00-05-26          0700    Morning routine (meeting).  Then worked on notes for most of the day.  A copy of the notes for yesterday’s two meetings given to Peter PURCHASE for distribution to Insp. LATHEM and Keith STOTHART.

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            I spoke with both Don ENNS and John GARSTANG about yesterday’s meeting and they are very concerned over the “Political” desires of certain senior members of the board.  They feel that one or two very highly placed members are about to retire, and their desire is to go out successfully with a ‘conclusion of the file’, which takes a higher priority over ‘successfully concluding the file’.  ENNS also commented that he thought the new legislation had been designed to remove the TSB from this very political influence.  It seems that funding is the ultimate political influence, and while the Government might not yet be directly interfering, it is the mere anticipation of that potential influence of withholding funding that is driving the decisions of the TSB upper management.  ENNS also commented that there is a lower level feeling that instead of this being a one-year investigation that is a year overdue, it is a three-year investigation being cut off a year early.  TSB management has the idea that every crash should be finished within one year.  But, typically, the NTSB takes three years on a crash like this.