15. Enter Michael Lynch

When something important is going on, silence is a lie.
—A.M. Rosenthal

The United bankruptcy was world news, since United Airlines was the second-largest carrier in the world. On Dec. 9, 2002, the UK Guardian accurately forecast:

“…protection from creditors will come at a steep price for the 83,000 employees who own 55% of the company. A bankruptcy court judge is almost certain to order wage and job cuts and could dissolve the employee stock ownership plan.”

In the year following the 9/11 catastrophe, the report also stated:

“On pace to lose an industry-record $2.5 billion this year, United had pinned its last hopes of avoiding bankruptcy on obtaining Federal backing for $1.8 billion of a $2 billion loan that banks would not otherwise provide. But the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, created last year to help the airline industry recover after the September 11 terrorist attacks, rejected United’s request on Wednesday.

The linchpin to United’s proposal was $5.2 billion in labor cutbacks by 2008, but the three-member Federal panel said the airline’s business plan was financially unsound and a loan guarantee would have risked US taxpayers picking up the tab.”

The article also noted, “It is the 11th time a major US airline has filed for bankruptcy since deregulation in 1978, including TWA three times.”

The bankruptcy was authorized by a vote of the directors of the holding company, UAL, Inc., founded at the end of 1968 by then-CEO George Keck, to allow the company to diversify. It was at UAL, Inc., that the vote to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy status was held by the board of directors. On paper, we employees who had given up so much to keep United Airlines flying, during the post-Richard Ferris reorganization, owned 55% of United Airlines. But the reality was, UAL, Inc. was the “parent company,” and the home of the Board of Directors, in whose hands the direction of the company actually lay.

The United bankruptcy case lasted 1,150 days until February 2, 2006. During that time, presiding Judge Eugene R. Wedoff granted every single employee concession requested by United Airlines. The company had not filed a profit since 2000. He granted UAL distress-termination of a $10-billion employee defined benefit pension plan, which adversely affected more than 100,000 employees worldwide.

Then there was the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) disaster. In 1987 pilots had taken a 25% pay cut to purchase United stock as part of their compensation plan, which granted certain employee participants a 55% ownership of United Airlines. Employees initially paid around $65 per share and agreed to the codicil that we could not cash in the stock until retirement.

The price of our stock plummeted to less than $1 per share after 9/11. Despite our majority ownership in UAL, Judge Wedoff utterly abrogated our union contract. He authorized the sale of “our” stock by “the company” at that extremely low price under $1. Needless to say, this gave us no chance to ever recover the money we had sacrificed and there was no hope for any eventual gains. With a bang of a gavel, we were all robbed and wiped out. I personally lost around $600,000 from this unwarranted and forced sale.

During the bankruptcy proceedings of over three years, Glenn Tilton remained CEO of United Airlines while many lost their jobs or had their compensation cut. After emerging from bankruptcy, he told employees: “When we started this journey three years ago, many people questioned our ability to rebuild United into a company with a sustainable future. But together we have created a fundamentally better airline — strong, confident and ready to compete with the world’s best.”

This competition was evidently to be in the “leanest and meanest” sense. The NBC News website also noted, Feb. 1, 2006:

“It now has about 30 percent fewer employees (58,000), 20 percent fewer airplanes (460) and 20 percent lower operating costs (7.5 cents per seat per mile), excluding fuel, than it did when the bankruptcy began on Dec. 9, 2002. Labor costs are down by more than $3 billion annually after two steep pay cuts and the elimination of defined-benefit pensions. Dozens of daily domestic flights have been eliminated.”

The report also noted that United stock now closed at $40 in pre-trading on Nasdaq’s over-the-counter market. What a rebound! Many of us suspected behind-the-scenes market manipulation had taken place. Whether with insider trading or not, those who bought shares for a buck suddenly had a 4,000% profit to show for their investment. We guarantors of United lost it all by Judge Wedoff’s court order.

United’s new stock plan granted 8% to top management. As financial analysts praised United for their very productive bloodletting and profiteering on the backs of its employees, some of them publicly proclaimed their displeasure in no uncertain terms.

Again, from the NBC News report:

“The empty suits at UAL world headquarters are dropping their bags of money only long enough to pat themselves on the back for a job well done,” said Randy Canale, president of District 141 of the Machinists’ union and a UAL board member. “The fact is that United survived in spite of its current leadership, not because of it.”

A leader of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association was even more blunt in urging a new management team to be appointed.

“We challenge UAL to take the same carnivorous attitude used to beat concessions from the union work groups, and apply it towards its management team,” said AMFA Local 9 president Joseph Prisco, whose unit represents more than half of United mechanics.

It was in this atmosphere in July, 2006, that I received an email from Captain Bob Falco. He was a New York based friend in my network. The email was sent to 13 other United Airline pilots remarking, “Well fellas… Looks like we found a smoking gun.”

As an aside, I purposely haven’t mentioned my family. I had been able to woo an attractive mate and amply provide for my loved ones as a result of my continued career success. During the past twenty-seven years we had a son and daughter who were now on the cusp of adulthood. The “shy wallflower” of the Belleville CYO teen dances had blossomed during my mounting achievements about the time I enlisted in the Navy. Our family’s financial security had been torpedoed as a result of how I was railroaded out of United Airlines and never being able to pilot an airplane again. The stress of adapting to our new circumstances as a family was proving tough for them to accept.

My family initially admired and supported my efforts to help improve the integrity and priority of the flight safety systems. I was pursuing justice via every available avenue. My family eventually became weary and alarmed as more and more of our financial security was being snatched from us. I suspect that it appeared to them that the longer I persevered, the more it would cost our once plush lifestyle and future security.

It certainly didn’t help that I had long since become convinced that 9/11 was not as portrayed to us by Bush-Cheney and subsequent Administrations and by the media. I could see fear in their eyes any time I mentioned my inquiries and the many sordid revelations that were uncovered.

I could see that I was losing my precious wife and children. This increased my determination to prove that my insights were correct. It seemed like I was constantly shoveling coal into the furnace of a locomotive to keep it going at top speed. Why couldn’t they see what was obvious to me? They began to think I was charging at ghosts of my own imagination, especially since there was an official diagnosis of a mental disorder on my record. They seemed to forget that it was a false diagnosis to terminate my pilot’s license and kick me out of United Airlines. They had faith in televised news which only spouted the “official story”. They figured those newscasters would have uncovered problems with the “official narrative” if there had been massive crimes with 9/11. After all, hadn’t “Watergate” been uncovered decades before? Even though a lot of professionals had serious questions about 9/11, the mainstream media was not interested in researching those issues.

I received a phone call in December 2006 from Captain Field McConnell, a DC-10 captain from Northwest Airlines. He had learned that my career had been terminated because I was a whistleblower. He said that Northwest, the FAA, and the ALPA pilots’ union were trying to ground him for life as a pilot. They were trying to force him to see a notorious FAA quack shrink in Los Angeles on a trumped-up psychiatric diagnosis. Captain McConnel was attempting to expose the existence of illegal modifications on Boeing aircraft. I explained how United had used false psychiatric charges to get rid of me. After our conversation, Captain McConnel decided to retire 9 years early, forfeiting over $4-million in pay and pension, so that he could serve as an expert witness in future litigation.

I personally knew five other pilots who had been grounded for speaking out about airline safety issues. All of them were falsely accused of having “mental” issues in manners similar to what United did to me.

In February 2007, Field filed a federal lawsuit in Washington DC (pro se) regarding these illegal issues, but the judge tossed the case on frivolous grounds. It was obvious that higher powers didn’t want to touch this illegal issue.

Through my network I learned that an uninterruptible autopilot system might have played a key role in the disastrous 9/11 events. This is a high-tech system that enables electronic hijacking of a commercial jet during flight. It could be remotely activated to take control of the aircraft autopilot and flight management computers. The remote operators could then fly the airplane wherever they wanted. The pilots cannot disconnect this system once it is remotely engaged. Could it have been used to fly the two planes into the Twin Towers? Captain Field McConnell exposed this uninterruptible autopilot.

I had first heard of the uninterruptible autopilot when President Bush mentioned it at O’Hare Airport on 9/17/2001 right after the 9/11/2001 disaster. He said that authorities were “looking for” all kinds of new technology to help thwart airline hijackers, including an uninterruptible autopilot.

I learned that this technology was already in use. The 4/24/2001 issue of Space Daily reported on the “Global Hawk Makes Historic First Unmanned Flight To Australia”. This technology was demonstrated by flying Global Hawk non-stop across the Pacific Ocean from Edwards Air Force Base in California to the RAF Base in Edinburgh, South Australia. “RAAF and DSTO are working closely with the US Air Force (USAF) and Northrop Grumman Ryan Aeronautical Center, the company which developed Global Hawk for the USAF, under a four-year agreement called Project Arrangement 13.”

https://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-01d.html

The report further stated: “Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical, with a wingspan of 116 feet, will provide battlespace commanders near-real-time intelligence imagery from high altitudes for long periods of time, using SAR, moving target indicator, EO and infrared sensor systems. The data gathered by Global Hawk will be relayed to decision-makers via world-wide satellite communication links to its ground segment.”

We airline pilots had never been informed during that time period of these uninterruptible autopilot systems. It turned out that they had already been implemented on newer planes. The general flying public certainly wouldn’t have suspected the existence of these systems.

The more I wanted my wife and children to understand what I was uncovering, the less they wanted to know and the farther apart we drifted. I was beginning to understand the true nature of many governing our nation. Being cold, calculating, and devious were often requirements for gaining high levels of official powers. They also needed to work in lock-sync with the media to achieve their objectives. The media ownership and control were concentrated in the hands of about a half-dozen corporations at that time.

Let’s take another look at the email received in July 2006 from Captain Bob Falco where he mentioned the “smoking gun”. It included a Business Wire Press Release that was written by attorney David Martin Price on behalf of Michael W. Lynch. This addressed serious allegations of purported judicial corruption and other matters surrounding the bankruptcy of Michael Lynch’s Chicago-based company, McCook Metals, LLC. The presiding chief Federal Bankruptcy Judge, Eugene R. Wedoff, and other Federal and state judges were identified.

There Wedoff was again! He was none other than the presiding judge in the United Airlines Bankruptcy proceedings.

The article explosively alleged that Judge Wedoff maintained a $40-million bribery fund in a Chicago bank. This money was used to bribe other judges and court officers to favor certain “pre-ordained” conclusions important to their cases.

Mr. Price’s phone number was at the bottom of the press release, so I called and left him a voice mail, thanking him for his and Mr. Lynch’s efforts, leaving him my personal and contact information and an offer of my assistance.

An hour or so later, Michael Lynch called me. Over the next hour, I listened closely as he detailed the legal issues surrounding the McCook Metals antitrust case against Alcoa Aluminum. Mr. Lynch reciprocally offered his assistance to us, the United Airlines employees, regarding the UAL bankruptcy case.

He went on to assure me that there were many others working behind the scenes looking into this massive scam operation, including former FBI/CIA agents, Federal judges, lawyers, and many others nationwide seeking to expose the issue of judicial corruption in our cases.

Mr. Lynch kept reminding me throughout our conversation that if I were to cooperate in this matter, then I would become a wealthy man. I repeatedly asked that he not bring up financial remuneration to me regarding my involvement, as my sole motive was to help expose the heinous crimes against United employees and shareholders, not financial recompense, despite the magnitude of what I knew to be my own personal losses.

At the close of the conversation, he stated, “Dan, I just want you to know that the highest levels of La Cosa Nostra are involved in these matters.” (The La Cosa Nostra, also known as the “Mob” or the “Mafia,” evolved from the Sicilian Mafia and is one of the foremost organized criminal threats to American society. Translated to English, La Cosa Nostra means “this thing of ours.” Consisting of different “families”, this nationwide alliance of criminals is dedicated to pursuing crime and protecting its members.)

This, naturally, rang my alarm bells! Though I didn’t tell him so, upon hearing this statement I did not desire to cooperate with him. I tried, then and there, to put him in touch with United labor union leaders and other grassroots organizations that I was in contact with in various locations, whom I felt could better legally employ his information. After all, I was only one lone individual among many who had been looted and left hanging out to dry.

His final remark to me warned, “If you choose to work with me and others, once you go visible, you have to remain very visible — or they will kill you.”

Rattled, the next morning I began researching Michael Lynch on the internet —only to discover that he had been labelled a “judge chaser,” and consequently been put on the FBI Domestic Terrorist Watch List! With the passage of the menacing PATRIOT Act, with its potential threat of an American being legally arrested and detained in violation of what had, hitherto, been our inviolable Habeas Corpus rights, I felt that perhaps I was placing myself at grave risk of incarceration through my association with Mr. Lynch.

On October 13, 2006, Mr. Lynch appeared in a Chicago courtroom to legally represent himself (pro se) before Illinois State Judge Paddy McNamara, for the purpose of presenting criminal evidence and informant testimony before the judge in chambers for an in-camera review. This was requested as, purportedly, members of organized crime were present in the courtroom, which would have endangered the lives of his informants were their identities revealed.

But, for the stated reason that Mr. Lynch would not produce his supporting evidence openly in the courtroom, nor reveal the identities of his informants who, at the time, were not even located in the Chicago area, Judge McNamara denied this request and, instead, held Mr. Lynch in contempt of court. The Judge sentenced him to 60 days in the Cook County Jail — one of the most dangerous detention facilities in the United States. He ordered the bailiff to remove Lynch from the courtroom and take him straight to jail, on the spot, without permitting him a separate sentencing hearing as prescribed by law.

By the way — Judge McNamara resigned from the bench shortly thereafter and moved to Florida.

I was informed of these alarming developments via receipt of an email that evening from Michael’s wife, Kimberly. It was thirteen days before his attorneys were able to legally secure his release on appeal.

Upon his release, Michael phoned me, informing me of the details of his detention and release on appeal. My knee-jerk reaction was to say I intended to write Chicago District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald on behalf of the Whistleblowing United Pilots Association, but Michael suggested that I write key members of Congress, instead. So, with the Democrats having won both chambers of Congress on November 13th in the midterm elections, I drafted a letter to Congressman John Conyers, Chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, advising his office of the judicial corruption issues pertaining to the bankruptcy cases. Before mailing it, Michael suggested that I forward the proposed letter to him for additions and/or corrections, which I did.

The next day he emailed me back the letter, to which he had added the following paragraph:

“Key in his evidence are the current Bush administration member Vice President Dick Cheney’s and former Chairman of Alcoa and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil’s involvement in the McCook Metals and United Airlines case. They conspired to push the PBGC’s pension obligations away from corporations and on to the Federal government. Billions of dollars of pension obligations were forced away from Alcoa and United and illegally absorbed by the Federal government.”

I took a deep breath upon reading those words, but I mailed the letter certified and, after receiving the receipt of delivery, phoned Congressman Waxman’s office. I spoke with staffer Matt Siegler, who repeatedly and flatly advised me that Congressman Waxman would not investigate this matter.

Hmmm. Stonewalled again.

Due to the enormous implications of this case, and because the alleged crimes took place in the state of Illinois, a few weeks later I decided that I would write a joint letter to US Senators from Illinois Richard Durbin, who sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee which has the power to impeach guilty Federal judges, and his junior colleague, Barack Obama.

Concurrently, I advised Michael of my intent to write District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, but he informed me that he had already spoken with Fitzgerald and had even briefed the recently-created FBI Chicago White Collar Criminal Division on the information that he and his team possessed.

Michael further cautioned me that any correspondence sent to DA Fitzgerald would be intercepted and blocked by Assistant District Attorney Gary Shapiro, leaving me, at the time, wondering why and how that could be happening.

In spite of his warnings, I wrote the letter requesting Fitzgerald’s legal intercession. A few weeks later, I received an unsigned letter from the “Screening Committee,” advising me to contact Chicago FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Grant if I had criminal evidence or informant testimony to support my allegations of judicial corruption.

Given the alleged Mob involvement in this matter, I had no desire to proceed any further, so I made up my mind to turn it all over to the labor unions at United. Among others, I wrote letters and made follow-up calls to the leadership of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), and the International Association of Mechanics (IAM), advising each of the availability of criminal evidence and witness testimony regarding judicial corruption in the United Airlines bankruptcy.

The result: not one organization was interested in receiving the information, or in being put in touch with the Lynch team.

My relations with my immediate family reached the breaking point in 2006, after I persisted, despite some initial hesitations, in spite of warnings I received that my efforts would be crossing the ruthless crime bosses of “La Cosa Nostra.” That thought, atop all that had gone before, was more than my wife could bear indefinitely. My son and daughter had come to see me as a deluded “Don Quixote” figure, a tragic case tilting at imaginary windmills.

So, from this period, I lived alone, but I continued to press on, even if the truth of what was happening meant something only to me. And for me, that truth was that our nation itself had been converted into a criminal enterprise, above anything else.

I eventually met, fell in love with, and married a Pakistani woman and moved to Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2010.

Perplexed and not knowing where to turn next, in January, 2007, I sent certified mail letters to all Senators and Congressmen who sat on the Senate and House Judiciary Committee and Pension Committee, and I followed up with phone calls to many staffers — none of whom initially appeared interested.

I found myself stonewalled, yet again.

Finally, in May, I received a letter from Ms. Joan Curie-Leonard, Special Assistant to Senator Barack Obama in his Chicago office, advising me to contact my Senators for my home state of Georgia concerning this matter, since I was not an Illinois constituent — even though the alleged criminality took place in the state of Illinois.

Since United Airlines was the single largest employer in the state of Illinois, and the United bankruptcy was the largest in commercial aviation history, with the alleged illegal $10-billion pension termination being the largest in the history of the planet, I was left dumbfounded at this advice.

Meanwhile, Senator Durbin’s office never responded to my letter at all.

My letter to Chicago FBI Agent Grant had gone unanswered by his office, as well. But I learned that it had been “kicked upstairs” to the DC FBI Public Corruption Unit — whose response to me simply stated that I should contact the Atlanta office of the FBI!

As I pondered this directive, I realized I did not physically possess some of the key evidence. Nor did I have direct access to alleged mob informants in this case. Coupling these facts with the fact that Michael Lynch had already briefed the office of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago FBI, and the Chicago Crime Commission, I felt that any visit on my part to the Atlanta FBI office would serve no purpose, given that no action had been taken by any office to date.

But I decided, I wanted Senator Obama to review the evidence. I once again wrote Ms. Joan Curie-Leonard in his Chicago office, imploring her, as spokesperson on behalf of the Whistleblowing United Pilots Association, that the materials I had mailed to her office be given to Obama. But again, in a phone conversation with her staffer, I was simply advised to contact my home state US Representative.

In October I received an unsolicited official letter from my home state of Georgia. In it US Congressman Lynn Westmoreland advised me that his staffer, Ms. Jean Stoddard, would look into this matter with the Department of Justice and do everything his office could do to assist me.

Finally! I thought I was making progress.

By now, keeping in daily phone contact with Michael Lynch, apprising him of our progress, was part of my routine. Since he was still backed into a legal corner with his appeal of the remaining 47 days of his jail sentence unresolved, he was restricted by his legal team from openly engaging in my letter-writing or phone-calling campaign. Still, he offered me sound advice each day.

Little did I realize just how politically naïve I was, especially in post-9/11 America, until much later in the game. Michael was not. Thus, he was sometimes amused at my bewilderment at the non-responsiveness of government officials. Thus far, still waiting for any further word from my congressman’s office, I felt I was being stonewalled again. The earlier letter seemed to be just another part of a great big runaround.

Alice Fisher, Assistant Attorney General - Criminal Division, oversaw every District Attorney in the country. Given where I was in matters, I decided to write her a lengthy letter with numerous attachments. These included a copy of a sworn affidavit that had been previously filed by Michael in Kansas City, in which he specifically named the alleged four US Federal judges and six State court judges operating under the influence of an Arizona crime family. I knew it was risky to send this letter, since doing so would draw attention to me and increase my risk of physical harm because of the parties involved.

Then Michael Lynch phoned me in a near-panic, to inform me that President Bush had just nominated Chicago Federal Judge Mark R. Filip to the post of Deputy Attorney General. He advised me that we were now both at extreme risk, since Judge Filip had been named as one of the four corrupt Federal judges in his affidavit.

This caused me greater alarm, as I had previously submitted this same affidavit to various offices in hopes that an investigation into this matter would be initiated. Michael speculated that perhaps now certain individuals in government might concoct methods of criminally indicting both of us. He recommended that I get my financial affairs in order, including my tax returns.

I assured him that my financial house was in order. But inside I was much taken aback by this alarming news. As a result, I prepared and forwarded a letter with an evidence package to the office of Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the official who would oversee the Senate confirmation hearing of Judge Mark Filip.

Surprisingly, on October 22, 2007, I received an unsolicited letter from my US Senator, Saxby Chambliss, advising me that, “I have contacted the Department of Justice on your behalf and will certainly share their response with you when I receive it.”

Just one month later, I received another letter from Chambliss’ office, advising me that, “While I regret to learn of your difficulties, I, as a United States Senator, have no jurisdiction over matters such as these.”

Abandoned by the sole potential ally I might have had within the power structure; I now knew that I was being stonewalled at the highest levels within the Department of Justice. If my home state senators would not respond to my petition for help, then to whom in government could I turn for support and to defend me?

In December, I received a letter from Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney, in response to the letter that I had sent to Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher. However, his letter skirted every single issue that I had addressed in my letter to her. He told me his decision was to not investigate this matter. In support of this conclusion, he cited an irrelevant reference to a three-judge ruling on a previously-decided appeal which defended Judge Wedoff’s ruling in court. Would favorable rulings to Wedoff’s decisions indicate that this judge was not manager of a huge bribery slush fund? Hardly!

I was furious, but also relentless in my pursuit of justice. I sent another letter to him, requesting that he review the content of my letter to Ms. Fisher, as I felt that his letter did not respond to the questions posed therein.

Both Mr. Keeney and Ms. Fisher resigned from the Department of Justice shortly thereafter — is there a pattern here? — and I received no further response from DOJ.

I now realized that I had over-exposed myself to criminal and other malevolent elements, due to having nursed a delusion that my government would defend and represent me.

At this point in time, neither Michael nor I knew whom we could trust.

Subsequently, in February 2008, I phoned the office of the Chicago FBI and filed a Federal complaint with FBI Agent David Barusko, who was on duty at the intake desk. I requested he keep the file open, pending future submission of evidence and a witness list. I also requested guaranteed witness protection for mob informants. During this phone conversation, he advised me that a secret meeting could be arranged at an undisclosed location of our choice in the Chicago area, wherein informants could be questioned and evidence collected. But, he advised, the DOJ would have to review the case before witness protection could be afforded, due to the expense of Federal Marshal protection. I declined the offer, but told him that I would get back in touch with the office.

In March, I phoned the office of Senator Leahy and spoke with his senior staffer, Matt Robinson, the day before Judge Filip’s senate confirmation hearing. I asked him if he had, in fact, reviewed all the information that I had sent to their office. He admitted to me that he had. He then asked me, in muffled tones, if I had legal representation and whom I was working with on these matters. I informed him that I did, in fact, have legal representation, and was working closely behind the scenes with numerous print media journalists and many others. I further informed him that, since he had reviewed all the materials that I sent him, if the information proved true and Judge Filip was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, that I would lose all faith in our government and my representatives.

Judge Filip was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on March 3, 2008. Senator Durbin, who endorsed him, had been aware of our allegations since November 2006, as was Senator Obama.

Approaching the Fall of the 2008 presidential election, then-Senator Obama was employing his oratorical gifts to make sincere-sounding campaign promises of a greater openness of government and enhanced protection for Federal whistleblowers. So, I decided to wait until after his inauguration to petition a new Cabinet and Congressional leaders for assistance as a federal whistleblower. After having been deflected twice by assistant Ms. Joan Curie-Leonard to my Georgia representatives who, in turn, did nothing to assist me, I now felt that, as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama would now have jurisdiction over his own Cabinet. So it was that, due to a politician’s stirring oratory, I naïvely believed that I would finally receive the support I needed as a federal whistleblower.

On January 31, 2009, I wrote the following letter to President Obama detailing the events of the past two years since I had written his Illinois senate office in 2006, while petitioning his office for support:

January 31, 2009
4204 Lakeside Way
Newnan, Georgia 30265

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

SUBJECT: UNITED AIRLINES BANKRUPTCY CORRUPTION

Dear Mr. President,

On behalf of the Whistleblowing United Pilots Association, please allow me to extend our sincere congratulations and best wishes to you and Vice-President Biden on your tremendously successful political journey to the White House. Your elevation to the Oval Office is a much-welcomed breath of political fresh air and relief to the 300-million citizens of this great country at a time of grave political and economic peril. Well done, sir!

The Whistleblowing United Pilots Association is a national grassroots coalition comprised of employees and retirees from all airlines whose purpose is to help discover the truth regarding alleged white-collar criminality associated with post-9/11 airline bankruptcies and serve justice on the criminals who perpetrated these crimes. I serve as a public spokesperson for this group.

With your vision of hope and promise for change, which includes a greater openness in government, exposure of government fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption, including the untoward influence of K-Street lobbyist and Wall Street financial pressures, excessive executive compensation, and white-collar criminality, whose exposure is further enhanced through the strengthening of whistle blower protection laws, suffice it to say that you have the full support and cooperation of our association in achieving those lofty objectives in the future.

As you may or may not know, on November 16, 2006, I wrote to your senate office, as well as that of Senators Reid and Durbin, apprising you of the existence of available evidence in support of allegations of white-collar criminality in the United Airlines, Inc. and McCook Metals, LLC bankruptcies. Neither Senator Reid’s nor Senator Durbin’s office responded to this letter.

On May 14, 2007, Ms. Joan Currie-Leonard, your Special Assistant in your Chicago senate office, responded to my letter informing me that since I was not an Illinois resident and hence, not your constituent, Congressional courtesy dictated that home state representatives be afforded the opportunity to respond to my concerns.

With the surfacing of significant additional Federal criminal evidence, petition has been made to numerous branches of government, including relevant Congressional committees and the Department of Justice, for political and legal intercession during this same time frame, to no avail.

Given the unfolding events, and as a public spokesperson for the association, while realizing that I was not personally a member of your constituency, but spokesperson for the association, on October 24, 2007, a second letter was mailed to Ms. Currie-Leonard, this time on behalf of the association membership that outlined the chronology of events surrounding these controversial legal and political issues.

Rather than expound, kindly review the enclosed letter for details. Once again, Ms. Currie-Leonard responded as before, deferring me to my home-state of Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, this in spite of the fact I had written to your office on behalf of members, many of whom reside in Illinois, of the subject Association, which, as you recognize, is the single largest employer in the state of Illinois.

On October 22, 2007, an unsolicited letter was received from Senator Chambliss acknowledging his awareness of criminal evidence associated with the United Airlines bankruptcy and his assurances that he would respond to me upon receipt of an answer to his Department of Justice inquiry, which he had recently made. But just 15 days later, on November 5, 2007, he sent me a letter advising that, “…as a U.S. Senator, I have no jurisdiction over matters such as these.”

Because these matters had been stonewalled for so long by so many levels and branches of government, including the Department of Justice, on October 18, 2007, I concurrently filed for whistle blower protection under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 with letters of petition to Senator Carl Levin and Securities and Exchange Commissioner Christopher Cox. In subsequent discussions with Senator Levin’s staff, I was advised that the issues could not be investigated due to staff shortages and committee focus on the overabundance of higher priority issues.

On February 14, 2008, I filed a federal complaint (#2008-9580) with the office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago pending forthcoming evidence and witness testimony, which will be presented to this office shortly.

On January 29, 2008, frustrated by over a year lapsed time and no SEC response, coupled with the exposition of DOJ “deferred compensation agreements” by New York Times investigative journalist, Eric Lichtblau, described in his April 9, 2008 article, “In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials,” I wrote to H. David Kotz, the Security and Exchange Commission Inspector General, expressing my frustration and dismay over the lengthy delay of an appropriate SEC response, given that sufficient information, which included my sworn affidavit and other information, had been provided to warrant a preliminary investigation.

Very recently, letters were also sent to the Office of Inspector General at the Departments of Justice, Treasury, Transportation, and Labor, as well as to the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration on a tangentially relevant issue. Copies of these letters are enclosed for your perusal.

Given your recent elevation to the Oval Office with present jurisdiction over these departments of government, and in light of your proclamations concerning openness of government and diminishment of corruption in both the civil and Federal sector, our association members are highly confident of your assurance of extensive investigations into these matters by the Inspector General of each department, and stand ready to fully support and cooperate with them in the future.

Last week, the Government Accountability Project office sent a letter of petition to your office asking your support of pending enhanced whistle blower protection legislation, which has been appended as an amendment to the Economic Stimulus Bill currently under debate in the Senate. You will note that my name/association appear as signatory toward the bottom of this document. It is because of my personal past abuse as a whistle blower on numerous counts, as well as the thousands of other unheard informants, that I strongly support passage of this legislation, as do members of the Whistleblowing United Pilots Association.

When individual whistle blowers garner the courage to step forth with criminal evidence, they do so with the hope and promise that laws will be upheld and the agencies assigned to enforce them will perform these duties, with the added personal safeguards provided by Federal law.

As a Harvard Law graduate, teaching law at the University of Chicago, a U.S. Senator, and now President of the United States, I’m certain that we can agree that this is a nation of laws with time-honored established institutions of support. Over the course of the past eight years, we have observed the most disgraceful abuse and denigration of power of the U.S. Constitution in our nation’s history. Citizens want their Constitution and good government back. More so, they beg for the restoration of law and order that embraces the precepts of this sacred document.

We want to believe that Lady Justice is blind in the criminal prosecution of unlawful behavior in this country. Based on the frustrating past several years experiences of our association, we’ve come to believe this only to be the case with selective issues and individual cases. Kindly prove us wrong in this instance.

It is blatantly obvious to all that you are a good and loving family man, husband, and father. Please empathetically realize the horrific pain, sadness, familial maladies, and other hardships wrought on the good people of the airline industry during the post-9/11 bankruptcies which, as our membership asserts, were affected by alleged illicit means. In this regard alone, we beg for your understanding, cooperation and assistance.

Our association stands shoulder-to-shoulder with our president, ready, willing, and able to rout out the possible white-collar criminals who may have committed these crimes against airline employees who were willing to give the shirt off their backs to sustain the industry in the post-9/11 era. In the end, they did. Is this their reward for their sacrifices?

The Whistleblowing United Pilots Association membership sincerely wishes you, Michelle, Malia Anne, and Sasha much happiness and success during your stay at the White House. You’ve travelled a very long road in life to get there. Please reflect on the long career paths travelled by airline employees with hopes and dreams for a happy and successful retirement, only to realize them shattered in the eleventh hour of their careers, with nowhere else to turn for sustenance in the twilight years of life. It wasn’t right.

Very respectfully,
Dan Hanley
Spokesperson – Whistleblowing United Pilots Association

Enclosed:

Letter dated November 18, 2006 to Senators Reid, Durbin, and Obama

Letter dated May 4, 2007 from Ms. Joan Currie-Leonard

Letter dated October 24, 2007 to Ms. Joan Currie-Leonard

Letter dated October 22, 2007 from Senator Saxby Chambliss

Letter dated November 5, 2007 from Senator Saxby Chambliss

Letter dated November 6, 2007 from Ms. Joan Currie-Leonard

Letter dated October 18, 2007 to Christopher Cox, SEC Chairman

Letter dated October 18, 2007 to Senator Carl Levin

Letter dated January 25, 2009 to Calvin L. Scovel, DOT Inspector General

Letter dated January 28, 2009 to H. David Kotz, SEC Inspector General

Letter dated January 31, 2009 to Gordon S. Heddell, DOL Inspector General

Letter dated January 31, 2009 to Glenn A. Fine, DOJ Inspector General

Letter dated February 2, 2009 to Eric Thorson, Treasury Inspector General

Letter dated January 26, 2009 from Government Accountability Project Coalition

Copied:

Calvin L. Scovell - Inspector General, Department of Transportation

H. David Kotz – Inspector General, Securities and Exchange Commission

Gordon S. Hedell – Inspector General, Department of Labor

Glenn A. Fine – Inspector General, Department of Justice

Eric Thorson – Inspector General, Department of Treasury

Tom Devine – Legal Director, Government Accountability Project

Whistleblowing United Pilots Association Membership

I received no response to this letter — not from anyone!!!

Shortly thereafter, I sent a detailed letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine, expressing my frustration and displeasure regarding the runaround I was getting from within the Department concerning what I considered to involve huge Federal crimes related to judicial corruption, RICO, and bankruptcy/pension fraud. A few weeks later, I received an unsigned letter from his office stating that he did not have jurisdiction over matters such as these.

That was the final straw! I decided that I would collect all evidence on a 164 MB external hard drive and personally deliver it to the FBI.

On February 20, 2009, after having confirmed that my federal complaint was still on file with the FBI, I flew from my home domicile of Atlanta to Chicago, rented a car, and drove to the Chicago FBI office in south Chicago. Upon entering the security facility outside the building, I was told to relinquish all personal items, keys, wallet, cell phone, etc., to be stored in a locker and returned to me after my interview. I insisted to the guard that I be permitted to retain my 164 MB hard drive, as it contained important material that I wished to present to an FBI agent. After a brief debate, he gave me a key to the locker while retaining my hard drive in it, and informed me that if the agent wished to review the material contained therein, he/she would take the key and have someone retrieve the hard drive.

After entering the building and checking in at the front desk, I was escorted to a small briefing room that was divided by a glass partition and sat waiting for an agent. Nervously, I rehearsed in my head what I wanted to say, realizing that I might not have too much time to expound, while at the same time not wanting to miss any details.

Finally, after about ten minutes, a female agent entered the room from the other side of the glass partition and sat down across from me, but refused to introduce herself by name. I started to speak, but she interrupted me by saying that the Chicago FBI office had reviewed all the material that I had sent them and advised me that the Department of Justice was not going to investigate my allegations. Stunned, I reminded her that the FBI had not reviewed the tiniest shred of evidence in the case, nor deposed any of the mob informants. She sat across from me, poker-faced, not uttering a word. I then slid the locker key through the opening beneath the glass partition and requested that she have someone retrieve my hard drive as it contained important relevant information. She slid the key back and said, “No.” Exasperated, I asked her if I could possibly speak with an agent in the white-collar criminal division, but she refused! I was dumbfounded. Finally, in desperation, while acknowledging that I was aware that FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Grant was a busy man, would it be possible for him to give me just a few minutes of his time to brief him since he never responded to any of the letters that I had sent him? Again, a negative response.

This was definitely not going as I had planned. I was growing angry, but I maintained a professional composure. Calmly reminding her that United Airlines was the largest single employer in the state of Illinois and its airline bankruptcy and pension termination was the largest in history, which grossly disenfranchised over one hundred thousand employees worldwide, I inquired if there was anyone in the Department that I could deliver my hard drive to for the purpose of briefing them on the materials contained therein. Blankly staring at me through the glass partition, she said, “This conversation has ended.” She got up and left the room.

Numb, I continued sitting in the chair for about five minutes, disbelieving what I had just experienced.

Upon retrieving my belongings from the security facility, I immediately called Michael to inform him of what had just happened. His first remark: “You’ve been marginalized.”

“Marginalized?” They were treating me and all my evidence as if I were some random crank who was spewing baseless ravings! I was outraged.

Arriving back in Atlanta that evening, I drafted a letter that I mailed the next day expressing my rage and disappointment to Chicago FBI Agent Grant and also mailed copies to the Attorney General Holder and FBI Director Mueller, not expecting a reply — as usual.

A few months later in May, I received a letter from Ken Kaiser at the DOJ, advising me to contact the Atlanta office of the FBI, if I had evidence of Federal criminality. This made no sense to me. The Chicago FBI agent had already informed me that the Department of Justice was not going to investigate my case. What purpose would be served by contacting the Atlanta FBI, just to be turned away at the door again?

I had had enough of the stonewalling and runaround. I picked up the phone and called the FBI Headquarters in Washington and asked to speak to an agent in the white-collar criminal division. After explaining my dilemma, the agent advised me to contact the Atlanta FBI office.

At wit’s end and with no other recourse available, I hung up with him and I did call the Atlanta FBI office. I spoke with the intake agent and gave him my federal complaint number (#2008-9580) on file with the Chicago FBI office.

“You should come down to the office here and file a new complaint,” he told me. “Talk to one of our agents here.”

I was simply out of patience, angry, and in no mood to start all over again. He couldn’t or wouldn’t even use my current DOJ complaint number. After all, what was the purpose of this Federal system? Also, unable to bear what was happening within the United States any longer, I had formed new personal bonds abroad and relocated to Pakistan. I was placing these long-distance calls from Pakistan.

I inhaled deeply and said, “Look. The Chicago FBI agent has already told me that the Department of Justice is not going to investigate my allegations. Furthermore, I filed a Sarbanes-Oxley report with Cox at the SEC, with Senator Levin and many others, which includes President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Assistant Attorney General Breuer, and FBI Director Mueller. Every one of them has ignored me. What is a visit to the Atlanta FBI office on my part after all this going to be, except another exercise in futility?”

A few seconds of silence on the line followed. Then, the intake agent simply said, “We’ll need to see you here in the office personally to take your deposition. So, let us know if you change your mind.”

I hung up.

The agent wouldn’t allow me to file a federal complaint over the phone, as I was at least permitted to do with the Chicago FBI office.

Frustrated, I called one of the key witnesses in Chicago, Dr. Sheila Mannix, with whom I knew Michael Lynch had been working, and I asked her to contact FBI Atlanta for the purpose of delivering her evidence. She honored this request, but when she did so, the FBI agent advised her to contact the FBI Chicago office and hung up on her! So, we had the runaround again, full circle!

I realized I was pretty near the end of my rope. Attempting to obtain accountability on any important matter from the US Federal government had proven akin to waging a battle with an army of undead zombies.

United employees kept trying into 2010 to obtain some form of justice. Some of us worked with reporter Barbara Hollingsworth of The Washington Examiner. In a March 10, 2010 story under the headline, “Pilots: United Airlines bankruptcy never should have happened,” she wrote:

“The single largest pension default in U.S. history should never have happened, say former pilots who lost stock and the bulk of their pensions in the United Airlines bankruptcy.

The pilots say they are in the early stages of preparing to file a RICO lawsuit based on what they claim was the airline’s fraudulent listing of its frequent flyer Mileage Plus asset – worth an estimated $15 billion at the time - as a liability in documents submitted to a Chicago bankruptcy court and the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which took over all of the airline’s pension obligations.

Jerry Summers, a former United pilot who involuntarily retired after 36 years of flying, told The Examiner he expected a pension of $10,000 per month, but now gets less than half that amount even though the pilots’ pension fund was 85 percent funded. ‘Nobody expected this bloodbath,’ he said.

Summers added that PBCG inexplicably agreed to hold United ‘harmless’ against future guaranteed claims, even though ‘no one can make sense of how the numbers were computed.’ Airline employees were also told that it would take a ‘few months’ to issue final determination letters from PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation] regarding their reduced pensions. Five years later, they’re still waiting.

‘The bottom line, based on the undisclosed Mileage-Plus asset, estimated at $15 billion, is that this bankruptcy should never have been allowed,’ Summers added.

I was also quoted in the article as saying:

Employee-owned stock was allowed to plummet to near zero value before it was sold with the bankruptcy judge’s approval,” former United 777 captain Dan Hanley, now national spokesman for the Whistleblowing Airline Employees Association, charged in an Oct. 18, 2007 letter to SEC chairman Christopher Cox, a copy of which was also delivered to then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. “The employees were prevented from selling their stock during this time frame.”

We had been, in effect, caged by our efforts to rescue our employer. Then, the employer plundered our funds at will, with the approval and assistance of the court system.

Ultimately, the RICO suit was never brought due to the utter disinterest, across the board, within the supposedly independent branches of the US Federal government. No one would look at evidence, and no one would respond, much less investigate.

That article headline, “In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials,” nearly said it all about the America we all inherited in the wake of the Reagan Revolution.

The only thing to add to those few pithy words is that corporate deals also replaced justice, mercy, and temperance. No longer were guarantees of compensation for a lifetime of service worth the paper they were written on. No longer were there investigations when grand larcenies occurred. No longer were there concerns for the general welfare. No longer was the safety of human lives entrusted to air carriers a concern. Lives lost were to be considered “acceptable losses,” mere bumps in the corner-cutting road which led to increased profitability.

So much for checks and balances. Our society was now unbalanced, and corruption, unchecked.

I learned all of this the hard way. By now I had tried everything permitted by law. I had done everything except succumb to mental instability while travelling the long road of this ordeal.

And on the way to losing everything I had worked for and the family I cherished, I was confronted with the rational dissonance of 9/11, the gap between the awful fact that “it happened” and the series of silences and lame explanations regarding important questions about exactly how it happened which followed, excuses which seemed ever more hollow the more I considered them.

My focus is that of an accomplished career pilot for the Navy and United Airlines. Based upon my extensive flight experience, the poorly trained and inexperienced alleged Muslim hijackers could never have flown the aircraft or the flight profiles. It is clear that the uninterruptible autopilot system existed prior to 9/11. Based upon my professional experience, I don’t believe that any Muslim hijackers were at the controls on that day and that the uninterruptible autopilot system was probably used to guide the airplanes to their targets.

After 9/11, President George W. Bush remarked in a speech that the government would seek to develop a remote-control system that could be used to thwart hijacking of commercial airplanes. If this succeeded, it would “probably” be available in the distant future. This was an incredibly misleading statement designed to deceive the public. In truth, systems like this were already in existence for a long time, whether Bush knew it or not.

At the end of World War II, the US Army Air Corp and US Navy launched two top secret programs where B-17s and PB4Ys were gutted and then loaded with a highly incendiary substance called “Torpex.” Pilots were still required to launch these airplanes from runways into the sky. They then bailed out and the airplane was remotely guided to its intended target by a second airplane flying high above.

Forty years later in 1984, NASA and the FAA conducted a joint crash test experiment. A large empty 4-engine B-720 commercial jet aircraft used remote control to take off from the runway without any on-board pilots. It flew around the traffic pattern several times and landed. It was then remotely flown and intentionally crash landed to test crew and passenger survivability under similar circumstances.

Prior to 9/11 in the mid-nineties, an uninterruptible autopilot had been developed. It was designed to take control of a jet aircraft’s autopilot in the event of an airborne hijacking. There was no way that a pilot could then override this system. The aircraft could then be safely landed at many airports in the world.

Obviously, this same system could be used to crash airplanes into buildings, like we saw on 9/11. My belief is that a system like this was probably used on 9/11.

Why? Because the poorly trained and inexperienced alleged Muslim hijackers simply could not have flown those sophisticated airplanes on 9/11. They could barely fly the small single-engine Cessna airplane that they were reportedly trained on. During my flying career of 35 years, I have flown 20,000 hours in 15 different civilian, US Navy, and commercial jet aircraft. Even with all of that experience on sophisticated aircraft, I could not have flown those flight profiles, especially the Pentagon flight profile.

The advanced navigation systems on today’s modern jet aircraft are derived from cruise missile technology. It is very accurate. Consider today’s modern pilotless military drones. They are able to take off, deliver their armament payload, and the return to the airport and land automatically.

This sophisticated technology existed prior to 9/11.

If you do not believe me, then research all the above and “Dov Zakheim-uninterruptible autopilot-9/11-Flight Termination System-System Planning Corporation” for your further consideration.

I also believe that there were no Muslim hijackers involved in piloting the 9/11 aircraft. The real pilots had plenty of opportunities to squawk the ‘hijack codes’ from their cockpits, yet none were received on the ground. The sophisticated uninterruptible autopilot system was not only capable of taking total control of the aircraft, it could also have disabled the hijack squawk codes, no matter how hard the pilots tried to send them. Otherwise, it is baffling why none of the pilots didn’t follow normal procedure to send the “hijack codes.”