Congressional Record, Volume 158 Issue 92 (Monday, June 18, 2012)

[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 92 (Monday, June 18, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H3729-H3731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CLEARING THE NAMES OF JOHN BROW AND BROOKS GRUBER

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I won't take the entire hour, but this is a
10-year journey that I have been on since I was notified by the wife of
one of the pilots, Connie Gruber, who lives in my district, that the
very tragic plane crash on April 8, 2000, when 19 marines were killed
in a V 22 Osprey, that her husband, Major Brooks Gruber and Colonel
John Brow, pilots, were being blamed for the accident. Nineteen marines
that night were killed. And again, 10 years ago I was contacted by Mrs.
Gruber, who lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina, which is the home of
Camp Lejeune Marine Base.
Mr. Speaker, I have, for the House, a photograph of the V 22 Osprey
that many people might have forgotten. In the year 2000, it was a plane
going through a lot of trouble, meaning from the standpoint of testing,
standpoint of records being changed, and the standpoint that the
Secretary of Defense at the time, Dick Cheney, wanted to scrap the
program. But the Marine Corps was saying that they had to have the MV
22. And again, Mr. Speaker, for you to know, this is the plane that
goes from a helicopter mode to an airplane mode, that the nacelles will
go from this way to a plane mode. I have this beside me so that people
can see the V 22. The pilot was Colonel John Brow. He's pictured
immediately on my left, and the copilot to the poster's left was Major
Brooks Gruber.
Connie Gruber wrote me a letter. It's a full page, Mr. Speaker, and I
would like to just read what she said, just one paragraph:

With so many wrongs in the world we cannot make right, I
ask you prayerfully consider an injustice that you can make
right. I realize you alone may not be able to amend the
report, but you can certainly support my efforts to
permanently remove this black mark from my husband's
honorable military service record.

Mr. Speaker, there was a time when there was an issue involving the V
22 that the Marine Corps did not recognize, nor did Bell-Boeing, the
manufacturer of the plane. It's called vortex ring state, VRS, and it's
where the different, the two helicopter nacelles can be impacted in a
different way, and that's what caused this tragic accident on April 8,
2000.
Mr. Speaker, right after the accident, the Marine Corps sent three
investigators--Colonel Mike Morgan, Colonel Ron Radich, and Major Phil
Stackhouse--to Arizona to investigate this accident, which was very,
very difficult for the marines who were given the responsibility to
find out why this plane crashed and burned.
Mr. Speaker, they came back and completed what was known as the
JAGMAN report that was submitted to the Marine Corps. The
investigators, this was their findings of what caused the accident.

{time} 1950

This is what has created the problem is that the Marine Corps issued
a press release that I will talk about in just a few minutes. And the
JAGMAN the families agreed with. Everything in the JAGMAN they agree
with. And I'll touch on that in just a moment.
I also at this time want to thank Congressman Steny Hoyer from
Maryland, who is the Congressman for the wife of the pilot. Her name is
Trish Brow. She has two sons, Matthew and Michael. Mr. Hoyer has joined
me in clearing the names of these two pilots, and I want to thank him
again for that.
In addition, Congressman Norm Dicks from the State of Washington, who
will be leaving this year, has heard me speak on the floor about this
accident, and he also wants to join in clearing the names of these two
pilots.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank attorney Jim Furman in Texas.
Attorney Jim Furman represented Connie Gruber and Trish Brow in the
lawsuit against Bell-Boeing. In addition, Brian Alexander and his
associate, Francis Young, were the attorneys for the 17 Marine
families. So those two attorneys, Jim Furman and Brian Alexander, have
joined me in clearing the names of John Brow and Brooks Gruber.
Mr. Speaker, I must state that they won their case against Bell-
Boeing. The amount of money allotted to the families has been secured,
so therefore no one knows except the families; but it tells me a whole
lot when a manufacturing company decides that they would rather settle
out of court than take the case to court.
Phil Coyle, the Assistant Secretary of Defense and Director of
Operational Test and Evaluation in the Department of Defense at the
time of this accident, has also joined us in clearing the names of the
two pilots. Also, shortly after the accident in the year 2002, CBS ``60
Minutes,'' led by Mike Wallace, who is now deceased, gave the story of
what happened and why this plane crashed and why the two pilots should
not be seen at fault.
Mr. Speaker, there have been many people in this 10-year journey.
Local press in eastern North Carolina all the way to press in Texas
have joined us in this effort to say to Connie Gruber and Trish Brow
and their sons and their daughter: your husbands were not at fault.
Why the Marine Corps will not join in this effort I do not
understand. All the Marine Corps has to do is to issue a paragraph that
clearly states to Trish Brow that your husband, John Brow, Colonel John
Brow, pilot, was not at fault for the accident that occurred on April
8, 2000, in Marana, Arizona. All the Marine Corps has to do is to write
a paragraph on the commandant stationery to Connie Gruber stating the
same thing, except: your husband, Major Brooks Gruber, co-pilot, was
not at fault for the accident that happened on April 8, 2000, in
Marana, Arizona.
Mr. Speaker, you might think--and maybe some people watching tonight
might think--well, why is this so difficult? The lawsuits are over, the
plane is surviving, there's no threat to the Marine Corps that they're
going to eliminate the V 22. It is part of their

[[Page H3730]]

arsenal now. But this is what happened: a Marine Corps press release
July 27, 2000, states:

Unfortunately, the pilot's drive to accomplish that mission
appears to have been the fatal factor.

Mr. Speaker, the official JAGMAN investigation that I made reference
to, Colonel Morgan, Colonel Radich and Major Stackhouse, this is what
they said in the JAGMAN:

During this investigation, we found nothing that we would
characterize as negligence, deliberate pilot error, or
maintenance/material failure.

Mr. Speaker, if only the Marine Corps, after the JAGMAN report came
out, would have released a press statement that would have said: After
we have reviewed this JAGMAN report, it is now our determination,
because of the JAGMAN report, that Colonel John Brow and Major Brooks
Gruber were not at fault for this accident.
Mr. Speaker, at the time of this accident, this issue of vortex ring
state was not fully understood. It was understood in the world of the
helicopters, but not in the world of the Osprey. The Marine Corps did
not understand, nor did Bell-Boeing understand, how the vortex ring
state, how these pilots could have reacted. Mr. Speaker, in fact, at
the time of the accident, the NATOPS manual that was given to the
pilots of the V 22--and this night given to Colonel John Brow and Major
Brooks Gruber--the NATOPS manual had absolutely nothing about the
vortex ring state. It had one sentence. Since that time, the NATOPS
manual for the Marine Corps and the Navy and the Air Force, Mr.
Speaker, is six pages about vortex ring state and how you react to
vortex ring state.
Mr. Speaker, there are warning systems in the cockpit of the V 22 now
that these two Marines never saw, never had, never understood, never
knew about. But since that accident, Mr. Speaker, they now have a
warning system that tells the pilots that you're in trouble, you're in
trouble. They even have in the helmets they wear a voice of a woman
saying ``sink, sink, sink,'' meaning you have to react to the sinking
of the ship, this plane.

Mr. Speaker, that's why tonight and once a month I'm coming down on
the floor to talk about the fact that these marines have every right to
rest in peace. One's buried in Arlington Cemetery; that's Colonel John
Brow. And the other, Major Brooks Gruber, is buried in the veterans
cemetery down in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where his wife lives.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank WTVD of Durham. They're bringing a
film crew up tomorrow to interview Trish Brow and one of her sons. They
will meet Mrs. Brow over at Arlington Cemetery. This is why it does not
make any sense why the Marine Corps will not issue a public statement
in a paragraph to the two wives saying: after this many years and all
the facts and all the testing and everything that we've done, there's
no way that your husbands could have known what they were doing.
Mr. Speaker, they were sitting in the air. They did not understand
how to react to vortex ring state. The Marine Corps knew not how to
explain to them how to react. And Bell-Boeing had not done the proper
research. Mr. Speaker, when I say proper research, after this accident
and an additional accident, Tom MacDonald, a test pilot, spent 700
hours trying to figure out how the V 22 responds to vortex ring state
and how the pilot should respond to vortex ring state. In fact, Mr.
MacDonald deserved and he earned from the Test Pilots Association the
Kincheloe Award for finding out and figuring out what you do when a
plane gets into vortex ring state.
Mr. Speaker, these two men would not have given their lives and 17
marines in the back of the plane if Bell-Boeing had done its job and
the Marine Corps had demanded that Bell-Boeing understand vortex ring
state and how it would impact the V 22.
Mr. Speaker, very quickly--I'm going to close in just a few minutes,
but I wanted to share with the Record that when the JAGMAN said that
this was not deliberate pilot error, I wrote to one of the
investigators, Lieutenant Colonel Morgan, and I asked him how and why
did you use the words ``deliberate pilot error'' in the JAGMAN report.
Again, the families, we accept the JAGMAN report; but I did not quite
understand, I'm not a pilot, not a marine, never served, but I wanted
to understand why. And I'd like to read this for the Record.

{time} 2000

Colonel Morgan stated, and these are his words:

My personal feeling and opinion, supported by my interview
with the lead flight crew, is that the mishap aircraft had no
idea they had exceeded any flight parameters.

Mr. Speaker, the pilots had no idea they had exceeded any flight
parameters. They were merely trying to remain in position on a flight
lead trying to salvage a bad approach.
Mr. Speaker, the bad approach was by the lead plane. This was the
second plane.
And, again, he said, the pilots had no idea they had exceeded any
flight parameters.
Mr. Speaker, as I said just a moment ago, they now have warning
systems, and if the pilots today had exceeded any flight parameters,
there would be a warning system going off, and the plane would not
crash and 19 Marines would not burn to death.
Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank Congressman Steny Hoyer for
joining in this effort to clear the names of these two Marines. I want
to thank the families, Trish Brow and her two boys, and Connie Gruber
and her little girl, Brooks, for continuing to say somebody's got to
clear the names of these two men.
They were outstanding pilots. Mr. Speaker, I've never had anyone in
the Marine Corps tell me anything different than that John Brow and
Brooks Gruber were outstanding pilots. But, as I've said tonight, the
environment of the times, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was opposed
to the V 22 program. He wanted to eliminate the program. There were
Members in Congress in both parties that wanted to save the program.
There was a fight going on.
So when these two Marines crashed, and the 17 Marines in the back of
the plane that died, they sent out this press release that I just made
mention of, and they never had a second press release that would
clearly have stated, based on the investigation, based on the JAGMAN
report that we, the Marine Corps, have reviewed, and signed by General
McCorkle, that these two pilots were not at fault. They had not been
trained. They did not understand vortex ring state. Bell Boeing didn't
do its job. The Marine Corps didn't demand that Bell Boeing make this
plane safe, and how it would react to vortex ring state, and they
didn't understand it.
So for 10 years--actually 12 now; the crash was in 2000--for 10 years
there have been many people who have joined me in trying to say to the
Marine Corps, you owe these two men. They deserve and their families
deserve a letter from the Marine Corps stating that they were not at
fault for this accident.
Mr. Speaker, again, all I can say, and I will continue to say to the
Marine Corps, you have the utmost respect of the American people. They
have great respect for the history of the Marine Corps and what the
Marine Corps has done for our country in all the wars, just like the
other services.
But in this case we're talking about the Marine Corps. And all the
families want is one paragraph that clearly states that Colonel John
Brow, pilot, was not at fault for the accident that occurred on April
8, 2000, in Marana, Arizona. All Connie Gruber wants is the same
letter, but with her husband's name. This is to certify that copilot
Brooks Gruber, Major Brooks Gruber, was not at fault for the accident
that occurred on April 8, 2000, in Marana, Arizona.
Mr. Speaker, this is a journey that I will not stop till we clear the
names of these two pilots. The facts are on our side. There's so much
more that I could say tonight. I have volumes, Mr. Speaker. I have the
tape that Jim Furman presented in the lawsuit case. I have a copy of
that, given to me by Jim Furman. I've seen it all.
I've seen the tape from Mike Wallace and ``60 Minutes.'' I've talked
to Jim Shaffer, Colonel Shaffer, now retired. He was in the air. There
were four planes flying that night, and he was in the air. These were
his buddies, John Brow and Brooks Gruber. He saw the plane crash. He's
joined us in this effort to clear the names of Colonel John Brow and
Major Brooks Gruber.

[[Page H3731]]

I want to thank Chairman Buck McKeon and Ranking Member Adam Smith.
They allowed language to be in the NDAA bill that basically says they
hope that the Marine Corps will work to clear the names of these two
pilots.
And, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the press that has taken on this
effort also. Voltaire said, and I quote Voltaire, We owe the living our
respect. We owe the dead the truth. And that's all this effort has ever
been about is trying to call on the Marine Corps, who the American
people respect, I respect, to issue the letter to Trish Brow and Connie
Gruber.
Mr. Speaker, all the lawsuits are over, and I look at this letter
from Mike Morgan, and I don't read it because the first sentence is
about me. But it says:

I applaud and fully support the extraordinary effort you
have undertaken in support of John Brow and Brooks Gruber and
the families who lost loved ones in the tragic crash of
Nighthawk 72.

Let me read just a couple more, and then I'm going to close, Mr.
Speaker. This is from Phil Stackhouse. Again, this is one of the three
investigators. He said:

I do not believe that it would be a surprise to anyone that
it is my opinion the mishap was not a result of pilot error,
but was the result of a perfect storm of circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, that's what I'm talking about. They did not understand
vortex ring state. The manufacturer didn't understand it. The Marine
Corps didn't understand it, so they couldn't train the pilots to
understand it. That's what Major Stackhouse meant by a perfect storm of
circumstances.
During the conduct of this investigation, we collected some 20
binders of evidence, including, among other things, maintenance
records, training records, telemetry records, operational and testing
records, and dozens of photographs. He further states this includes,
for example, compressed testing and evaluation created by deadlines,
funding, and maintenance.
Mr. Speaker, that's what he's talking about--at that particular time,
when this plane was up and going to Arizona, they were cutting programs
to test the plane. You had Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney trying to
kill the program. They did everything they could.
I don't blame the Marine Corps for trying to save the program. They
believed that this was the helicopter of the present and the future.
But he further stated:

The actions of the lead aircraft in the section, and lack
of understanding how vortex ring state/power settling would
actually affect the Osprey in the real world, was part of the
problem. I do not feel that our investigation reflects that
the mishap was a result of pilot error, and if the
investigation was interpreted that way, it was
misinterpreted.

Mr. Speaker, this is one of the three investigators. They all wrote
about the same letter. And Major Phil Stackhouse closed by saying this:

For any record that reflects the mishap was a result of
pilot error, it should be corrected. For any publication that
reflects the mishap was a result of pilot error, it should be
corrected and recanted.

Mr. Speaker, I've had the privilege and the pleasure to meet Major
Brooks Gruber's daddy and mom. They live in Florida. One time after the
accident they came to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Connie Gruber
invited me to the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville. And it's one of
those falls where they have reunions. And I never will forget, after
the church service, Connie said, I want you to meet my father-in-law.

{time} 2010

I went out and met Mr. Gruber. Mr. Speaker. He was a marine who
fought for this country in Korea. We were in the vestibule of the First
Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
He said, I want to shake your hand.
With tears in his eyes, he said, Congressman, I cannot thank you
enough for trying to clear my son's name.
Mr. Speaker, I've stayed in touch with Mr. Gruber from time to time
to let him know we're making progress. No, we're not there yet, but we
keep beating this drum, the drum saying, Clear their names; clear their
names; clear their names.
I called Trish Brow last week to tell her that WTVD wanted to come up
and interview her about the accident. It happened to be a tough day,
Mr. Speaker, because her father-in-law, who is 80 years old, was having
surgery. I am pleased to report that the surgery went well.
I want Mr. Brow, Sr., and his family and I want Mr. Gruber, Sr., and
his family to see the letter that we are asking the Marine Corps to
send to the two wives. Both men are in their eighties.
I will read it one more time before closing:

The three investigators--Colonel Mike Morgan, Colonel Ron Radich,
Major Phil Stackhouse--have all written me letters and have said the
same thing, that our JAGMAN report says the pilots were not at fault.
Mr. Speaker, we are going to keep battling this thing for the
families. I will say we're getting closer because I have such faith in
God Almighty that I know that it's God's will that these two pilots who
are dead and their families who are living deserve to have their names
cleared. I just call on the Marine Corps to do what's right for their
marines.
Do what's right for the marines. Forget the Congressman. He just
happens to be the foot soldier. Do what's right for the two marines who
are dead. Do what's right for the 17 marines who were in the back of
the plane who are dead, and do what's right for the families of the
pilot and co-pilot.
Mr. Speaker, with that, I want to thank you and the staff. You stayed
here tonight to give me this chance to share my concern, my heart.
I will ask God to please touch the hearts of those in the United
States Marine Corps, to look at the face of Colonel John Brow, pilot,
and at the face of Major Brooks Gruber, co-pilot, and call on the
Marine Corps to write the letters to the families and to publicly say
that the JAGMAN report has cleared these two pilots' names and that we,
the Marine Corps, could have 8 years ago issued a press release to the
Nation saying that these two pilots were not at fault.
Had they done that, I would not be on the floor tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I close, as I always do, from the bottom of my heart for
all of those fighting in Afghanistan: God, please bless the families of
our men and women in uniform. Please, God, bless those who are serving
our Nation. Those who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq,
hold them in your arms, dear God. Give them comfort.
God, please bless the House and Senate that we will do what is right
in the eyes of God. Please bless President Obama that he will do what
is right in the eyes of God for God's people.
And three times I will say in closing: God, please, God, please, God,
please, continue to bless America.
I yield back the balance of my time.

____________________