Yesterday, Tuesday, was when the trial of me by misinformation began.

The day didn't start well, as a combination of me leaving later than usual and unbelievably heavy traffic when most people should have already been at work (no, the recession hasn't hit this area yet) resulted in me being over fifteen minutes late to court. Unlike other days when things didn't get under way until a half hour after the supposed to be 9:00 AM starting time, they were waiting for me to arrive to get started. I got admonished by the judge to be on time or there was the jail option to ensure I was there on time. I apologized to the judge for my tardiness. It's things like these that make you wonder whether "innocent until proven guilty" is really what is practiced in court.

At about 10:00 AM the jury was finalized--14 jurors with two of them unknowing alternates (so they will pay attention to the trial).

Then Scott Peterson, the Senior Deputy Attorney likely the next in line to the Republican dynasty of King County Prosecutors once Dan Satterberg dies or is removed from office for some other reason, began his opening statement full of mistruths.

He cast me as a "slow and methodical" worker, somehow infering I wasn't doing my job well, when the opposite was true. Yes, I was slower than other inspectors who rollerstamped to a greater degree than I was forced to, but that is just the law of mature--it takes more time to do something and stamp the paperwork to indicate you did it than not doing the work and just stamping the paper off.

And for just doing my job to a minimal level not even close to the level of what inspectors were supposed to do per the FAA approved quality system I am branded as "slow and methodical."

That really shows how twisted the justice system is and how far Boeing's "quality system" has devolved--when you don't join in wholeheartedly in with the fraud of the rollerstamping inspectors who just pretend to inspect the airplane before they falsify paperwork stating they did, the Senior Deputy Prosecutor of the King County Fraud Department accuses you of being "slow and methodical" for not joining fully in that fraud. No wonder he and Dan Satterberg have totally ignored Boeing's actual breaking of the law mutiple times, and have even gone on the offense for Boeing in trying to prevent any evidence of Boeing crimes from being discussed during the trial.

He also bald faced lied when he stated that I "spent several hours each day he should have been working "navigating file shares." Wrong! I did my research for my report on Boeing/FAA fraud to the DOT OIG only when there wasn't any other work to do.

He also infered that I was asking for money to keep quite about Boeing's law breaking, which is also diametrically opposed to the truth. Apparently he misreads everything to mean what he wants it to mean, rather than what it plainly means to any unbiased person.

He then tried to trump up my computer knowledge level way beyond what it is. This was another lie in order to falsely convict me on his unwarranted charges. In fact, any Boeing employee could access the same information I did with minimal computer knowledge. But the truth won't get him his unjust conviction, so he had to fabricate and prevaricate.

At about 11:00 AM my attorney, Ramona Brandes, began our opening statement. I think she did very well. At least she didn't lie about anything like the prosecutor did. She said I was not the most "succinct writer," which is perhaps an understatement. She made it clear that they were accusing me of "hacking" Boeing's computer system when I did nothing of the sort, and only accessed areas of the computer system I had permissions to access. She said I was no "white knight." Ain't that the truth. Although I wished I could save the public from the dangers to them from Boeing's fraudulent "quality assurance" activities, the public needed someone who gave more to it than I, even though I did little else for a few years but try to go through all the proper channels to get Boeing and FAA fraud ended. I'm human. Perhaps if you were trying to protect the lives of the public from a megalith corporation you too might make some well meaning mistakes as well.

Then, my last supervisor at Boeing took the stand. Even though I knew just how corrupt he was, I was happy that he did not seem to testify at all times to what they had scripted him to. A big deal was made about the two times out of thousands of writeups of discrepancies by me when he questioned whether they were just "flaws" and not "defects." QA professionals will laugh, but that is truly how far they had to dig to get negative stuff to testify about against me.

He said that I was "kind of a loner," which was a bogus comment. I got along very well with my coworkers, and joked and talked with them any chance I could. Of course, I did do more actual work than other inspectors who spent more time bullshitting than working, but that doesn't make me a "loner."

My former supervisor proved today what I knew was still the case--things are as bad in QA at Boeing as they ever were. Boeing still has not reformed their quality system into the minimal state where at least the Quality Supervisors, like my former boss testifying was, actually knew what their real job functions were in Quality.

He showed the same care less attitude about his real job duties that I witnessed in him and multiple other QA supervisors. He actually testified that he didn't check whether his inspectors were doing their jobs as he hadn't gotten enough complaints from customers to make him concerned enough to do so. Yep, the old rollerstamping quality system is still in full swing at Boeing, and QA supervisors are intentionally asleep at the wheel of their actual FAA required duties, which say nothing about how much product has to be pushed out the door uninspected.

Then Marie T. Farrelly was called to testify by the prosecutor (she is the Boeing "fixer" I blogged of earlier. I had only talked to her on the phone and emailed her before, and maybe saw one picture of her.

She was much tinier and more frail than I imagined. I had thought of her as a more robust, fighter type woman.

The prosecutor and her tried to use a few sentences out of a many page letter to Doug Bain, former Chief Counsel to Boeing, to try to show I was threatening to go to the press with Boeing's QA fraud if I wasn't paid off. Nothing could be further form the truth, yet they knowingly tried to parlay that falsehhod to the jury.

On cross examination, my lawyer finally put the letter in context, and got Farrelly to admit that the letter really showed that I did not want to be paid off to "go away," and that I required that Boeing fix the items I reported to the FAA themselves, including corrupt QA management, with me agreeing to testify if need be against such managers in court for Boeing at any time. "He wanted to ensure his allegations were investigated," she admitted.

That was pretty much it for her, besides some talk about the bogus audit of just my work area she had done after my last conversation with her.

Then Anthony Maus came to the stand, a "Senior Manager of Corporate security" who's comment in my 2006 interview with him that "Boeing is the most arrogant company on the face of the planet" is still one of my favorite quotes about Boeing.

I'll cover what he stated later. He takes the stand again today.

Gerry

The Last Inspector