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  • 2008-11-24 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Nancy Pelosi Routinely Use a 'Big Fat 200-Seat Jet' to Travel to California? (en)
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  • An item about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi which was widely circulated online in November 2008 was a revised and recirculated version of a rumor that originally surfaced in February 2007 (just after Pelosi assumed the Speaker of the House position), claiming that Pelosi had spurned use of the Air Force C-20B Gulfstream III 12-seat jet that had been made available to her predecessor, Dennis Hastert, and instead demanded the use of a larger, more luxurious aircraft: After the 9/11 terrorists attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush ordered that the Speaker of the House (next in line of succession to the presidency after the vice-president) be afforded secure government transportation on military aircraft when traveling on official business, and then-speaker Dennis Hastert often used a C-20B (Gulfstream III) jet to travel back and forth between Washington to his home state of Illinois. The later brouhaha kicked off when Speaker Pelosi inquired about the availability and rules regarding the use of military aircraft other than the C-20B (such as the C-21 or the C-37A). Critics quickly maintained that Pelosi had insisted on being allowed to use a big fat 200-seat jet (a C-32 Boeing 757, which the Air Force describes as seating up to 45 passengers) so that she could travel in luxury and reward her financial contributors with lavish trips. Speaker Pelosi said that her inquiry involved security issues, primarily that she should have access, when needed, to an aircraft capable of flying non-stop between Washington and California, a quality the Air Force said was not possessed under all conditions by the C-20 aircraft used by her predecessor. Those security concerns prompted her to ask about the use of an aircraft that met the non-stop requirements, regardless of its size: Ultimately it was the House sergeant at arms, Bill Livingood, who issued the request that, if necessary, the Speaker have access to a military plane meeting the non-stop security requirements -- not specifically a larger plane or a C-32, but simply any suitable aircraft capable of making the California-Washington run non-stop -- for travel to and from her home district: The Los Angeles Times elaborated on the changes in air travel that the 9/11 terrorist attacks necessitated for the person holding the Speaker of the House position: The Bush White House also acknowledged that the request for use of a plane capable of non-stop flights was appropriate: In the event, according to the Air Force, Speaker Pelosi did not routinely use the larger C-32 aircraft referenced in this rumor to travel between Washington and California (to the detriment of taxpayers' wallets and the environment) every weekend, as claimed in the e-mail quoted above. According to the Air Force, as of the end of 2008 she had used that larger airplane on only one occasion, when no alternative was available: In March 2009, Judicial Watch published various e-mails and memoranda supposedly documenting Pelosi's repeated requests for military travel. As ABC News noted of those documents: Moreover, the Air Force weekly travel reports reproduced in that Judicial Watch report disproved the claim made in the e-mail stated at the head of this article: They show Speaker Pelosi making 20 trips between Washington and California in 2007 and 2008, but always on the smaller C-20B and C-37A aircraft, never on the big fat 200-seat [sic] C-32 jet the e-mail claimed she used on a weekly basis. As well, an 11 January 2007 memo from a USAF Military Assistant to a Pelosi aide regarding refueling data provided additional confirmation that the C-20B could not always (depending upon weather conditions) make the trip from Washington to California without stopping to refuel: (en)
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