President Clinton’s nominee for Air Force secretary was grounded as a pilot in the Air Force reserve in 1991 because he was compromising safety, his former commander told a Senate hearing Thursday. The testimony conflicted with that given by Daryl Jones, a Florida state senator and attorney, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee he stepped aside voluntarily as a reserve pilot at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida because of conflicting demands on his time. But Col. Thomas Dyches, now detachment commander of the U.S. Air Force Reserve at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., portrayed Jones as frozen in indecision over whether to stop flying. “I had to make it for him,” Dyches told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Dyches said Jones had become dangerous to himself and others as an F-16 pilot.
