Possible Retaliation Against Pacific Wings Revealed

Ties between TSA, Wackenhut and MPD, coupled with environmental whistle-blowing, may have led to attacks against air carrier’s employees.

J.M. Buck

KAHULUI– After recent incidents of violence between Wackenhut and inter-island carrier Pacific Wings were caught on video, one of the biggest questions that has surfaced is: “Why?”
Why is the security company contracted by the State to serve and protect at Kahului Airport behaving in such a hostile manner towards the employees of a small commuter airline?
The answer, it seems, stems from many things. Greg Kahlstorf, president of Pacific Wings, is also a self-styled investigative videographer and maintains an informational website called AirportScandal.com. Kahlstorf looks into different aspects of operations at Kahului Airport, and when uncovering questionable practices or violations of policy, he publishes them on his site.
Kahlstorf, 42, feels that the website and his criticism of the airport may have something to do with the harassment. “I’m sure the current of hostility and resentment runs at the managerial level,” said Kahlstorf.
He feels that airport officials in Honolulu have been handling the ongoing conflict in a professional manner, but the problems that Pacific Wings have been experiencing has to do with certain Kahului Airport officials. “Decisions are coming down from Honolulu that parallel the rules, because that’s what we hold them to. Basically what you are seeing is a tug-of-war between the local airport management on Maui that’s used to doing what it wants with no questions asked, and some people in Honolulu who are trying to be accountable. When you get into the outer islands, you get into a more, ‘What goes on out here stays out here,’ type of a thing. Our barbecues were a perfect example. You got [local security] saying, ‘You’re not going to have a barbecue, no matter what,’ and then you have the deputy director for all the airports faxing you a letter [okaying the barbecue] that they refuse to take. The reason they’re pissed off is clear. It’s change. They don’t want change.”
Pacific Wings is the only signatory airline at Kahului’s commuter terminal. This, in effect, means that they are governed by federal rules, like major air carriers, not Hawai‘i administrative rules.
“They don’t know what to do with us,” said Kahlstorf. “It forces the airport at a local level to deal with us more like a major airline than a small air carrier, and I think this is causing them to have to change the way they’ve done things. I don’t think anybody likes that. At the commuter terminal, I believe they may have run roughshod over whoever was there. I think they’re angry because we won’t go away, we won’t conform, and we enjoy certain latitudes as a signatory, like having a barbecue.
Kahlstorf likens the series of hostile incidents to a “trickle-down” effect. “There’s an above the line administrative resentment for what we do, coupled with a below the line undercurrent of irrational hostility.
On the morning of Oct. 20 of this year, a 3 p.m. meeting was called by Kahlstorf to try to settle differences between Wackenhut and Pacific Wings. The meeting was to take place in the office of acting airport manager Dale Tsubaki.
Shortly after the meeting was scheduled, TSA agent Philbert Carvalho showed up at Pacific Wings’ counter claiming he was investigating reports of pilot Roman Sarkissian being in the Pacific Wings’ airport operations area without proper credentials. Sarkissian was then detained “somewhere in the airport” for over three hours.
Tips have been received that Robert Tam Ho, a retired MPD assistant police chief and the head of Wackenhut Security at Kahului Airport, had been heard bragging a few hours before the meeting that he knew right after Sarkissian was taken, Kahlstorf would come over.
Tam Ho was allegedly overheard saying that if Kahlstorf stepped out of line or said anything they didn’t like, he was going to place Kahlstorf under arrest. Tips from airport employees allege that that’s the reason a TSA official wasn’t in the meeting, and why Tsubaki didn’t seem surprised when guards burst through his door, nor showed any hint of alarm until punches started getting thrown.
After the Oct. 20 assault, Kahlstorf had spoken with Maui TSA director Lowry Leong and stated that he felt that Howard Tagamori, Carvalho’s superior, should be recused from the case due to a conflict of interest. Tagamori was indeed recused shortly after that conversation. He still holds his position as an inspector for TSA at Kahului Airport. That conflict of interest, incidentally, was that Tagamori was the chief of police for Maui Police Department while Linda Lingle was mayor, and his assistant chief of police at that time was none other than Robert Tam Ho.
Leong could not be reached for comment regarding the matter.
As mentioned before, Carvalho was the TSA official that showed up at Pacific Wings the morning of Oct. 20 just before Sarkissian was taken into custody. Carvalho was the same TSA official that was supposed to attend the meeting in the airport manager’s conference room to work out difference between the two companies. He never showed up.
Kalstorf wonders if Carvalho was possibly directed to not show up.
So where is this going? Well, here it is:
In 2004, Kalstorf received a tip on AirportScandal.com that there were underground fuel storage tanks beneath Kahului Airport that were leaking.
“The tip said that the airport not only knew the tanks were there and knew they were leaking, but once they discovered it, they actually stopped monitoring them,” Kahlstorf recalled.
The tip went on to claim that the employee responsible for the airport baseyard was aware of the condition, and that there was an $11,000 per day fine from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for every day that the leakage continued.
Kahlstorf decided to investigate the tip. He went down to the State Department of Health and went through the file with Roxanne Quan, and sure enough, the tip was accurate.
Health Department documents revealed that a 2,500-gallon, single-wall fuel storage tank underneath Kahului Airport had been leaking since 1999. What had begun as soil contamination at a depth of 18 inches had reached a contamination depth of 18 feet by 2004. Contaminates such as benzene and xylene were twenty and 30 percent the allowable EPA levels. It is of interest to note that one pinhole-size leak in a storage tank of that size can contaminate 300,000 gallons of ground water in a year.
The problem had become so bad due to neglect that the EPA ordered the State to drill additional monitoring wells at Kahului Airport further out from the toxic plume that had formed at the baseyard.
In April of 2004, Kahlstorf e-mailed a letter of referral and enclosed his findings to Norwood Scott at the San Francisco branch of the EPA. One of the documents forwarded to Scott was a letter from the Fuel Oil Polishing Company (FOPCPO) to the State requesting an explanation as to why the contamination and leakage had been ignored for so long. Another forwarded document was the original notice to the baseyard manager in 1999 from Steven Chang at the Department of Environmental Quality. The notice basically says that the problem must be remedied immediately, and the fine is $11,000 per day for every day that the problem is not addressed.
The baseyard manager who was first notified of the problem and failed to act was Philbert Carvalho.
So now the chain becomes apparent: Tagamori, Carvalho, Tam Ho. TSA ties in with Wackenhut through old MPD affiliations. Pacific Wings blows an environmental whistle on Carvalho, ex-baseyard manager who is now with TSA, and Carvalho’s superior is a good buddy with Tam Ho, head of Wackenhut at Kahului Airport. None of the three returned messages that were left for them.
Wackenhut has been instructed not to go near the Pacific Wings counter or their AOA unless there is an emergency. Kahlstorf says they seem to be honoring this order.
Kahlstorf feels that Brian Sekiguchi, deputy director for the Department of Transportation in Honolulu, is handling the matter responsibly.
“The excuses seem to have stopped,” said Kahlstorf.

The Maui Examiner