Maybe, but this is just one reason why AlGore will never run again for anything elective this side of the Berkeley axis:
THE TIMES OF LONDON
June 18, 1997
Gore Sued in Row Over Report on TWA Crash
FROM TOM RHODES IN WASHINGTON
A WOMAN who lost her husband in the Lockerbie disaster and was appointed to a White House airline safety commission is suing Al Gore, the United States Vice-President, over the report into last year's TWA Flight 800 crash.
Victoria Cummock has filed a suit in federal court against Mr Gore and the Department of Transportation, alleging that the Vice-President forced her to abandon a call for specific counter-terrorism measures and demands for their implementation. A magazine report claimed yesterday that Mr Gore's decision may have been influenced by large-scale campaign contributions from the airlines.
Mrs Cummock has not endorsed the accepted theory that the Boeing 747 was brought down by mechanical failure and believes a terrorist bomb could have been the cause of the disaster.
She claims that Mr Gore, as chairman of the commission, refused to publish her detailed dissent as part of the group's official recommendations after last July's TWA crash off Long Island in which all 230 passengers and crew were killed.
The report, when presented to President Clinton in February, was said to have the unanimous support of all 21 members of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. It recommended that special bomb detectors should be installed at only 54 of America's 450 airports and, even then, only bags deemed suspicious would be checked.
Mrs Cummock refused to sign the report and, according to The American Spectator, she then received a fax from Gerry Kavauer, the commission's executive director, promising her dissent would be published if she relented. She was later told Mr Gore would not agree to include her comments. The magazine alleges that Mr Gore's initial enthusiasm for anti-terrorist measures, which could have cost airlines up to $1 billion (about £600 million), was curbed by large donations to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign by many airlines, including TWA.
Federal Election Commission documents show that airlines gave nearly $500,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party after Mr Clinton appointed the commission.
In September last year on the day that Mr Gore promised the airline lobby there would be no expensive new counter-terrorism measures, the Democratic National Committee received a $40,000 contribution from TWA headquarters.
In her suit, Mrs Cummock claims that the commission and the Department of Transportation intended to file the final report without her complete dissent. She says the body violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act which requires committees to publish full minority dissents.
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