Allan J McDonald - Demoted and Reinstated — Transcript

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1. 0:04i said well i haven't been the director
2. 0:05of the solid rocket motor project for
3. 0:07martin thought call
4. 0:08he said would you come down here on the
5. 0:11floor and repeat
6. 0:12what i think i heard because if i heard
7. 0:14what i think i heard
8. 0:16this will be in litigation for years to
9. 0:18come
10. 0:20my life changed when he said that
11. 0:22because then
12. 0:23i knew who was going to be in the middle
13. 0:26of all this litigation for years to come
14. 0:28me at that moment i decided that
15. 0:32i was going to start writing down
16. 0:34everything i knew
17. 0:36as much detail as i could remember it
18. 0:39everything i heard
19. 0:41and everything that was published in the
20. 0:42press i did that
21. 0:45the next three straight years because i
22. 0:47about
23. 0:48three months after the accident they
24. 0:50issued this report to the president
25. 0:53i was called in because right after my
26. 0:56first testimony for the commission
27. 0:58i was called in said you're no longer a
28. 1:00head of program you're head of
29. 1:01scheduling
30. 1:02this is scheduling what the hell we're
31. 1:03going to schedule we're not going to
32. 1:04build anything
33. 1:05what we build certainly isn't going to
34. 1:07be what we have and so that's all right
35. 1:09all these people work for you it doesn't
36. 1:11work for you anymore you're
37. 1:12scheduling and they gave me this non-job
38. 1:16and i said furthermore you're off of the
39. 1:18failure team you can't
40. 1:19have any interaction now so you can't do
41. 1:21any failure analysis
42. 1:24and it was ironic that about three or
43. 1:26four months later i ran
44. 1:28into general don katina in washington
45. 1:31because i at the time was the head of
46. 1:32the
47. 1:33chairman of the american institute of
48. 1:35aeronautics and astronautics
49. 1:37sod rocket technical committee and i was
50. 1:39turning my gavel over to the newly
51. 1:40elected chairman
52. 1:42and and they were having a annual
53. 1:44conference there and they were having
54. 1:46this big
55. 1:47keynote address by the assistant
56. 1:49secretary of the air force pete aldrich
57. 1:51on what a horrible state of affairs
58. 1:53we're in because we lost
59. 1:54both titan and shuttle which was our
60. 1:56major launch vehicles for large payloads
61. 1:59all of our big spy satellites and he
62. 2:02couldn't show up so he sent general
63. 2:04katina
64. 2:05to to give this briefing and he i was
65. 2:08sitting the front seat
66. 2:09and he saw me sit in the front seats
67. 2:10when he came down he says al what the
68. 2:12hell are you doing here he says
69. 2:14you shouldn't be wasting your time
70. 2:15hearing this crap that we're telling
71. 2:16everybody about these launch vehicles
72. 2:18so you need to spend all your time
73. 2:20figuring out why the shuttle failed the
74. 2:22way it did
75. 2:23because i'm not doing that anymore i've
76. 2:25been doing that for some time
77. 2:27what do you mean you haven't been doing
78. 2:28that i thought you were on the failure
79. 2:29team that was
80. 2:31i got removed from that so when did you
81. 2:32get removed from that i said right after
82. 2:34i testified for you guys
83. 2:36he said you're kidding i says no he said
84. 2:40well that's
85. 2:41we'll fix that problem he called the
86. 2:44chairman and they brought in our
87. 2:46corporate executives and read them the
88. 2:48right act
89. 2:51and then about a month later i get
90. 2:54called and said hey
91. 2:55now you're going to be ahead of this
92. 2:56whole redesign team for
93. 2:58fixing this problem on the show i kind
94. 3:01of uh
95. 3:02you know i enjoyed that that was great
96. 3:06and because that's what i want to do and
97. 3:08get rid of you know
98. 3:09looking on what could have been things
99. 3:11well
100. 3:12about two months later i get a phone
101. 3:14call from
102. 3:15congressman markey from massachusetts
103. 3:17he's still there he's a mr mcdonald is
104. 3:19it really true what i read in new york
105. 3:20times or you're heading this
106. 3:22whole activity to restore the shuttle or
107. 3:24is that just a facade your company's
108. 3:26putting out there and they got you in
109. 3:27some menial job
110. 3:29i says no it's it's real i've been
111. 3:30working 16 hours a day
112. 3:32seven days a week i said do you know
113. 3:34something i don't know
114. 3:35so well he said i'm sure you're familiar
115. 3:37with house joint residues in 634 we
116. 3:39introduced in your name
117. 3:40was passed by the congress and the
118. 3:42senate there's no what's that
119. 3:44he said what's the bill he says we wrote
120. 3:46to protect your job in fact he says
121. 3:48i'll send you a copy of that along with
122. 3:50the letter we sent to your ceo in
123. 3:52chicago
124. 3:53and what it basically said was they
125. 3:55didn't reinstate me
126. 3:57to a job equivalent to what i had before
127. 4:00i testified for the commission
128. 4:02that they were not only canceling the
129. 4:03existing contract