Ms. Whiteman returned to work. Ms. Whiteman was moved to another supervisor and area manager, but the situation did not improve. "After that I became a fighter," she said. In March 2000, she filed an equal employment opportunity complaint with the FAA. Seven months later, she filed a claim that she had faced reprisals because of her complaint. Ms. Whiteman agreed to a confidential settlement; although she couldn't discuss terms, she said she found them insufficient. As time went on, "I probably went into a shell. I don't want to say I was scared. I stood up to these guys. I started getting used to being isolated, to being ostracized. But the harassment was incessant," she said. Feeling targeted Ms. Whiteman said she wrote letters telling of her hubcaps being marked up, her lunches and mail tossed out, her schedules changed. A number of times, someone taped a dime to her mailbox, an accusation that she squealed on fellow controllers. Someone changed her personal radar settings so her radarscope was blank when she began work; a controller wouldn't tell her where he had directed an airplane that was approaching the path of an aircraft she was controlling; a controller kept calling her and hanging up while she was on duty. "From day to day, they would add just one more little thing," she said. "You'd think, golly, tomorrow somebody has got to care. Tomorrow, I'll find someone who cares. Tomorrow, I'll find the supervisor who stands up and says, 'Damn it - stop it.' But I never did." On Sept. 7, 2001, Ms. Whiteman was extremely busy, handling 23 airplanes. While another controller sat down beside her to help, she says, she could overhear two other controllers snickering that she was about to have a "deal," controller lingo for an operational error. Scanning her radarscope, she found the problem and turned an airplane to avoid a close call. She was aghast to think that the two controllers would watch it occur rather than do something to prevent it. "I grew up in an environment where you helped everybody out. You didn't play games with airplanes. They were sitting there laughing about it," she said. The harassment and hostility moved outside the radar room too, Ms. Whiteman said. On June 5, 2002, another controller pulled his vehicle alongside hers as they both drove to work on a late-night shift, she said. The man sped up and slowed down as she did. Finally, she says, he steered his car over into her lane, forcing her to slam on her brakes to avoid a collision. She reported the incident when she got to work, and later repeated the allegation to police, records show. The other controller explained to the TRACON manager that "he wasn't trying to run me off the road. He simply was in my lane of traffic because he was having trouble seeing in my tinted windows," Ms. Whiteman wrote in a letter to a manager. Ms. Whiteman wrote to an FAA official at the center that she overhead a controller say, "The snitch that called the hotline should be beat to within an inch of their life." She told airport police of her fears in two incident reports filed in January 2003. "Ms. Whiteman said that two co-workers were talking about getting a shotgun and wondering what kind of pattern it would have and so on," according to one report. She was "crying, trembling and appeared to fear for her safety as indicated by her emotions," according to a second report that outlined several run-ins with some threatening controllers. By her count, Ms. Whiteman talked with or wrote to two dozen officials, including the heads of the FAA and its parent agency, the Department of Transportation; a member of Congress; airport police and the FBI. Mr. Martin, the FAA spokesman, said the agency takes seriously any issues involving a hostile work environment. "That's always a level of concern. It involves the greatest degree of focus to do what we do. Anything that takes away from that focus gives us a real cause for concern," he said. "What Mrs. Whiteman was subjected to by fellow controllers, that's a distraction. ... She should have been able to work where she was and not contend with that. Those are some serious allegations." Authorities haven't issued any findings on her contentions about workplace conditions. Several of the men identified as members of the clique declined to comment. One man who agreed to comment if his name was not used said that Ms. Whiteman is just a disgruntled staffer, upset about not getting a full-time supervisory job at TRACON. Disputing the perception he's a bully at work, he asked sarcastically: "If I start crying now, will I get rid of that reputation?" Satisfied with inquiry Despite Ms. Whiteman's belief that the investigation fixed a few symptoms without attacking the serious disease at TRACON, federal agency investigators say they are happy with the investigation's results. "We have brought this matter to the attention of FAA senior management and believe corrective actions undertaken by the agency substantially address Ms. Whiteman's concerns and represent considerable progress toward preventing future unreported operational errors at that facility," said David Barnes, spokesman for Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead. But Darrell Meachum, Southwest regional vice president for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the investigation would make little difference in monitoring operational errors. If the FAA really wanted to do that, the agency would install technology nicknamed a "snitch patch" in radar rooms to automatically record errors. "The FAA systematically discourages controllers from reporting instances. They always have," Mr. Meachum said. "We run a lot of airplanes and we do it safely, but if the FAA wanted to know how many deals they were actually having, they have ways to find that out." The FAA said it would be a technological challenge, but that's not the biggest issue with installing equipment to monitor operational errors, said the FAA's Mr. Martin. "There has been some long-standing resistance from the union based on the belief that operational errors are used punitively," he said. Whether Ms. Whiteman's continuing concerns will be addressed also remains a question. Cathy Deeds, a spokeswoman with the special counsel, said she could not comment on whether any investigations continue. Ms. Whiteman said she is stunned and discouraged that nothing more has happened. "I have been told many times and as recently as two days ago by FAA officials that they are not an enforcement agency, they cannot conduct criminal investigations," Ms. Whiteman said in her letter to the special counsel last month. "I would then ask who can, who will, will anyone?" Attached Photo: Anne R. Whiteman's complaints of cover-ups of instances where jets near D/FW Airport flew too close to one another sparked a government inquiry.
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