By Christopher G. Adamo

Last month’s launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery represented an ominous “milestone” in America’s space program. Previously, every major space mishap was followed by thorough investigations, and no effort or expense was spared in executing a proper fix.

This time however, things were different. Breaking completely with NASA’s history, the Columbia disaster was not followed by an appropriate redesign of crucial components, but by major cover-up operation. From almost the moment of the accident, official NASA mouthpieces were intent on discrediting suggestions that foam from the giant external tank had torn loose and fatally damaged the spacecraft during launch.

The dark secret NASA officials obviously wanted to conceal was that, in 1998, the spacecraft manufacturing process had been altered in wholly imprudent deference to the concerns of environmental extremists. So intent was NASA to avoid admitting this fact that significant energies were focused on denying, rather than correcting, the root cause of the catastrophe.

Thus, the flawed manufacturing process remained in place. And similar recurring problems have once again grounded the Space Shuttle fleet.

Alarming as this situation is, it represents only a fragment of a widespread pattern of “acceptable risk,” established during the Clinton years. Repeatedly, national interests were gravely compromised, either through gross incompetence, or out of blind devotion to the liberal agenda.

Former Clinton Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, when not squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on meaningless “fact finding” junkets with her friends, was playing games with the security program at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, one of the nation’s most sensitive research facilities. O’Leary disliked the lab’s security badges, color-coded to indicate clearance levels. So, in the name of “sensitivity,” she scrapped the system and seriously compromised security.

Also under the supervision of the Clinton Administration, crucial rocket technologies were given to the Communist Chinese, along with design specifications of the W-88, America’s most sophisticated nuclear warhead.

Now it has been learned that “Able Danger,” a military intelligence project that specifically marked 9-11 hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist in 2000, was repeatedly rebuffed in its efforts to forewarn the FBI of the need to monitor his actions. To this day, the 9-11 Commission continues to obfuscate and dodge serious questions of such lapses prior to the attacks, while engaging in transparent efforts aimed at avoiding a serious investigation of a possible internal cover-up.

Worse yet, during the Commission’s hearings, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was caught at the National Archives, altering and destroying key documents related to security practices within the Clinton Administration.

Despite the heinous and criminal nature of his actions, upon conviction Berger received merely a token fine. One wonders if his NASA counterpart wasn’t busy last month, down at Cape Canaveral, collecting and hiding pieces of foam from around Pad 39, after the Space Shuttle Discovery had lifted off.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, career bureaucrats are doing their best to undermine members of the “Able Danger” group who have blown the whistle on not only the security lapses that left America vulnerable to 9-11, but more ominously, patterns of behavior indicating that the 9-11 Commission continues to suppress evidence of such.

From its inception in mid-2004, the ostensibly non-partisan 9-11 commission pursued a course of making President Bush look as inept and culpable as possible, just prior to the presidential election. Attorney General John Ashcroft successfully turned the tables on the Commission, pointing out Commission member Jamie Gorelick as the chief architect of a “wall” that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing vital terrorist information.

Thereafter, the Commission was on the defensive, seeking primarily to protect Gorelick from direct examination. In truth, Gorelick’s presence on that panel was an outrage, lending as much credibility to it as Jack Ruby might have given to the Warren Commission. But under the arbitrary scrutiny of a sympathetic press, her validity has never been called into question.

Clearly, the interests of the country are once again being subordinated to efforts by Commission members (no doubt influenced by outside political forces), intent on avoiding discussion of crucial lapses, in order to protect their reputations or political agendas.

It is altogether telling that, just as problems with the Discovery proved that the Columbia disaster has not been properly addressed, scandalous revelations from the 9-11 Commission now underscore dangerous and possibly deliberate blunders, thoroughly disrupting its supposed mission of investigating the attacks. If such criminal oversights are not corrected, something hideously worse than 9-11 may yet befall this nation.