Pilot: Refusal to Donate Shot Down Career

A Newport Beach pilot who said he spent nearly half his time ferrying politicians in his company’s corporate jet filed suit Friday against his former employer, alleging that he was fired because he refused to contribute to a political donation fund.

Keith Atkinson, a former pilot for Iranian arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, said his $72,000-a-year job with Indianapolis-based Superior Training Services Inc. ended when he refused to donate $500 a month from his paycheck to a fund for political candidates, including former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, supported by the company. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the corporate pilot is seeking $1.25 million in damages from the vocational training company, which runs schools for truck drivers and heavy equipment operators throughout the country.

Atkinson, 43, alleges that he used the company’s $6-million jet on at least five occasions to ferry Hart and his campaign workers to various political rallies during Hart’s shortlived presidential campaign.

‘Hey, We Gotta Do This . . . ‘

He said that throughout his 13 months with the company, he was the pilot on trips for politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) and Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.).

Atkinson said the chief executive officer of the company, Gary Eyler, a defendant in the lawsuit, “kept telling everybody, ‘Hey, we gotta do this because in another year when Hart gets elected, we’ll all be sitting at Camp David instead of sitting here every weekend.’

“He was very brash about what he was doing and why he was doing it. He had great ambitions of being Gary Hart’s right-hand man,” Atkinson said.

Company officials, in a letter to Atkinson’s attorney, Maurice Mandel II, called Atkinson’s allegations about the donation fund “absolutely ridiculous.”

They said Atkinson was fired because of personality conflicts with other employees and because he damaged the tail section of the company jet while moving it out of a hangar.

It is a violation of federal election law to require employees to contribute to political action committees, according to Fred Eiland of the Federal Elections Commission.

Atkinson said the dispute over political contributions arose when Eyler demanded that he attend a $250-a-plate fund-raiser held to retire Hart’s campaign debt.

“I went, but I didn’t pay. I said: ‘I’m not kicking into the Democratic fund. I’m a Republican; I don’t believe I should have to do that.’

“There were little innuendoes about if it wasn’t for our political connections, you wouldn’t have the job you have right now.”

Later, at a meeting in Eyler’s office, he said, Eyler told him that all top-level management people at the company had agreed to payroll deductions for the company’s political fund.

“He turned to me and he says, ‘You’re expected to also have a deduction, a minimum of at least $250 coming out of your (bimonthly) paycheck, for this political contribution.’ It was a slush fund that we all in upper management were supposed to contribute to.”

He refused, and when he returned from vacation a few weeks later, Eyler told him it was “time for a change,” he said.

Company Vice President Gregory Hahn, in a statement released Friday, said: “Mr. Atkinson was an employee for one year with the company as head of the aviation department, and as an executive, along with 60 other employees, he was asked to join a political action committee.

“Our PAC is based on hundreds of other companies who have the same type of committee for their executives to participate in.”

Lou Gerig, a spokesman for the company, said no employees of the company are required to join the committee.

Of 50 who are eligible to join, just 10 belong, he said.

Eiland of the Federal Elections Commission said that employers may ask workers to contribute to a political fund in writing twice a year.

“But they may not tell the employees how much they should give,” he said. “They have to clearly state that it is a voluntary thing. There can be no hint of coercion.”

Gerig refused to comment on use of the company airplane for politicians, except to say that such uses were either reimbursed by the politicians or reported as campaign contributions.

Hart’s campaign treasurer could not be reached for comment.