In the search for answers in the wake of the TWA 800 disaster, the role of the Athens airport is coming under scrutiny — and is the subject of some peculiar politicking in the United States. A good thing too. TWA Flight 800 originated in Athens before landing in New York and then departing for Paris. The Athens airport has a troubled history; it was the site of a 1986 hijacking of a TWA flight. As recently as March, the U.S. department of Transportation declarcd it unsafe and placed it on a watch list because the airport had failed to improve its security. Two months later, after only four days of FAA inspections, Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena lifted the travel advisory. Why? Andrew Manatos, of the firm Manatos & Manatos, a Washington lobbyist for the Greek government and a prominent Democrat, may be the answer.
The importance of the issue to Manatos is clear from a press release he issued at the time: “One out of every nine Greeks died fighting with [the U. S.] against the Nazis and communists.” In March, according to a staffer at the House Transportation Committee, Manatos called “all hot and bothered” to lobby the committee to lift the ban. The staffer explained the committee didn’t feel that “the arena of safety has a place for politics, and that there was nothing that the Athens airport could do in only two months to get off the list.” Indeed, the 1985 International Security and Development Cooperation Act was designed to ensure travelers’ security regardless of political implications. Some administration aides apparently were unaware of this, or didn’t care, since Time magazine reported last week that in February they tried to put the kibosh on the Athens airport warning to smooth the way for the first lady’s trip to Greece the following month.
There is little doubt that Manatos would have also put his Democratic connections to work in lobbying the Clinton administration — Time says that after the White House counsel’s office accepted the inevitability of the warning, pressure was brought to bear instead on the Department of Transportation.
