THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996 TAG: 9608070353
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 82 lines
The Air Force has punished 16 officers in connection with the crash that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, including reprimands to a general and a colonel for ``dereliction of duty,'' officials announced Tuesday.
The April 3 crash of the Air Force CT-43 in Croatia killed Brown and 34 others.
The punishment is expected to ruin the military careers of all of the officers, military sources said.
None of the 16 faces criminal charges for their actions in helping oversee the Air Force in Europe or running the service's wing that ferries VIPs there, the Air Force said.
The most serious punishment, under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, was meted out to two high-ranking officers - Brig. Gen. William E. Stevens and Col. John E. Mazurowski - who were relieved of command in May for allowing the CT-43 transport to fly into Dubrovnik airport, even though that airfield had not been certified by U.S. military officials for bad weather landings.
Tuesday the Air Force cited them for ``dereliction of duty'' for failing to ensure that military safety officials inspected Dubrovnik airport and other eastern European airfields to determine the types of landing approaches pilots should be allowed to fly into them. Top Air Force officials had ordered that the inspections take place.
As the report was announced Tuesday, a grim-faced Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, said, ``How can we have an Air Force instruction in the field that was not being complied with at the mission command level? . . . In my view, that's the start of this chain of events. . . . That, more than anything else, haunts me.''
An Article 15 is the most serious form of military punishment short of a court-martial.
The nub of almost all the charges against the 16 officers was that they failed to carry out the explicit orders of superiors, or failed to delineate lines of responsibility in their units. In some cases it was found that the officers tried to get their overworked units to follow the orders, but did not push hard enough, Air Force sources said.
In June, Air Force officials determined that the plane crashed into a mountain near Dubrovnik airport during a rainstorm because the pilots made a series of elementary errors, because higher-ranking officials neglected to provide sufficient training for flights into less sophisticated airports and because Croatian aviation authorities improperly designed the landing standards at Dubrovnik.
``The fact is an Air Force unit failed to comply with Air Force instructions'' to inspect the airfields, ``and there were consequences'' in the crash, one Air Force official said Tuesday. ``These are not bad people. They were trying to do their jobs, with 50 million other things going on at once.''
``But as an official part of an officer's record, this action will be almost impossible to recover from'' for Stevens and Mazurowski, the Air Force official said. Moreover, ``it will be very difficult for any of the (14) other officers to get away from this'' in their military careers, the official said.
Stevens was the commander of the 86th Airlift Wing, the Germany-based unit to which the CT-43's two pilots were attached, and Mazurowski was commander of the 86th Operations Group.
Two officers received letters of reprimand: Maj. Gen. Jeffrey G. Cliver, former director of operations at the Air Force's European headquarters; and Col. Roger W. Hansen, former vice commander of the 86th Airlift Wing.
Letters of admonishment went to four colonels and two lieutenant colonels. Letters of counseling went to two lieutenant colonels and two majors, while two lieutenant colonels received verbal counseling, the Air Force said. None of those individuals were identified.
Brown and an entourage of Commerce Department officials and private business people were on the first day of a three-day trip to the Balkans to help rejuvenate the region's war-torn economies. MEMO: The Associated Press, The Washington Post and Knight-Ridder
News Service contributed to this report.
What: Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others were killed in the
April 3 crash of an Air Force CT-43 in a rainstorm in Croatia.
Why: The pilot made errors; higher-ranking officials neglected to
provide sufficient training; and Croatian authorities improperly
designed the landing standards.
Outcome: 16 Air Force officers have been punished, including
reprimands for a general and colonel. None of the 16 faces criminal
charges. by CNB