Thank you for your reply. Maybe I didn't explain it thoroughly enough. The US forest service is huge on safety. The director of maintenance made these comments specificly to harm us. He has been in the business long enough to know what key words to use. He could have been vague but he chose buzz words. Vague would not have been a big deal. This was calculated. It is clear now after the appeal hearings. We aren't the only people he has done this to. We do have people as witnesses that he said this these comments to. He even admitted saying them in the appeal hearing. There are 10 conditions that WA state has to be eligible for unemployment. Unfortunately our industry doesn't fall in any of the catagories. What he was saying is that I was overlooking a potential catastrophic condition and my husband was causing it. We were on a rappel contract. These guys have to have total faith in both of our abilities. Especially the pilot. He hovers 150-200 feet from the ground while these guys rappel out of the helicopter. Now tell me if you were them and a person in a authority position, director of maintenance, said, 'I'm not happy with Bob and Kim because Bob could overtorque or overtemp the helicopter and Kim would cover it up.' Now tell me that isn't going to be going through your head when your standing on the skids ready to jump off. Remember the Alaska airline flight where the jack screw was the problem. The maintenance people knew about it but didn't say anything. They just turned the other way. People died. Lots of people died. This is the scenario that the director of maintenance was making. As far as the Director of Operations he could have had the director of maintenance take the crew aside and explain that his comments were false. Or he could have done it himself. We sat down with the crew and talked with them about the statements. But I don't think it had any effect because they still asked questions about what I was doing to the aircraft. Even when I was just wiping the grease off and cleaning it up. Something that I did on a regular basis so they knew what I was doing. The crew distanced themselves from us. Anyway your are probably right. There is nothing that can be done. It just very frustrating. Oh by the way, the director of maintenance was shown the door a couple of months afterwards because the company found out that he has been a problem in other areas. I guess that doesn't matter. All I know is that we had to remove ourselves away from the situation as soon as possible to come away with as little damage as possible. Thanks.

Kim