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Tom and Linda Daschle
Last Updated: July 16, 2008

From the late 1980s, right on through September 11, 2001, the air transportation industry had no better friends than Tom and Linda Daschle. Tom Daschle (D-SD) served in the U.S. Senate from 1987 through 2005, spending the last ten years as majority and minority leader, while his wife went from air transportation lobbyist to acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, then back to lobbying.

During that time, they carried water for airlines large and small, rewarding Linda’s former and future clients with contracts, bailouts, and deregulation, even intervening personally to hamper inspections of a friend’s air charter company; one of whose planes later crashed, killing the pilot and three government doctors.

Tom married Linda, former Miss Kansas, in 1984, and Linda went to work as a lobbyist for the Air Transport Association. She became Senior Vice President of the American Association of Airport Executives in 1987, the same year Senator Tom Daschle would intervene at the FAA on behalf of close family friend Murl Bellew. Bellew owned B & L Aviation and had taught Tom Daschle how to fly.

When B & L failed a safety check, Daschle complained to FAA.officials, who sent a supervisor out to South Dakota to see whether inspections conducted there were overly harsh.

In the ensuing years, Bellew and B & L Aviation ran up numerous violations from both the FAA and the Forest Service.. (The Forest Service regularly charters private planes and has its own inspection program,).Its inspectors complained B & L was so poorly run that it was unsafe and should be cut off from government contracts.

In 1993,Linda Daschle was nominated FAA Deputy Administrator by President Clinton, and approved unanimously by the Senate,, including her husband Tom.

That year Senator Daschle drafted legislation to stop the Forest Service from conducting flight inspections, saying they were “duplicative.”. The FAA, with Deputy Administrator Daschle, continued giving B & L Aviation high marks, though some of its inspectors agreed with Forest Service findings.

In February 1994, a B & L Aviation plane chartered by the Indian Health Service crashed in North Dakota, killing the pilot and three government doctors.

During its investgation, the National Transportation Safety Board found problems with the crashed plane that matched previous Forest Service reports After the crash, Linda Daschle recused herself from anything regarding B & L. But two senior FAA officials said she later broke that promise and may have removed documents related to B&L’s history.
Though Senator Daschle kept trying to stop Forest Service inspections, independent reports disagreed with his “duplicative” claim, and in 1995 the Forest Service dropped B&L from its charter list.

That same year Tom Daschle became Senate minority leader, and a company named Loral, owned by leading Democratic contributor Bernard Schwartz, got a $1.5 billion contract to shore up the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System .

On February , 1996, a Chinese rocket carrying a Loral satellite crashed after lift-off. During the post-crash post-crash investigation, Loral transmitted sensitive missile technology to China that the Pentagon charged significantly boosted China’s long-range nuclear missile capability.

During that year’s re-election campaign, during which Congress later found that Clinton had received millions from Chinese government sources, Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz also pitched in with $1.5 million.

Linda Daschle was promoted to FAA Acting Administrator in ’06, even better ablel to aid past and future clients.. She sided with the airline industry in opposing background checks for all airport workers. Outspoken Transportation Department Inspector General “Scary Mary” Schiavo said, “I thought her position on the background checks was insane.” That year Schiavo resigned, after the FAA tried to classify a report she issued criticizing the agency’s lax security.

Linda Daschle left the FAA in 1997 and joined the law/lobby firm Baker Donelson .She was prevented by law from lobbying the FAA for several years, but immediately began lobbying Congress for Boeing, Northwest Airlines, and American Airlines. Loral Communications paid Baker Donelson $740,000 over two years for Daschle’s services.

Over the next few years, the Daschles were well rewarded by government contractors and the airline industry—Linda through lobbying ,, Tom through campaign donations. Their benefactors received good service..

Government contractor L-3 (spun off from Loral,) paid Baker Donelson $460,000 from 1998 to 2001. During that time, Tom Daschle directed a budget provision through the Senate, actually requiring the FAA to buy one baggage scanner from L-3, for each one it bought from any other companiy

Moreover, those scanners were so substandard that the FAA never installed most of them, according to 2001 report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead.

One machine installed at the Dallas-Ft Worth airport leaked radiation. Mead, (a hold-over Clinton appointee), told Congress that the “FAA’s requirement to buy L-3’s machines is one reason that DOT will not be able to screen all luggage for bombs for many years.”
The air transport industry also directed serious money toward the Daschles. Boeing spent $80,000 on lobbying at Baker Donelson in 1998, $120,000 in 1999, $120,000 in 2000, and $120,000 in 2001. Northwest Airlines spent $190,000 at Linda Daschle’s firm in 1999 and was the second largest contributor to Senator Daschle’s 1998 campaign. The air transport industry group gave $100,000.

In 1999, Daschle lamented the impact of the Chinese espionage hearings in Congress on China’s chance of joining the WTO. Schwartz contributed $2,275,000 to Democratic committees in the 1998 and 2000 campaigns. Over 2001 and 2002, Schwartz once again donated more than $2 million to Democrats.

In 2001, Daschle became Senate majority leader, and Linda returned to lobbying the FAA directly. Over the 2000 and 2002 campaigns, the Air Transportation Association donated $777,000, split about equally between the Democrats and the GOP.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act requiring background checks for airport employees with “access to secure areas” (Thanks to the FAA during Linda Daschle’s tenure,, background checks had only been required for employees hired after December 2000 .

Under Tom Daschle’s leadership, Congress also passed a massive bailout for the airline industry after 9/11. The Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act paid out $15 billion to the airlines and exempted them from any liability for 9/11.

Northwest Airlines -- Senator Daschle ‘s top contributor in the previous five years -- got $404 million in “cash grants” and then posted a $19 million profit in the third quarter of 2001.

The bailout provided short-term benefit for shareholders and CEOs, not itself. Within a few years, several airlines filed for bankruptcy. Later, the General Accounting Office found that in lobbying for the bailout, the airline industry grossly exaggerated its anticipated losses from 9/11 by as much as $5 billion.

Finally, in 2002, Loral paid a $14 million fine for its long range missile giift to China.

That year Tom Daschle joined 93 other Senators authorizing the Air Force to lease at least 100 Boeing 767s over the next 10 years. Darleen Druyun, the Air Force’s deputy acquisitions chief, steered the $23 billion contract to Boeing, at the same time negotiating with Boeing for a $250,000 vice president’s job there.. She served nine months in jail.

In 2003, Bernard Schwartz donated only $4,000 to Tom Daschle’s senatorial campaign.

In 2004 he contributed just $45,000 to Democratic committees, and $25,000 in 2006.

In 2004, Tom Daschle lost his seat to Republican John Thune. As of the end of ’07, Daschle was chairman of Prime Biosolutions, trying to build an ethanol plant in Nebraska. and is a fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Linda Daschle still works for Baker Donelson.

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