The report on the Columbia disaster has been released, but it didn’t disclose everything.

The panel that investigated the Columbia shuttle disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed Feb. 1, has released its accident report. Retired Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the investigation board, handed it over Aug. 26.

What Gehman issued, however, is the abridged version, even at nearly 250 pages. This report, with its flogging of NASA management and sensible but familiar recommendations, is what the board feels the public is owed.

Actually, the public deserves more. Despite this hefty report, put together by brilliant minds, much has been left out.

Gehman told lawmakers a while back that if his board was going to get to the bottom of things, it wouldn’t disclose everything. The public, the press and most members of Congress would be kept in the dark.

Fortunately, a few lawmakers such as Florida Sen. Bill Nelson objected. Nelson, a member of the Senate committee overseeing NASA and a former shuttle crew member, has insisted on full disclosure for the public’s sake as well as NASA’s future funding.

Gehman, however, stressed that the accident board’s interviews with 200 people must remain confidential. He said confidentiality agreements enabled people to speak freely about what they knew. After some pressure in Washington, Gehman later allowed select lawmakers to see, but not reproduce, contents of the interviews.

Did people interviewed by the board assign blame and name names? Did they allege reprisals or fears of reprisal for reporting safety concerns for this or other flights? Are some bureaucratic bunglers still in position to carry forth the NASA culture assailed by the accident board?

The public has a right to know.

Besides, the sooner this is all out in the open, the sooner NASA can get out of the management mess and earnestly follow the board’s recommendations. And, finally, the better prepared America’s space program will be for the challenges of the future. Now that the report is out, is there a leader in Congress ready to throw down the gauntlet?

Aren’t taxpayers paying for this accident probe? Didn’t taxpayers get billed for that costly foam test that identified “the smoking gun” as that 500-mph chunk that ripped open Columbia after liftoff?

What the public knows, thanks to federal Freedom of Information Act requests, is that there were some NASA engineers and others who begged for satellite imagery but were turned down. We’ve learned about loose tiles and internal e-mails. These insider accounts have let the public and lawmakers know why the manned program is such a mess. Last week’s report concluded that had these warnings been listened to, a rescue might have been tried with no guarantee of outcome.

What we already know has hurt us, as Sen. Ernest F. Hollings pointed out at a May Senate committee hearing on the Columbia accident.

“NASA engineers issued waivers, then tried to eliminate foam shedding, but never fully succeeded,” the South Carolina senator said. “Last October Atlantis shed a much larger piece than normal, which struck the solid rocket booster. Yet, two flights later, not a single mention of foam trouble was made in Columbia’s “flight readiness review,’ the vigorous preflight discussion of safety issues.”

The accident report covers some of this old ground. It further declared that “unless the technical, organizational, and cultural recommendations made in this report are implemented, little will have been accomplished to lessen the chance that another accident will follow.”

Absent all the facts, how can the public and lawmakers be assured that those changes are made before the next manned mission, if at all?

What we don’t know can hurt us. It already hurt seven astronauts who were told all was well.

Recently Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, praised Gehman and the board; he also issued a caution.

The Arizona senator said, “Congress’ task will be not only to ensure that the (board’s) recommendations are implemented in both the short term before the space shuttle returns to flight but in the long term before flaws in NASA’s culture are perpetuated, but also to define the goals of the human space flight program.”

McCain called the report “a wake-up call” for the space program. It is. However, the Columbia report echoes the Rogers Commission report on the 1986 Challenger explosion. How many more people and shuttles must be lost before the lessons sink in?

McCain’s Senate committee has its first hearing on the Columbia accident report on Sept. 16. Said McCain, “Given the complexity and number of issues raised, the committee will be conducting a thorough analysis” of the report.

Full disclosure and accountability must come as part of that process. Hollings said it best at the May hearing: “While there is no question that we will continue to send humans in space, we must put everything else on the table.”

The report is finished. Now the real work begins, starting with getting not just truth but the whole truth.

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman is a columnist for the Kansas City Star.

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