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

Not much to report from thr trial by Boeing of me from yesterday, as almost the whole day was spent in jury selection.

I did learn an interesting fact, however, about Vanessa Lee, the lead Boeing Legal Attorney representing and reporting back to Boeing Legal and Boeing executive management progress and strategy in the trial.

I learned that she is "under immense pressure" by Boeing to secure my (unjust) conviction. So much so that pressure has taken its toll on her emotionally.

She was the Boeing Legal attorney that has been involved in trying to secure my demise from the outset, having me followed home and who knows what else before I was arrested and my house ransacked for evidence to "hang" me with.

Also, Peter Conte, head purveyor of only positive news and twister of the truth into something different for Boeing, showed up at the trial in street clothes as opposed to his Armani suit befitting a Boeing executive of his pay grade, which shows the importance of this trial, as Boeing's lead spinner is now in attendance.

That's it for now.

Gerry

I haven’t traveled by railroad since so long ago I don’t know when it was, but last week I rode uninterrupted all week long on a train in which I was the sole occupant with a destination as predetermined as any scheduled Amtrak service—with this unstoppable train’s destination in effect set to the edge of a cliff of a deep, deep chasm by Boeing, the King County Prosecutor Boeing largely financed last November’s election of, and a compliant (thufar) King County Superior Court system.

Railroaded. There is no other way to describe last week’s sequence of events in pre-trial hearings before the trial this week with its all but certain similarly predetermined ending to please corrupt Boeing management and attorneys who really should be on this train, albeit I would at least grant them a fair trial despite the vastly greater crimes they committed than I am being railroaded for supposedly committing---as opposed to the unfair trial they are ensuring for me with money funneled to the King County Prosecutor’s successful (because of it) campaign, executives conferring strategy against me in closed door meetings at Boeing’s headquarters, taking precious time away from their own continuing and complex fraudulent activities, and communication via Blackberry device from and to the courtroom to ensure the train they put me on isn’t detoured in any way.

This railroading started in earnest Monday at a hearing before Superior Court Judge Carey where my attorney tried to stop the railroading before it began by asking for just a week’s continuance until we could finally get the information requested from my seized computer that was needed for my defense that we were promised by the prosecutor the previous Friday, so at least we had the weekend to review it and incorporate it in my defense before trial. The prosecution and Seattle Police Department failed to produce the information required for my defense despite almost the full week’s time to do so under the guise that the terms we wanted to search my computer for were crashing the police database of what was on my computer. They tried to search for all of the 56 search terms we requested at the same time, which “crashed” their database, they said. Both my attorney and I, not as computer savvy as them by far, wondered why they couldn’t search for each term separately, and maybe get us at least some of the requested information. The answer seemed clear—it was just an excuse to withhold the information needed for my defense from us.

The prosecution’s case is based on information they supposedly found on my computer that supposedly relates to information found in articles in the Seattle Times. While they are using such information they supposedly gleaned from my computer to prosecute me, they are not willing to let me access my own files on my computer in order to prepare a defense to those charges, yet another reason I have been in effect placed on a train with sabotaged brakes by the “working together” team of the King County Prosecutor and Boeing with the destination of my doom in order to “kill the messenger” of Boeing’s vastly greater and numerous crimes against myriad innocent commercial airplane travelers and against our nation’s security itself.

The prosecutor argued to judge Carey that, even if there was proof on my computer that Boeing was violating laws and regulations by intentionally placing airline passengers at greater risk of death for more bottom line dollars by not doing required inspections, then that would not prevent him from convicting me on the (relatively very petty) charges against me. The judge seemed to agree, and abetted the prosecutor’s “don’t give a damn” attitude about airline passenger safety and Boeing’s breaking of laws and regulations that placed them at much greater risk, and kept the train I was on running on its predetermined destination despite withholding of essential information and the time to review it in order to present our defense to the retaliatory charges making the term “malicious prosecution” inadequate to describe the situation. The judge denied our motion for continuance for a week and placed the case on the trial schedule as a priority for the next judge available for a trial to take.

I then left, as my attorney said it would likely be the next day at the earliest when a judge could be found for such a long case. However, just a few hours later my attorney called me an told me to be back at the courthouse ASAP, as a judge had already been assigned to the case! By the time I got there, the pre-trial motion part of my persecution had already begun.

The judge assigned to the case was Monica J. Benton, who I just this weekend learned was appointed by Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire, which was a shocking revelation after watching her rule against the well reasoned motions backed by numerous case law pecedents all week.

My attorney would present detailed and very relevant case law and arguments to justify our motions, then the prosecutor would give some inane interpretation of cases almost totally unrelated to the issue at hand and then present his obviously highly biased personal opinion (not reasoned legal argument based on the facts) of that case and how it should negate our motion, then the judge would rule against us (and the law) and for his personally and intentionally twisted opinions of vaguely related cases, everytime.

It was disillusioning, to say the least. First you see wholesale corruption placing lives at risk at Boeing, then you find out the enabling corruption in FAA management that intentionally rollerstamps its oversight role of Boeing as “it’s all good” without any real oversight of Boeing at all. Then you find out the enabling DOT OIG that will not act against Boeing or FAA management itself, no matter the merits of the case. Then you find out that your own county justice system is highly biased, and next to impossible to get a fair trial in.

My attorney told me, after I indicated to her my dismay at her (what I saw to be “slam dunk” legal argument based) motions all getting ruled against by the judge, that people new to the justice system there are shocked, like I was, when they find out how biased the whole court system is against the defendant. I couldn’t have agreed more with her on that point.

One of the days the prosecutor even had the gall to ask the judge to admonish (or a similar term) my attorney for stating to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that, “Boeing is a very big presence here in this part of the country. I think that the prosecutor is under a lot of pressure from Boeing," to which any reasoned person would say “duh” to, however the prosecutor feigned outrage at such a suggestion that he was somehow under pressure from Boeing despite having practically been living with two or three Boeing Legal attorneys and one attorney hired by Boeing from an outside law firm for the past nearly two years, and especially the past few weeks. At least the judge didn’t bite on that one. My attorney and the Deputy Prosecutor had seemed to be getting along well with each other during various hearings, probably due to my attorney’s belief that being adversarial when not before a judge is not in the client’s best interest, however this undeserved jab by him in an effort to prejudice the judge may change things.

But the most damaging thing that occurred last week in the many rulings against us by a biased court system was the motion the judge granted taking away our right to argue a necessity defense for my actions. Of course, the only reason I ever contacted the press was to go public with my story after all other avenues had failed. I knew many lives would be placed at greater and greater risk as time went on if Boeing’s fraud in quality assurance management was permitted to continue unabated. However that sole reason for my actions will not be allowed to be presented in my defense due to the judge’s ruling.

Interestingly, this again hinged on what was obviously a bogus and biased argument by the Deputy Prosecutor. He cited a case about an elk that had charged a person who shot it outside of hunting season. The court found that he acted on necessity even though he broke the law, and could not be charged. The Deputy Prosecutor then (intentionally?) misquoted the case and stated the case made it clear that a necessity defense could only be presented if I was being compelled to commit a crime “by a force of nature” such as the charging elk. He again reiterated that even if my allegations of rollerstamping at Boeing are true, then that doesn’t deter him in any way from charging me with crimes they chose to charge me with. My attorney correctly quoted the case law and stated that in addition to “force of nature,” “the pressure of circumstance,” as was the case in my situation, was also permitted as a necessity defense.

The judge then said case law did support a “pressure of circumstance” necessity defense, but then she ruled against us because I wasn’t “personally endangered”! Quite unbelievable, isn’t it? I could only defend myself with the necessity defense if I was defending myself from danger. I couldn’t to so to protect the millions of lives Boeing had intentionally placed in danger in order to reap greater profit margins while Death also reaped greater returns. That’s justice for you. Or, more aptly, injustice, perhaps.

So, I guess the moral is that you had better not intervene and try to save anyone from harm by another person, lest you hurt the perpetrator while saving someone’s life and end up doing time for that, while the attacker walks free to hurt, maim, and kill again. Doesn’t sound logical to me, but that appears to be the law of this State, anyway. It’s a big disincentive for people to do the right thing, which is no doubt what Boeing and the Deputy Prosecutor are trying to ensure by my trial. Do gooders beware, as unethical companies and prosecutors have free reign, at least in King County.

Due to the current King County Prosecutor impersonating a just deceased and respected Republican King County Prosecutor, as well as donations and the running of his campaign by Boeing’s chief outside law firm, the current Republican King County Prosecutor was elected last November, a mistake by an electorate that obviously didn’t know the man at all, and who could blame them as he was doing his best to impersonate his dead boss to gain his job, running on his bosses’ accomplishments and not his own. The deceased former King County Prosecutor, Norm Maleng, was perhaps the only Republican in King County government (which are few) that was well respected. Indeed, Mr. Maleng’s death hurt the prosecutor’s office immensely, allowing the current King County Prosecutor to gain office by what was so blatant an impersonation of Mr. Maleng it could be charged, I believe, as a case of identity theft. What has resulted is a fascist prosecutors office that ignores purposely and openly crimes by corporations and white collar criminals, while holding those “little guys” not well connected to it to the law. It is no accident, perhaps, that the current King County Prosecutor touted as an accomplishment his running a organization of young Republican boys/men, the nearest thing I’ve heard to similar groups Adolph Hitler founded. Not to say that the group has the beliefs of the Nazis outside the general Republican belief that fascism is good (government controlled by and ran for corporations rather than the people) and socialism like social security is bad. So the King County Prosecutor’s office being run out of “Boeing’s pants” is no great surprise. If my predetermined conviction does any good, it will be in exposing these “working together” crooks for what they really are, and for what a justice system they promise to put in place in the future if left in power, ala George Orwell’s “1984” justice system.

We lost all the battles last week, despite having the law behind us. The prosecutor won his arguments solely by saying, “I believe,” then stating how the case law really meant the opposite of what it actually meant. Too bad the judge for the most part bought it.

We did win a few small points. While we sought substantive relief before trial in reducing the number of charges due to overlap and other legal precedents, the judge allowed us to argue that point to a jury only following my predetermined conviction. Never mind that the jury would be prejudiced by the number of charges against me during the trial itself, making a conviction more likely, as that is the destination already chosen for this “railroad” I am on.

Another interesting fact is that the prosecutor sought to further suck up to Boeing by protecting boeing from another one of their crimes—Sarbanes Oxley violations. The prosecutor presented a motion to exclude any testimony about violations of the SOX laws by Boeing by Boeing not protecting their financial data from access and manipulation as required. My attorney is working on our response to that motion.

And yet another interesting fact is that the “star” Boeing witness against me, Mike Bair, failed former head of the 787 program and still on Boeing’s payroll for reasons unknown, stated in his interview with my attorney that the leak to the Seattle Times of Boeing Commercial Airplane’s CEO’s recommendation to Boeing’s Board of Directors of Everett as winner of the site selection contest for final assembly site of the 787 had pressured the board to go with that selection, although he also said it could have made them go the other way, I guess for spite purposes. He called the leak “a brush with death.” What isn’t known is why he testified about that leak as I am not charged with that leak to the press. Perhaps it is just because he, just as Boeing’s Corporate Security Manager said to me during my interview the day after I was released from jail after my arrest, believes I was the source of that leak, and forced Boeing’s Board to select Everett with all of its “union problems” over the Board’s preferred site for final assembly of South Carolina. I detail Boeing’s belief I forced them to site the 787 in Washington State on my website. Bair’s interview only confirms their belief that is the case, which is not the true reason they are retaliating against me via these unfounded charges.

Gerry

The Last Inspector

Truly sad news Friday. Even I wanted Boeing to win the KC-X competition, if controls were put in place to protect the warfighter and taxpayer from continuing Boeing management fraud.

It is rightly just, then that the stock "tanks" today, after the tanker loss, fittingly negating the value of Boeing mismanagement stock options upon whose value they commit much of the fraud I witnessed. Hopefully employees will not be affected to any extent by such a loss to the stock price. Hopefully most Boeing employees did what I did, which was to never put any 401K money in Boeing stock and always sell Sharevalue shares at the earliest opportunity. I did so because I, just as most Boeing employees should have experienced and acted accordingly, knew how really badly the company was run internally and a few of the skeletons Boeing management was hiding in the closet as far as the fraud I witnessed as I was threatened with my job if I too did not engage in it.

Regardless of what has been said of why Boeing lost, I believe strongly that what the Air Force knew independent of any external source of Boeing management's continuing "ethical" problems half a decade past the Druyun/Boeing scandal that made Boeing the most risky proposal before it.

Indeed, the workers at Boeing are blameless in this loss. Boeing management is solely responsible for this loss for many reasons. Boeing would have likely won the original tanker contract if Boeing top management had not decided to ensure it was iced by bribing the top A/F procurement official with favors for her and her family. That directly led to this "recompete" in which the political climate and Boeing management's public reputation are very different than what they were before the Druyun scandal. Boeing management mistruths (intentional or unintentional) told to the press and investor community about the state of the 787 program didn't help either.

People should realize, even though the outcome is unpalatable to any American who wants to protect American jobs and our ability to produce our own aircraft in times of war, that there was a competition held between two different contractors. Due to that very fact that a competition was held meant that Boeing could lose it, especially since the post Druyun reforms at the Air Force, which "took," as opposed to the "reforms" in Boeing management.

One thing this loss proves is clear: The majority of employees at Boeing who thought we shouldn't have to sign a yearly "Code of Conduct" because of the illegal and unethical actions of our management were right. It was simply an effort by Boeing management to spread the blame away from where it laid--at their feet. This and other meaningless actions in response to the Druyun/Boeing scandal led to the still largely unreformed corrupt management team in place at Boeing today, some of whose unethical and illegal continuing actions are detailed on my website.

It is this unreformed Boeing management team and their enablers in the Boeing Legal and Office of Internal Governance departments (that should be instead disabling such management corruption) that are to blame for the tanker loss and Boeing being seen as the highest risk company to do business with.

So, if you are a Boeing worker like I was, when you go to work on Monday you won't have far to look for who really is to blame for the loss of the tanker contract. You won't have to look across the ocean to another country. Or even out of state. You only have to look at your Boeing manager--they are the group of people that failed you--yet again--by their search of ever greater "value" to their bottom lines by any means, legally, ethically, or not. They outsourced your jobs on legacy programs and the 787 to maximize their bottom lines and take away yours. The results of their war on their own employees has backfired, as any rational management would have known. Almost every employee is counting the hours, minutes, and/or seconds to retirement, hating how they are really treated by management as a disposable and unwanted commodity, wondering if Boeing management's next attempt to maximize their bottom lines will take away their job as well.

Ironically, Boeing management was being two-faced on this contract, which didn't help its credibility with the Air Force either. Boeing did exactly what Northrop did on the 787 program--Northrop Grumman outsourced most of the work overseas--bringing in airplane sections built overseas to a Southern state whose work force is more adept at picking banjo next to river banks rather than anything remotely as complex as building airplanes--much less large and complex military airplanes, even though they will "only" be "snapping together" the airplane sections and performing testing and delivery. Perhaps this is in a way yet another rebuke, similar to the 787 delay debacles, to Boeing management by way of the Air Force for for the war Boeing has waged against its own employees. Maybe someone at the Air Force thought this was poetic justice for the noted outsourcing weakening our country much more than the Northrop Grumman outsourcing can ever do due to the many fewer planes whose work will be outsourced on the tanker program compared to the outsourcing by Boeing mismanagement on the 3500 or so projected 787s and other programs, both legacy and future, on which outsourcing will be used more and more as time goes on. Ironic, don't ya think?

How does Boeing go forward and win the next major contracts? The answer is obvious--remove the source of the risk that the Air Force found unnacceptable in the tanker competition, and the sole reason for the loss of the tanker contract--get a new management team. Not just a few new faces in Chicago like in past Boeing management produced debacles, but any manager in any way tainted by corruption must go in order for Boeing to win again. That's a hell of a lot of managers, and many first lines as well, as I can attest.

I feel just as any employee does in this devastating loss. Even I, one of Boeing's most informed whistleblowers, advocated a Boeing win on this contract, if the proper controls were put in place, which I was confident was possible. It is sad our government has changed our procurement rules to allow apparently unlimited foreign content.

Our state officials may protest in Congress, but some of them know full well just how bad Boeing management still is and how they still use any means--ethical and legal or not--to meet financial targets.

Corrupt and incompetent Boeing management has long been the nemesis of the company's reputation and of its own workers. A new management team could fix that. Perhaps this loss, if it has a silver lining, will be the catalyst that makes that happen sooner rather than later. The joy Boeing workers would have expressed hearing of a win instead of the loss of the tanker contract would be greatly exceeded by news of such a management change to a management that is not at war with its own workers and country, except when they bid on military programs.

This letter is self-explanatory in nature. It was my duty to warn the Air Force before they entered into a contract with Boeing:


February 25th, 2008



The Honorable Sue C. Payton
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition
1060 Air Force Pentagon, Room 4E964, AF/AQ
Washington, DC 20330-1060



Dear Assistant Secretary Payton:

This urgent letter is to inform you of matters that I have witnessed that I believe should strongly bear upon how you should go about structuring the KC-X contract and how you perform contract negotiations should The Boeing Company be selected over the Airbus/Northrop team as supplier of the KC-X Aerial Refueling Aircraft.

First, I want to make my motivations in giving you this crucial information clear: I am not trying in any way to influence you to select the Airbus/Northrop proposal for the KC-X instead of the Boeing offer. Instead, quite the opposite is true, although that is not related to this letter other than as background information. I do hope you ultimately select the Boeing RFP even considering the corruption I detail below that I witnessed that is still entrenched deeply within Boeing management following the former tanker contract debacle and other Boeing ethical and legal lapses that have been aired publicly for several years now.

My opinion as a loyal former Boeing employee and U.S. citizen that can trace my roots in this country to eighteen years after the Plymouth Colony was settled and some 138 years before our country was founded is that it is essential for the economy of our country, the preservation of aerospace manufacturing jobs in this country, and therefore the preservation of military aircraft production capacity within the United States, that Boeing is ultimately selected as the winner of the competition for the KC-X contract.

That said, I can now get to the essential crux of this letter, which is how best you and your KC-X procurement team can structure a contract should, as I hope, Boeing wins the competition, in order to protect the Air Force, Air Force personnel who will fly on and use these tanker aircraft, and the American taxpayer from the consequences of the fraud still ongoing within management at Boeing today several years after Boeing’s much self-publicized “ethics reforms.”

As a former Boeing Quality Assurance Inspector until just over a year and a half ago, when I was terminated per the direction of the highest management levels at the company for collecting information in order to bring this continuing fraud in Boeing management to light, I witnessed this management fraud in Boeing Commercial Airplanes Quality Assurance on a daily basis. Knowing not only the lives of the public were being intentionally placed at higher risk by corrupt Boeing management because of this fraud, but the lives of our brave military personnel were placed at much higher risk illegally, as well, to maximize Boeing’s bottom line, I knew I had to act to stop this brazen fraud before more lives of the public and our military that fly on Boeing Commercial Airplane platforms were inevitably lost, so I reported this rampant fraud in QA throughout BCA to the FAA in early 2002, well before the former tanker contract debacle.

By the way, this letter is in no way related to Boeing Corporate Headquarter’s retaliation against me as noted above. I knew the day I decided to try to bring Boeing’s illegal actions I witnessed to justice that I would be ultimately removed from my job by Boeing as retaliation for attempting to bring Boeing management’s fraudulent actions to an end as I knew Boeing management’s corrupt modus operandi almost better that they knew it themselves at that point, when Boeing’s “win at any cost” “ethic” was in full swing, as it had not been publicized yet.

The fraud that I witnessed and reported to the FAA in early 2002 is a fraud that sadly continues to this day, due to a relationship with the arm of the FAA that I reported it to that mirrors to some extent the bias that was unfortunately shown by a few former officials in the Air Force before those officials were removed from their posts following the reforms instituted after the 2003 tanker procurement scandal. While the Air Force, under your new leadership team’s hard work and integrity, is totally reformed now and is up to the task in performing your duties with the utmost integrity for the benefit of the taxpayer and our military you represent, the same cannot be said of the FAA and Boeing management involved in the continuing fraud I witnessed. And it is this continuing fraud that, if not noted and addressed by your team as it relates to the KC-X program, poses a grave threat to military personnel who fly on or use the services of the KC-X tanker, and an unreasonable danger to the wise use of American taxpayers’ dollars. Possible challenges to the hard won reputation of the procurement agency for the program also exist if this ongoing corruption at Boeing and the FAA is not properly addressed before a contract is signed, and is not properly mitigated during the life of the program.

The fraud I witnessed on a daily basis at Boeing is something you have likely heard of. While my coworkers and I referred to it as “rollerstamping,” this fraud does have other names in the industry, such as “hot stamping,” or perhaps its most apt description: Product Substitution.

As you well know, the safety, quality, and reliability of military as well as commercial airplane platforms that are produced must be ensured by strict adherence to inspection, testing, and other quality assurance processes. Without such processes, no matter how well intentioned the people are that do the actual construction of those aircraft and their many component parts, inevitably faulty and/or incomplete aircraft will be produced because all humans by nature make mistakes, especially on fast paced and complex tasks requiring high levels of skill, such as in aircraft manufacturing.

That basic fact is acknowledged in the modern regulations and implementing and necessarily mandatory quality assurance procedures that have been put in place over the years to ensure the safety, quality, and reliability of military and commercial aircraft is ensured, and is ensured to the high level required.

However, to Boeing and FAA management, those critical regulations and implementing procedures are only guidelines, if that.

At Boeing, inspectors are expected by management to “look the other way” rather than actually do their critical jobs of ensuring the safety and conformity of Boeing aircraft, and FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors are also similarly expected by their management to “look the other way” from their duties to enforce the FAA regulations at Boeing and to ensure Boeing is adhering to their FAA required quality system.

Is this corruption just speculation? Hardly. I, as well as many others, witnessed it, and I in fact proved it during my dealings with top Boeing and FAA management in my thusfar futile efforts to end this endemic and symbiotic Boeing/FAA fraud.

My reports of this fraud at Boeing to Boeing and FAA management did not have the desired result of reform so inspectors like me could begin to do their critical jobs without the inevitable harassment and retaliation for doing so. The FAA and Boeing chose to cover up and protect this fraud rather than investigate and end it. My refusal to ignore FAA foot dragging on investigating my report did result in corrupt FAA management having to document a few of my many reported Boeing noncompliances so as to be able to say they did an investigation, so they unwillingly corroborated several systemic noncompliances I reported. However, the major and most serious by far noncompliances the “investigation” of my report by Boeing and the FAA uncovered was in proving that the many noncompliances I reported were not just a result of low level Boeing management corruption—they were instead a result of corruption at the highest levels of FAA and Boeing management—a true “working together” corrupt relationship to ensure Boeing did not have to abide by what they saw as too expensive to comply with mandatory quality and safety ensuring regulations and procedures. What Boeing management got out of this corruption is clear as most of their compensation is tied to bottom line driven stock option prices. What the corrupt FAA management involved got out of ensuring Boeing could break regulations, in opposition to their mandated duties, other than “quid pro quo” well paying jobs at Boeing and organizations funded by Boeing is less clear, but time will tell.

Since you are busy, I will spare you the details in this letter as this letter is to only warn you of this fraud so you can take measures to protect the taxpayer and warfighter from it before it is too late to do so. The details of this fraud are on my website, www.thelastinspector.com . I strongly suggest you visit the site to find out the corroborating and disturbing details of this corrupt FAA/Boeing relationship.

As you are intimately aware of the inner workings of the aviation industry as I am, it should not surprise you then that the ethics reforms Boeing said it undertook after the first tanker contract and the Lockheed RFP data theft debacles did not “take,” and Boeing management still relies on unethical and illegal activities to enhance its bottom line. Even unethical and illegal activities that obviously place many citizen and military lives at risk.
Although Boeing has apparently been very careful to not use such unethical and illegal habits in the current tanker RFP until the contract is sewn up, that has not prevented it from engaging is such misconduct in other areas of its business—especially “safe” areas to do so, such as internally in making quality and safety assurance at Boeing one of the most corrupt organizations within Boeing, and in long fostered corrupt relationships with FAA management. The Boeing Legal department is another area where the illegal is tolerated, if not fostered. They were they department of Boeing tasked with covering up rather than ending the Boeing management corruption I reported to them on two occasions. It is no accident an internal Boeing system used by Boeing Legal is called the “elegal” system, and that one of Boeing Legal’s top attorney’s mantra was “you gotta do what you gotta do.” Rather than end the corruption I reported to them, the same Boeing Legal attorney assigned to “investigate” my report was also assigned to personally ensure I was arrested and charged with a crime for collecting data for my continuing efforts to end the noted Boeing/FAA corruption.

However this letter is not about what Boeing has done to me. It is solely to protect the taxpayer from being defrauded by Boeing as it defrauds its current customers via the ongoing product substitution abetted by corrupt management personnel in the FAA, as well as to ensure such fraud is not allowed unwittingly by your organization to place military personnel’s lives at extra risk by your organization not being informed of it.

I have read disturbing articles about the still unreformed FAA being allowed to certify 767 tankers for Japan and Italy. Such certifications are next to meaningless in the current era of FAA management corruption. This is a key area that will have to be changed should Boeing be awarded the contract.

If FAA personnel have to be used on the tanker program in any way, DCMA Quality Assurance personnel must closely supervise FAA personnel to ensure they are actually doing their critical jobs rather than mostly pretending to do them. They must perform independent audits of Boeing quality assurance as well as FAA inspections and certification work with ending and preventing the fraud reported in this letter and on my website in mind during the program. Such heightened oversight activities by the DCMA must be allowed in the contract.

Boeing will likely pursue language that FAA and FAA delegated Boeing personnel do as much of the inspection and certification work as possible in the contract. After this letter, the motivations of such language should be much more transparent. Language must be inserted in the contract to give the DCMA the authority, headcount, and budget with which to perform the much increased oversight functions that will prevent FAA/Boeing fraud on the program from being used to pump up Boeing’s profits from the program via the noted product substitution currently enabled by “quality assurance” at Boeing and the reduced certification costs lack of real FAA oversight provides.

Such real oversight by the DCMA would uncover problems in the production system hidden for years by the noted Boeing and FAA non-oversight of Boeing’s engineering and production processes. This would add additional costs to the program, but the conforming aircraft that would result would be worth those costs. Drawings and engineering specs that could never be complied with as they were in error and/or conflicting would be uncovered—never fixed because Boeing management thought it would cost too much to fix them and that such fixes were “non-value added” no matter how much the errant engineering confused those who had to try to build per those drawings/specs and how creative mechanics had to become to make what they thought the engineer might have intended. Such evidence of past Boeing and FAA carelessness will be simply more proof of the corruption I am disclosing to you now.

Although I have not been on the Boeing production line for over a year, there is no doubt the FAA/Boeing fraud proven by the handling of my reports continues to this day. I still communicate with Boeing personnel on occasion. Nothing has changed. If the noted fraud was ended by Boeing and/or the FAA, the severe bottlenecks on production programs resulting would have to be made public, and an announcement by the FAA making the public announcement of the ultimately ineffective FAA Special Technical Audit of 1999/2000 seem very insignificant by comparison would have to be done. Neither has happened to date.

As you can see on my website documenting the Boeing and FAA management corruption I and others have witnessed, “working together” fraud in Boeing and FAA management will not be the only Boeing mismanagement and fraud your team will have to be vigilant in preventing in order to protect the interests of the military and our country’s citizens during a Boeing tanker program. Boeing’s past intentional and “unintentional” mismanagement of ITAR controls is an area that will need special emphasis in preventing during a Boeing tanker program. The QRS-11 chip debacle is just one such instance of ignoring such controls that I helped ensure a fair end to for our country. Transfer of ITAR data between commercial and military programs is another area that will need to be of special concern during the program in terms of putting in place controls to prevent such actions by Boeing’s still ethically challenged management during the program, and/or to prevent Boeing management’s past demonstrated disdain for adhering to ITAR controls when more money can be made by ignoring them from affecting how such controls are used on the program.

And then there are the 787 delays and the Japan and Italy tanker delays to consider as far as how to best help Boeing management avoid a repeat of those delays during a tanker program for our government. It is my belief that it was Boeing’s focus on “leaning out” the production and certification processes and focusing on the financial planning aspects of the program rather than planning sufficiently for production of the 787 itself that has resulted in the 787 delays. Schedules planned too tightly in order to meet financial targets ultimately has resulted in the delays thusfar, I believe. Notably, one of the “bright spots” in the 787 program thusfar has been the “smoothness” of certification activities on the program and the FAA siding with Boeing over experts on some controversial certification tests performed and those chosen not to be performed as was required in past new programs. I need not, I trust, give my well informed opinion as to why the FAA has been so accommodating to Boeing’s every wish on the program, and has allowed unprecedented levels of delegation of Boeing personnel to do formerly and exclusively FAA performed certification activities on past programs on the 787 program.

I will let my website give you the rest of the details. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions for me not addressed in this letter or on my website.

Please do not penalize Boeing workers for the continuing “sins” of their management. I believe, if you heed the warnings in this letter, Boeing and FAA management’s arrogance in continuing to perform unethical and illegal activities if the personal rewards are seen to outweigh the risk can be mitigated completely so that the Air Force will avoid being defrauded and receive the product contracted for, with the required levels of quality, safety, and reliability assured. And our country and the vast majority of Boeing workers not complicit with the noted fraud will reap the benefits of such a key contract to protect our military aircraft industrial base.

I hope one day soon the noted FAA/Boeing fraud will be ended. However, until then, procurement officials like you and the DCMA will have to take actions to protect our country and military from it on programs such as the KC-X tanker program and the P-8A Poseidon program.

Please ensure these warnings are heeded and the contract language is structured to protect the Air Force and the taxpayer from the noted Boeing/FAA fraud. Please delay any contract signing until such contract language is drafted, if necessary.

And please distribute this letter to your Deputy, Lt. Gen. Donald Hoffman, John Young, and any other member of your team that you believe has a need to know this information.

Sincerely,




Gerald Eastman

cc: The Honorable Patty Murray
United States Senate
173 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-0238

cc: The Honorable Maria Cantwell
717 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-228-0514 fax