WhistleblowerSupporter

Why One Boeing Whistleblower is Important

Why One Whistleblower is Important to the Safety, Security and Economic Welfare of All

The story of Boeing Whistleblower, Gerald Eastman, is a compelling one, the outcome of which will have far reaching effects on both employees of industry as well as government. In observing Mr. Eastman’s struggle, I see we have reached a significant turning point. Either we will achieve more transparency in our business (and government) operations or we will submerge into the swamp that is now business and contracting in America. I have become aware of Mr. Eastman's Boeing Whistleblower case, via my interest in whistleblower issues. I have his permission to send out his first press release and website address in order to better publicize his experiences as a legitimate whistleblower caught up in a most unpleasant relationship with his former employer.

His case is singularly important as unlike many, he chose to stand up to his company about the fraud he saw happening on the line at Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Mr. Eastman was a Quality Assurance Inspector and oversaw the assembly line for airliners. Thinking it was just a few corrupt and irresponsible low level supervisors, he began an odyssey which led him through each level of the Boeing Company to the very highest levels of management, finding anger, corruption, avoidance, cowardice, and retribution against himself, for daring to not shut up and look the other way, all the way to the top of his corporate structure. After exhausting all internal paths for addressing the problems he then went to the oversight authorities in the U.S. government whose job it is to inspect and oversee the safety and integrity of manufacturing and found they were similarly corrupted and impotent. His former employer, the Boeing Company has done their best with every kind of retribution imaginable, to destroy Mr. Eastman. In spite of this Mr. Eastman believing that the fraud and the safety risks the fraud represented to the American public, military and anyone else who would fly on Boeing airplanes, continued to try to get the problems honestly addressed and resolved. Mr. Eastman was fired from Boeing, was essentially blacklisted in his field due to Boeing’s influence, and when he finally did get another job, was fired from that job as well, ostensibly because the small company he worked for had a large customer (ostensibly Boeing) who was not happy with him being employed there. He has lost the integrity of his family, and much else has been permanently and negatively changed in his personal life. It has been a devastating experience. I hope that there will be more media and Internet attention to his story and more of you will present it to your readers. The public should know what is going on around them and see how destructive this kind of greed and corruption is to all of us.

The truth is that Boeing has a lot to lose. The situation is doubly interesting due to the settlement agreement the U.S. Government maintains with Boeing from the end of the Darleen Druyun/Michael Sears/Original Tanker Deal. In order not to lose the ability to bid on more contracts Boeing had to promise to keep themselves clean and ethical. The current issue is that they have not been doing that. There are in addition to Mr. Eastman’s situation, several whistleblower cases and even criminal investigations ongoing at the current time against Boeing. These cases have been slowed, thwarted, and corrupted or crippled; oversight agencies including the Justice department itself, (think federal prosecutors) have been totally dysfunctional in many cases, leaving these cases open, but not going anywhere, and poised to wait for the applicable statute of limitations to run out. This is the functional (or dysfunctional) state of things under the current administration. Those who are a part of the corruption, or are under the control of the corrupted officials, which I am told go all the way to the top of our government, continue to try to keep any of these cases from being investigated, and if that is not successful, from being prosecuted. Unfortunately, at the current time, they are quite successful in that effort.

Mr. Eastman's case however has reached a fevered pitch as Boeing, frustrated they could not shut him up by destroying his life, has tried to deny he is a whistleblower, used their economic and political power to control things and seek high stakes retribution. It appears that Boeing has managed to corrupt the King County Prosecutor’s office and Justice (judges and attorneys) as well. Only the jury refused to go along with Boeing's planned execution. The first trial ended in a hung jury, as several jurors could see what was happening, and seemed to be frustrated with the judge not allowing them to fully consider all appropriate elements of the case, such as Mr. Eastman's whistleblower status and current whistleblower law. To the credit of American jurors, many do not like to be herded to a predetermined end by the prosecutor or judge. The jury also advised the court that they felt the case should not be retried. Boeing, on a roll applying the bully tactic, has since tried to force Mr. Eastman into an out of court "deal" which he has detailed on his website in his Press Release, while threatening to prosecute him again in a second trial, and more recently threatening to move the trial to the federal level, even naming the U.S. attorney, who is interested in taking it on, which flies in the face of any logic, considering the facts of the alleged case, and the well known state of Justice in the U.S. Attorney General’s office.

The truth about campaign contributions from the Boeing Company to politicians in Congress is important, but so is their ample contributing to campaigns or other convenient causes in local jurisdictions where they have business presence, such as in prosecutor’s offices or police agencies. The Boeing Company has used all of these efforts well to garner power - much too much power. They have used that power to prosecute, or more accurately, railroad Mr. Eastman criminally for his efforts to stop the fraud he saw occurring while working at Boeing. Like some other companies I’ve read of just recently, Boeing appears to hope that by trying to criminalize him, they will evade accountability on his whistleblower charges against the company. And, they hope to punish him severely, putting him away and silencing him, as well as using him as a terrifying example to the rest of their employees, to derail anyone else from even thinking about reporting fraud or other criminal activities.

The travesty that has been witnessed in Seattle, masquerading as justice, needs to be exposed. I hope you will be able to help make that happen. You will find his press release at his website: http://www.thelastinspector.com You may also contact him at that site.

Please do what you can to help bring this kind of corruption into the light; it is the right thing to do. -GFS

Boeing Whistleblower, Gerald Eastman, Issues Press Release

News Release—No Bounds—Boeing's Powerful Outside Hired Gun Attorney, Perkins Coie's Marc Boman, Uses His Close Friendship with Assistant United States Attorney Carl H. Blackstone to Pressure Blackstone to Prosecute Me in Federal Court, Absent a Case.

Friday, June 27, 2008, 10:46 AM
Posted by Administrator

Note: those getting to this page by coming from the www.thelastinspector.com website will want to skip the following section and begin reading just after the seperation line below it if they have already read this intro to my Press Release on my website main page:

This is my first ever Press Release (just issued in a very raw form on Friday). It concerns major developments in the continuing war by Boeing executives and their hired outside counsel (both private and public) against whistleblowers like me that is shown in detail in my individual case of Boeing whistleblower retaliation--possibly the most severe case of Boeing whistleblower retaliation in the United States, if not in the entire world.

The following Press Release details both how and why my case is now threatened to be taken to the federal level by yet another U.S. Attorney of highly questionable integrity, who is only resorting to such threats in response to his extremely rich and powerful close personal friend's request.

The noted U.S Attorney couldn't possibly have reviewed the facts of my case before he acted to accede immediately to that improper request from someone who just happens to be the high level Perkins Coie partner that Boeing hired to guide me into prison without nary a trial, and who's arse is still smarting, apparently, from losing the last trial Boeing and him thought they had so far in the bag, due to similarly illegal and extremely unconstitutional shenanigans, that they started to celebrate their win even before the jury had begun to deliberate on the merits of the case presented to them in court.

They had began celebrating much too early what they thought to be an impending long prison term for me, a whistleblower they saw as a serious danger to the continuance of their own fraudulent schemes and a serious threat to them personally being rightly exposed for the powerful and eminently corrupt RICO-esque group they were.

They indeed also celebrated so heartily and so far before the "gun" of that trial's jury's deliberations over my guilt or innocence had even been "fired" because they thought they had just Aced their own "get out of prison" cards by engaging in the heavy handed rigging of the King County "justice" system they also had unfair (and illegal) access to the "controls of" behind the scenes.

And this Press release shows that they hired this high level Perkins Coie partner quite apparently also in order to work such unethical if not illegal "magic" behind the scenes of both propriety and legality to ensure Boeing remains forever on the offensive against all whistleblowers like me--whistleblowers who, perhaps, are only now just starting out on their one way "whistleblower journeys" as hopelessly naive as I once was at that same point.

Perhaps such "beginning" whistleblowers naively fully expect their senator, representative, CEO, and/or relevant government oversight agency to act to stop the fraud they report rather than simply ignore those reports (however detailed and obviously serious is the reported fraud), just as my reports were ignored by those whose job and responsibility it was to investigate them in an unbiased manner.

Perhaps they also naively trust that Boeing's CEO won't arrogantly direct Boeing's Chief Counsel to retaliate against them to stop them from further "protected" whistleblower actions if their identity as a whistleblower against Boeing fraud becomes known to Boeing's CEO, as was unfortunately my experience in my case of whistleblowing on the deadly serious fraud I witnessed as an inspector at Boeing.

Perhaps these naive whistleblowers are just now beginning to form even the first tenuous train of thought about bringing their intimate knowledge of just a tiny part of Boeing's vast plethora of frauds across the enterprise to the light of day for relevant action in order stop just the one fraud that they have intimate knowledge of.

If so, then the actions noted in this Press Release as performed by Boeing, Perkin's Coie, the King County Prosecutor, and now apparently even a much, much too friendly U.S. Attorney to one of Perkin's Coie's chief partners that Boeing hired to ensure that this whistleblower was sent to prison by hook or by crook, are meant to not so subtlety deter such whistleblowers from coming forward and endangering Boeing's continuing fraudulent activities, however unlikely such endangering of Boeing's continuing fraudulent activities is in today's changing but still extremely compromised political and agency oversight landscape.

What such potential whistleblowers incorrectly assume (as I once falsely assumed to be the case in my case of whistleblowing, as well) is that the fraud they witnessed was only committed by a few of the lowest level Boeing management layers and such fraud was therefore unknown and unsupported by every layer of Boeing management from Boeing's CEO on down.

Nothing could be further from the truth still in today's eminently corrupt Boeing management culture, rotten from the CEO on down, where whistleblower hunting is a blood sport enjoyed as much by these corrupt executives as their blue-blooded forefathers enjoyed the sport of fox hunting.

See the noted Press Release to see the actual email this apparently quite compromised U.S. Attorney sent off (only per his rich and powerful close personal friend's face to face request) to threaten me with a similarly biased and unbalanced federal prosecution if I did not accede to his corrupt friends' wishes and sign away my rights to a fair trial by a jury and/or judge in their effort to do an end run around such a jury or hypothetically unbiased King County Superior Court judge.

This is an obviously "last gasp" effort on their part in order to get me sent to prison without the "inconvenience" (to them) of a constitutionally required fair trial on the patently unfair charges against me.

All they would need to do after I was pressured by the compromised U.S. Attorney into signing their meticulously crafted to entrap me agreement would be for them to get any one of several biased King County Superior Court Judges to pronounce I had technically violated the agreement--an easy task for these people that find it absolutely normal after too many years of all too corrupting power for them to work only for corrupt Boeing management's every whim (no matter how illegal or unethical each such "request" is on its face) and to therefore to work in opposition to the public's interests they are statutorily and constitutionally instead supposed to be serving.

Could this be an echo of the U.S. Attorney corruption scandal of the recent past where politics, money, and power entered into the decisions and even the very appointments and terminations of U.S. Attorneys that are supposed to be above such reproach? I think it may quite well be. That U.S. Attorney corruption scandal is not yet fully investigated due to foot dragging (literally) by the executive branch of "our" government, nor, therefore, have corrective actions taken place in full or even in partiality, it seems, from this U.S. Attorneys actions as noted in my following Press Release:

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http://eastmans.web.aplus.net/pblog/index.php

For Immediate Release: Friday, June 27, 2008
Contact: Gerald Eastman, gerryeastman2477@msn.com


In these last few months before what appears to be a landslide that will sweep corrupt politicians of the present out of power, you would think that entities that depend on those doomed politicians' corruption in order to continue to perform their chosen frauds would be beginning to throttle back on such illegal relationships.

Not so--at least not so in the case of Boeing's continuing reliance on the ongoing corruption of our elected and appointed government officials to continue to allow them to engage in their frauds of choice.

Boeing is arrogantly even now "putting the pedal to the metal," not only on the frauds they continue to commit (as they know there is still no politician or government entity uncorrupted enough not to just continue to look the other way), but also in their connected attempts to retaliate against any whistleblower like me (who they were unable to intimidate into keeping quiet and to look the other way on perhaps the most deadly serious and systemic fraudulent act that Boeing is involved in at the moment--the Boeing Quality Assurance management fraud as noted on my website, www.thelastinspector.com, that makes Boeing's Production Certificate and related certifications and FAA delegations such as Boeing's ODA delegation and each individual airplane's Airworthiness Certificate, effectively worthless pieces of scrap paper).

Arrogantly bold and baseless threats and illegal punitive actions against even the most obvious of protected messengers--whistleblowers like me--are the course of action chosen by corrupt Boeing management even to this very day.

These are actions taken by Boeing against whistleblowers like me who are/were naive enough to try to end those Boeing frauds themselves in the political and agency climate of the past several years that was so conducive to abetting such corporate fraud, however serious and deadly it was.

I learned this continuing effort by Boeing and its outside counsel at whistleblower retaliation was being kicked up to a whole new level as of last Thursday, when my attorney sent me the following email concerning my continuing legal persecution by Boeing's King County Prosecutor's Office, and we later discussed it:

From: Ramona Brandes
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:59 AM
To: gerryeastman2477@msn.com
Subject: New info on federal jeopardy

Gerry-
See Below.


Ramona Brandes
Attorney
Northwest Defenders Association
Ramona.Brandes@nwdefenders.org
206-674-4700 Ext 3116

This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is emailed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable laws. If the reader of this communication is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribuiton or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by phone or email. Thank you.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peterson, Scott
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:00 AM
To: Ramona Brandes
Subject: Eastman

Ramona,

I just got a call from Carl Blackstone, US Attorney's Office, who asked about Eastman's case. He said they may be interested in prosecuting him federally if he won't resolve the case here. He said you could call him to discuss, 206-553-2905.

Scott


(End of email)

Interesting, huh?

Needless to say this new threat against me in the long and continuing saga of Boeing's illegal retributions against me for my ground breaking whistleblowing against Boeing's both illegal and unethical conduct in the Boeing/FAA fraud as noted on my website, www.thelastinspector.com, piqued my interest, to say the least.

But what I learned outside this email later was several times more shocking.

But first, to understand events, you must be brought up to date on what has happened since the King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, Boeing, and one of Perkins Coie's most powerful partners failed to secure what they thought would be a walk in the park style conviction against me in April, when my trial on 16 felony counts of first degree "computer trespass" ended in a 10-2 mistrial that began as a 9-3 mistrial early in the jury's deliberations.

Even before those deliberations had begun, the gleeful "embrace" (which was a female version of the "male" high five, I suspect) by Vanessa Lee (Boeing Legal's attorney who sat in the courtroom next to Perkins Coie's partner Marc Boman through the trial while she desperately tried to help ensure my conviction by any means possible from that back court bench) of Scott Peterson, King County Senior Prosecuting Attorney, just after Peterson's closing statement to the jury in that trial, was the beginning of the "celebrating before the game was up" that I noted in the introduction to this press release.

Incidentally, during the trial, Boeing and their bought and literally paid for King County Prosecutor's office had pulled out every stop in order to prevent me from even being considered a whistleblower, or my whistleblowing activities and whistleblower laws from even being considered during the trial by the jury. The jury themselves thought this was wrong, as they sent a question from the jury room to the judge asking whether they could consider such whistleblower protection laws during the deliberations.


After the disappointment and inconvenience of the jury's mistrial, instead of the pre-rigged win Boeing thought they had ensured by the unfair trial they "guided" by spending vast sums of money on Perkins Coie's best available counsel (partner Marc Boman) before and during the trial, Boeing was not as happy and giddy as they were before their expensive inside and outside counsel had remembered (apparently only after the announcement by the jury that deliberations were deadlocked) that I had to be pronounced guilty by the jury before they actually had me in prison with that trial's very friendly County Superior Court Judge to both Boeing and the prosecution's every whim.

A short time later, the King County Prosecutor put forth an "offer" for me to plead guilty to lesser charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass, the same kind of trespass someone would be charged with if a prosecutor wanted to prosecute someone for stepping on somebody's lawn, in order for me to avoid the added insult of a threatened second and similarly unfair trial.

I refused that "deal." It was clear that Boeing badly wanted me to accept one of these "offers," which were obviously not in my best interests, as I had done nothing wrong other than "the crime" of being too naive in thinking that some politician, government agency official, and/or Boeing Board of Directors member would do something to end Boeing's fraud that placed (and still places) untold lives at much extra risk in order to maximize the bottom line. I certainly thought one of those numerous powerful people I contacted before my arrest would at least grow a spine and do something to make things right for the public's sake well before I would find myself thrown to the wolves that are corrupt Boeing management and those that they hold the reigns of in "public" office for the whistleblower retaliation that was the trial I was put through per Boeing's "requests" and for the current King County Prosecutor's Boeing and Perkins Coie donations to his campaign.

But before the prosecutor set the case for the second trial, my attorney decided to negotiate a "continuance for dismissal" with the King County Prosecutor's office.

My attorney and the prosecutor Scott Peterson have been negotiating such an agreement since then, at least up to Thursday's throwing of a monkey wrench into the deal by Marc Boman's calling for the favor of a federal prosecution of me from his close friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, before the case setting hearing Thursday that my attorney and I attended at the King County Courthouse.

Read the last draft of the "continuance for dismissal" my attorney and the King County Prosecutor were working on before Marc Boman (Perkins Coie) and Boeing killed any chance of such an agreement with Thursday's shenanigans to try to threaten and intimidate me into taking the agreement just as they had rewritten it by threats of a federal prosecution by a buddy of theirs in the U.S. Attorney's office if I did not accede and sign it, at the following link (under construction):

Link (in work).

In a nutshell, the continuance for dismissal would have brought the lesser charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass against me and leave them hanging over my head until January, 2008, upon which all charges against me would be dropped, if I kept to the terms of the agreement.

Those terms were to sit down to an interview with Boeing where I would answer all questions, keep the contents of that interview confidential, keep the exact method (already public) I used to remove the files from Boeing for my whistleblowing activities a secret, show them exactly where the files were on my seized computer that I had given to the Seattle Times, and my attorney making a good faith effort to retrieve those same files from The Seattle Times.

In the agreement they are trying so desperately to coerce me into signing, however, there was a trap—-the central and only part of the agreement that I strongly believe Boeing, Perkins Coie, and the King County Prosecutor actually wanted. That clause stated that I, by signing the agreement, gave up the right to a jury trial or trial before a judge on the charges against me if they determined I had violated the agreement. One of the stipulations that would be a violation is if I "committed another crime" during the term of the agreement.

If they later got any one of numerous "friendly" King County Superior Court Judges to determine that I had violated the agreement in any way, then that judge would simply read the "facts" of the case as written in a "Stipulation of Facts" of the case agreed to by my attorney and the prosecutor's office and then immediately decide if I was guilty or innocent of the charges. Upon a guilty decision by the judge, I would go straight to jail or prison for the term decided by the judge.

It is my strong belief that their only interest in this "continuance for dismissal" was for that clause in which I would give up my right to a trial if I "violated" the agreement.

Boeing, Marc Boman of Perkins Coie, and their similarly corrupt puppets in the King County Prosecutor's office, wanted simply to get me to sign the agreement so that they could then find a way to claim that I had violated the agreement, at which point they would get the case before a friendly judge in King County Superior Court.

In so doing, they would have thusly steered around what they saw as an insurmountable problem hereto now. They knew that no jury would convict me as there would always be several people on the jury that actually deliberated the trial on the facts my attorney and I put forth at trial rather than just the mistruths that Boeing, Perkins Coie's attorney, and the prosecutor had made up and/or had allowed to be put forth to the jury and judge.

Too bad I saw through their plot. In fact, I believe that Boeing had Marc Boman talk his close personal friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, in order to ask Blackstone to make the threat of a federal prosecution if I didn't fall into that trap easily on my own, which made the agreement all the more unreasonably a risk for me to sign.

Then, interestingly, before I left for court yesterday (and before I ultimately found out that it was Marc Boman, Boeing's outside counsel and Perkins Coie partner, that had called on his own personal friend, U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone, to threaten me with federal charges if I did not take the noted entrapment deal) I thought a bit more about the prospect of such federal charges and sent the following email both to my attorney and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg's office to ensure that she shared the full message with their office:


From: gerryeastman2477@msn.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:48 PM
To: attorney.prosecuting@kingcounty.gov
Subject: Fw: New info on federal jeopardy

From: gerryeastman2477@msn.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:38 PM
To: Ramona Brandes
Subject: Re: New info on federal jeopardy

Ramona,

I just thought of something important "Federal Jeopardy" I see could be a good thing. Boeing is not popular in Federal Court. If my case is brought before a prosecutor that is not bought and paid for literally like Satterberg and Peterson are, it may well be Boeing that ends up being prosecuted, and not me. As Boeing's GSA expires sometime in August, it would only take one charge of a high ranking official at Boeing to get the whole GSA invalidated, and Boeing prosecuted as the criminal entity they are (and narrowly avoided culpability for with that GSA). They are also up on all of the numerous Federal whistleblower protection laws, and so, if Peterson forces it into that realm because he is being unreasonable and I think not treating you with the respect and credibility you deserve by trying to use such thinly veiled threats to force your hand, even if you or Peterson don't believe I am a whistleblower, I think I can show them I am, and show both Peterson, Satterberg, and Boeing were retaliating against me illegally (with the email they sent to themselves on 4/12/06 and everything they did to me before and after it. So, it could come out that if Mr. Blackstone is not in Boeing's or Satterberg's pocket securely enough that Mr. Satterbeg, Mr. Peterson, and Boeing may end up being the one's prosecuted. I suggest strongly you have Mr. Peterson take these facts into account and clear his actions in this regard with Boeing before he places both himself and Boeing at significant Federal jeopardy themselves. Certainly, if Peterson or Satterberg feel they could do no federal time for their actions in following a corrupt corporations every illegal whim against me, then they still owe it to Boeing to advise them of the risk he would be placing them in (criminal charges filed against them as a corporation and any of numerous Boeing executives involved in the original fraud Mr. Satterberg never took an interest in even looking into himself, much less prosecuting, and the retaliation lodged against me by Boeing for trying to bring their Southwest Airlines/FAA-like fraud on steroids to an end) by breaking the GSA) by thusly "taking it up a notch." Because I still care about Boeing's employees (not its largely and provably corrupt management), please have Mr. Satterberg or Peterson get word from Boeing that they want to "take it up a notch" thusly. If they do want to force it to Federal court, I may finally be allowed a real hearing, absent all of the withholding of evidence and bias by King County Superior Court of the past.

Thanks,

Gerry

(End of email)

I do not wish to repeat all of the points I made in the email again here, so I will let you take from the email what statements within it are of interest to you.

However shocking the news was I later learned, that Boeing and Perkins Coie's Marc Boman had used Boman's personal friendship with a U.S. Attorney to communicate threats--threats he wouldn't have obviously have made absent his close friend's urgent request. And these were threats he made while absent the facts of the case, as U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone couldn't possibly have had full access to those facts at the time he decided to act exactly per his close friend Marc Boman's overtures and improper requests.

I believe it is quite common knowledge that the U.S. Attorneys have been politicized under this administration for Republican and special interests--as in their penchant for being biased for giving even demonstrably corrupt corporations like Boeing whatever they want, no matter how corrupt their wants are. One only has to stay reasonably informed by reading the news to understand that.

Could this pressuring of U.S. Attorney Carl H. Blackstone by his own personal friend for his friend's client, Boeing, be yet another of numerous such illegal if not highly unethical acts?

Was it an act based not on the merits of the case, but instead only on who knows who, who has the most money, who is perceived to have the most power, who is Republican and who is not, and/or who is a corporation and who is just a common citizen trying to stand up to and end corporate corruption?

Of course.

It almost assuredly is thusly unethical if not illegal.

Everyone knows that power corrupts, and the longer that someone has unbridled power, as in Boeing's case, the more corrupt they seem to become. Let's just say that U.S. Attorneys, Boeing, the current King County Prosecutor, and even a Perkins Coie attorney, apparently, have much too much power, for far too long.

Well, that is it for now. I will be adding to this News Release constantly, so check back often, especially if you are a reporter or editor.

I do think this is newsworthy. I hope you decide it is as well.

I think that the public has the right to know just why such back alley deals, as occurred in my case between Boeing's hired counsel, Marc Boman, and an apparently ethically and/or legally challenged U.S. Attorney, Carl H. Blackstone, are made (based on powerful and not so moneyed friends helping powerful and moneyed friends in the personal interests of friendship, abuse of power, and quite possibly even the transfer of money and/or power from the moneyed friend to the not so moneyed friend at a present or future date, rather than the actual consideration of merits or lack or merit of the case imposed on one friend from another) and therefore serve the opposite of justice.

The public also needs to know that corrupt and arrogant corporations like Boeing will not relinquish such corruption or arrogance even if their corrupted friends in government will be swept from power in just a few months.

Contact me as noted above if you wish to cover these latest important twists in this important case for every other of numerous other potential whistleblowers at just Boeing itself, not to mention those at other corporations that similarly resort to try to "kill the messenger" when that messenger attempts to communicate their frauds to the relevant organization in order to have them stopped before consequences occur, like more people and troops dying because of such fraudulent activities, as are the consequences for the fraud continuing that I tried to stop as noted on my website.

Of course, I will take the actions outlined in my email and attempt to rightly have Boeing and certain officials in the King County Prosecutor's office prosecuted for their corruption if my case is moved to the federal arena (or even if not at this point).

Any possibility that there was for the agreement noted above being signed by me has been killed by Marc Boman's possibly illegal and certainly unethical actions on the behalf of Boeing, as well as my knowledge of the likely intentions of the true criminals involved in this matter--both Boeing and the King County prosecutors from Dan Satterberg on down in the hierarchy there.

My goal would be to have the Boeing GSA (the Boeing Global Settlement Agreement for the Boeing CFO/Druyun tanker fraud and the Lockheed competition sensitive data theft by Boeing which was then used by Boeing to rig and win the EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) contract competition) entered into in August 2006 invalidated by such rightful (based on the facts, and not just friendships) charges against the corrupt Boeing executives involved in covering up the fraud I attempted to bring to light by falsely testifying against me and colluding with a similarly corrupt King County Prosecutor in order to ensure that I (the "protected" whistleblower) was the one confined to prison before I saw to it that they and other Boeing management were rightly sent there by a fair and "facts and data" based prosecution for their fraud in which they intentionally placed the public at much greater risk by ignoring the laws and regulations meant to protect the public's very lives simply in order to maximize the bottom line.

Federal prosecutors may actually interview me and check into Boeing's corruption as documented on my site and in letters to Congress and federal agencies before they decide who it is that committed the actual wrongdoing in this matter that merits prosecution. That was something the King County Prosecutor's office never did or even considered doing as they were so beholden to the unbridled power and money that is Boeing for their own personal interests, and they therefore intentionally hid behind a similarly biased Seattle Police Department's "investigation" into this matter that also intentionally only focused where corrupt Boeing management wanted them to look, and came to the conclusions that Boeing management wanted them to make.

Thanks for your time,

Gerald Eastman

The Last (Boeing) Inspector

www.thelastinspector.com

Nightmare Episode for Boeing's Dreamliner

Here are two articles from the Seattle Times regarding Boeing’s woes with problems of quality of manufacturing and damage to their new project, the “Dreamliner.”  The damage was reported to be “incorrect fasteners which were improperly installed in the wrong holes causing damage to the composite structure during the join process.”  “It was further reported that ‘each fastener “splintered out the hole,” causing the carbon-fiber threads in the composite structure to break out from the plastic resin.’  I’ve linked the two Times articles for your ease in linking.

My main question is, why is Boeing being so hard on their employees, (ex.  Gerald Eastman, former Q.A. Inspector in Seattle), who report manufacturing or parts problems?  People who report problems should not be out of hand labeled whistleblowers, and then targeted for misery.  They are after all, looking out for the best long-term interests of their company, as well as for the safety of the American public and military, not to mention others worldwide. 

-GFS

Link to original story:  Damage to Boeing 787 fuselage piece at S.C. plant may delay flight tests.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/boeingaerospace/2008026631_dreamliner01.html

Link to original article:  Boeing 787 supplier halts work for 24 hours after FAA audit

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008028693_global020.html

6/6/08 Update from Boeing Whistleblower, Gerald Eastman

The Last Inspector, Gerald Eastman speaks of his experiences as a Boeing Whistleblower, discusses why others have not also done the same and challenges those who should be whistleblowers to blow that whistle.  (www.thelastinspector.com)

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Why are Boeing Employees Cowardly?
Thursday, June 5, 2008, 05:40 AM
Posted by Administrator

I recently wondered why such a person as me was thrust into this position--Why was I the only one "brave" enough at Boeing to turn the massive fraud accros the Boeing enterprise in Quality Assurance Management into the FAA?

Why?--I was by no means the best person for that job. Someone that had more drive to act with the requisite urgency in order to save the lives that are obviously placed in jeopardy by Boeing's systemic frauds against the public and taxpayer would have been much better than me.

Someone not so trusting and naive who could have therefor plotted a better course through the corruption in the overisght agencies whose only job is to stop companies like Boeing from committing this RICO-like "working togther with similarly corrupt agencies" fraud would have been much better in the scheme of things.

Someone who was more photogenic and perhaps actually enjoyed being on the news rather than cringing at the thought would perhaps had been better than me--certainly someone who had less resemblance than I do to the character "Hurley" on the TV show "Lost" would have been a better spokesman for the public and miltary personnel that Boeing and the FAA were placing at greater risks for more personal financial gain than they would have gotten otherwise.

I had heard many employees over the years say that they were thinking about going to the FAA, just as I ultimately also believed I had to do for the safety of those on Boeing airplanes.

They saw the same fraud as I did--the corrupt QA managers at Boeing who worked every day to destroy the Boeing quality system as opposed to what their true jobs were supposed to be. They were corrupt QA managers that were statutorily supposed to be firewalled off from the corrupting influences of other company departments who worshipped at the altar of Cost and Schedule only--Quality and Safety be damned.

However, the almost wholly corrupt QA management at Boeing saw that the corruption in other Boeing management made it a much better career decision for them to grovel even lower than Manufacturing and Engineering management did and "worship" solely the same two "gods"--Cost and Schedule--that other Boeing managers did, even though they knew their true regulatorily required jobs were to protect Quality and Safety only, and to protect those two critical items for the sake of public and military lives at all costs, as the much less corrupt FAA of old had seen that such groveling of Quality personnel before other company production departments ultimately led to deadly crashes.

Still, knowing the criticality of their uniquely important jobs being independent of other departments that historically tried to save money by ignoring every requirement possible--even obviously critical quality and safety ensuring processes, corrupt QA management at Boeing did as directed and surrendered their required independence from historically non-quality and non-safety driven departments in totality.

They actually defiled their jobs by taking orders from, and carrying out the solely Cost and Schedule driven goals of Manufacturing as their own goals.

In so doing, they became the same shills they ensured the inspectors who reported to them were or were made to become--merely pretending to do their jobs for a week every two years around FAA ACSEP audit time (and, as one of my corrupt QA supervisors told us, "the FAA ASIs don't look very deep, so no one had to even do a good job of pretending to do their jobs to pass such ACSEP audits easily), with the rest of their time spent taking orders from Manufacturing managers of their same level who they were supposed to independently ensure the quality, safety, and reliability requirements of their department's work. Illegal, but surely a conflict of interest, to say the least.

Instead, they became enablers of both Manufacturing and QA fraud across the enterprise. After all, per their sick way of thinking, ensuring Boeing aircraft had the required minimum levels of quality, safety, and reliability was totally "non-value added" to Boeing's bottom line--So what if massive amounts of defects the customers might never notice were delivered with each Boeing airplane to their mostly unsuspecting customers? Defrauding the passengers, crew, and our military personnel out of their safety was a no brainer to these types of criminals.

Even if a crash occured because of their intentional fraud, not even the most expert CSI or NTSB peronnel in the world could make sense of the cause of the crash because the resulting small pieces of people and debris that resulted automatically would cover up the crime. Boeing could then put their "value-added" P.R. machine into action and immediately start blaming the dead pilots of the doomed aircraft as occurred in the two 737 rudder hardover accidents that killed all on board. It was with great reluctance that Boeing gave up blaming the dead pilots and admitted that it might have been the rudder hydraulic actuator system at fault in those tragic crashes.

Such is the way the fraudulent QMS system intentionally doesn't work at Boeing. They have brainwashed themselves and some of the lesser minded in the public that anything required by law they don't do behind the closed doors of BCA factories that doesn't result in airplanes or pieces of airplanes constantly falling from the sky like rain onto the public means the FAA-approved Quality System they are required by law to follw is truly "non-value added," and they are therefore right to ignore it and simply go through the motions of pretending to comply with it--Never mind that no airplane can be delivered by a company until they have a quality system that supposedly complies with the FAA approved quality system and they are granted a Production Certificate by the FAA.

Of cousre, with the FAA manangement overlooking this fraud ongoing on Boeing production lines being several orders of magnitude more corrupt that the FAA management fingered in the fraud exposed between Southwest Airlines and the FAA, it is no wonder Boeing's Production Certificate has no more value than any generic sheet of paper used to construct an airplane for a paper airplane contest.

The corrupt FAA management still in place in the Transport Airplane Directorate--which Nick Sabatini at FAA Headquarters protects by looking the other way from all of the still ongoing fraud within that part of the agency--has yet to be "Stuckeyed," or brought to justice for intentionally placing the lives of the public and military at much greater risk by acceding to overlooking the fraud of what they consider as their only real customer--corrupt Boeing management, who in many cases are their dreamed for future employer for services they rendered over the years unto those corrupt managers at Boeing before their FAA retirements after a short twenty year stints at the agency, whereafter they can get hired by Boeing or one of numerous industry associations Boeing is the main contributor to at multiples of the salary and benefits then didn't earn while at the FAA.

Hopefully the fraud still ongoing between Boeing and FAA management placing the public and military at risk will receive the same or more attention soon that the Southwest Airlines/FAA debacle did both in the press and in Congress.

I know that people involved in this fraud do want to come forward to the appropriate authorities and report the fraud of their management. However, thinly veiled retaliation like Boeing and the officials they ensured were elected committed against me has given them pause, which is the real reason I am being attacked so overzealously for something other employees at Boeing were only given a few days off for.

They also are afraid of retaliation like the two Southwest Airlines FAA whistleblowers experienced, and are looking to see if they are retaliated against again for going before Congress and doing the right thing. Hopefully those whistleblowers will escape further retaliation because they went before Congress and that will encourage those who want to come forward and tell what they know about the ongoing fraudulent relationship between Boeing and the FAA to do so.

Yes, Boeing and FAA employees are cowardly, especially after what they've seen happen to me and other coworkers who even thought about coming forward or made the severe mistake of contacting the "ethics" department at Boeing about such fraud they witnessed and therefore just stuck a target on their forhead just as I unwittingly did.

But who could blame them? They have families and mortgages. The good pay at Boeing serves as a deterrent to those who want to come forward because they know their job and the pay and benefits they worked so long and hard for will be in jeopardy if they do so.

I had no illusions when I decided to be the first one to ever go to the FAA about the corrupt Boeing QA management I witnessed over the years. I knew at that point my job was most likely history. And that was years before my "infamous" collection of information for my report on Boeing and FAA management fraud for the DOT OIG. I never feared for my life, but my job was another manner. That was the way the the corrupt "Boeing mafia" would try to terminate me, no matter under what manufactured pretenses or however much time or resources they had to expend to ensure my termination and even imprisonment to make me the poster child of what happens to a whistleblower at Boeing that dares expose their RICO-like relationship with FAA management.

I did decide to do the right thing and come forward years before today when Congress looking the other way on this fraud that has been reported to them in the past finally starting to pay attention to the criminal collusion between FAA management and industry management via hearing in Congress and related FBI investigations. Today is the time when those who have kept silent about all of the fraud around them should come forward at long last. We certainly do not wnat to wait to act until we have to dodge parts of planes and body parts when we go outside which is the level at which so many corrupted people think is the only point at which this kind of fraud could be considered a problem.

Although I was a pioneer in the field of whistleblowing on the fraudulent realtionships between industry and FAA management, I by no means want to be the only one to ever have enough courage to come forward. Indeed, in today's climate, many of the dangers I experienced do not exist. After participating in a Southwest airlines/FAA style hearing before Congress, even Boeing is not arrogant enough to screw with you like they screwed with me years before my arrest as retaliation for my going to the FAA and also actually inspecting the jet engines, engine pylons, wing stub to body join, body structures, flight control systems, jet fuel samples, hydraulic fluid samples, etc., that I was assigned to only pretend to inspect over the years.

Yes, there are ample "close to home" reasons to be cowardly and not come forward as you know you should do. The Southwest Airlines FAA ASIs and I have broken the ground for you. There is, however, only one reason to come forward and tell what you know about FAA/Boeing management fraud to Congress and/or the FBI--because you know deep down it is the right thing to do. The public and our military have the right to not have their lives placed intentionally at much greater risk by the fraud both you and I have witnessed over the years.

If you are like past conciencious Boeing employees, you may have kept a journal of incidents and fraudulent actions your management has told you to do or have done themselves to protect yourself in case that particular plane crashed because of that fraud. If you do decide to come forward, such data would be useful to the authorities, I'm sure.

It is long past time for the corrupt management of Boeing and the FAA to committ their daily frauds and go home to soundly sleep and dream of the rewards they hope they'll reap one day for their frauds that may reap many lives. It is time for them to start to toss and turn at night. They won't do so because they intentionally placed the public and our military in danger for some imagined benefit to them and the company's bottom line. They are pathologically incapable of enough compassion to even start to care about the effect of their crimes. However, being the purely selfish creatures they are, they will toss and turn once you and others come forward and they are ultimately "Stuckeyed" to a prison bed for their golden years.

The time of cowardice has ended. There is no better time to be brave and stand up against the criminal management you work for that has made both Boeing quality assurance and Boeing's Production Certificate a farce.

Gerry

The Last Inspector

Fighting FAA & Boeing Fraud from the 737 to the 787

Last Inspector's Blog - Fighting FAA & Boeing Fraud from the 737 to the 787

Alert From the Project On Government Oversight Supporting their Op-Ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

Monday, May 12, 2008, 12:14 AM
Posted by Administrator (www.thelastinspector.com)

If you thought the last blog was noteworthy, check out this alert on the Project On Government Oversight's website, which gives facts and data backing up their op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that showed that Boeing and the FAA knew my report on massive rollerstamping fraud by BCA inspectors was correct. Yet over the years they knew it was the status quo at BCA they did nothing about this fraud allowing defects of unknown number and severity to deliver to airline and government customers. In fact, the STA (Special Technical Audit) of BCA in 1999/2000 was actually used to further weaken an already ineffective quality system, rather than to make it more effective, as an reasonable person would deduce was what was needed.

This effort to weaken and make "less prescriptive" Boeing's already sievelike quality system was called the "Quality Management System," or QMS. Why would Boeing further weaken such a compromised quality assurance department as documented in the STA? Because, of course, as noted on my website, Boeing management was always aware rollerstamping was going on on a massive scale in QA because it was Boeing management who wanted that fraud to take place for cost and production flow reasons. And they knew they could count on their counterparts in the FAA to look the other way.

In January, 2002, I began my effort to end the rollerstamping in Boeing QA after my manager of the time proved to me it was Boeing management directed fraud, by going to the FAA. After several rounds of trying to get the FAA and Boeing Headquarters management to end that fraud placing passenger and crew lives at extra risk for a few more bottom line dollars for Boeing, Boeing dared me to go public, knowing they had FAA management to cover for their continuing fraud. The FAA had reliably done so since at least the 1999 STA.

That's where the "Dual Failures" charade came in, which began, not coincidentally, just after I last spoke with Boeing about the subject, in October, 2003. This was a cover for Both FAA and Boeing management should I go public, as they and I expected I would. However, due to aforesaid reasons, I was unable to do so in a timely manner. They thought that I had decided to not go public after all, so they dropped this "Dual Failures" cover up project. More proof of Boeing/FAA management complicity in ensuring the rollerstamping quality system at BCA can continue. What more proof does DOT OIG Inspector General Scovel need to investigate the crooks in the FAA "overseeing" Boeing Type and Production Certificates? You have to wonder at what point they will step up and do their jobs in this critical area. Corrupt FAA mmanagement are not going to out themselves. Real oversight of BCA is needed now that will not only restore Boeing's quality system to minimum standards, but also restore Boeing's and/or the FAA's oversight of Boeing supplier's compliance with minimum quality system standards, which the OIG has documented serious noncompliances with. The root causes of both are the same--corrupt BCA and FAA management.

http://www.pogo.org/p/transportation/ta-080508-faa.html


Alert


May 8, 2008


Internal Boeing Documents Support Whistleblower's Allegations: Aircraft Quality Control Problems Cited


For Immediate Release
Contact Nick Schwellenbach (202) 347-1122

Internal Boeing documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight show that the allegations of a former Boeing quality control inspector facing criminal charges have merit. Quality control problems at Boeing increase the likelihood that defective aircraft parts end up on planes and flaws in the manufacturing of planes remain uncorrected. This can potentially threaten public safety and drive up the cost of aircraft maintenance. These documents are linked at the bottom of this release.

Gerald Eastman, the former Boeing inspector, is facing a second trial of criminal charges for disclosing Boeing information to the press. His first trial last month resulted in a mistrial when jurors could not agree on whether Eastman committed "computer trespass." Mr. Eastman claims that his involvement with the press stemmed from the lack of corrective actions taken by Boeing and the government in response to his disclosures of wrongdoing to them.

An internal Boeing memo sent to Boeing employees in October 2000 stated that misuse of "production stamps" or "roller-stamping" can result in negative consequences for the company and the individual misusing their stamp. Roller-stamping is the misuse of production stamps to stamp work on critical parts and assemblies as complete and fully inspected when there has only been a cursory inspection, if one at all, of the part or assembly in question. Eastman's central claim is that he had perceived widespread "roller-stamping" and Boeing did little to curtail the practice.

"These documents show that Eastman clearly had a reasonable basis for his belief roller-stamping was occurring," according to Nick Schwellenbach, POGO investigator. "It's one thing to break company policy on releasing documents and getting fired, it's another matter to file criminal charges. Who do the prosecutors work for?"

The Boeing memo came months after the Federal Aviation Agency conducted a special technical audit of Boeing that concluded that there were systemic quality control problems. The 2000 FAA special technical audit found "in some cases, manufacturing planning was not adequate, requirements were not followed, inspections were not specific, or personnel were not knowledgeable about requirements." Thus, "parts, assemblies, and installations are released through the system that do not conform" to approved designs. Also, in 2000, the FAA proposed "a record $1.24 million in civil penalties against Boeing for inadequate supplier oversight and for failing to quickly report cracked parts on two older jetliners," according to a news report (James Wallace, "FAA Audit Rips Boeing Over 100 Production, Design Problems Detailed; Company Plans Corrective Action," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 11, 2000.).

Years later, roller-stamping was still occurring when Eastman acted on his concerns.

Boeing certainly was aware of the practice because a Boeing document dated January 2004, states that, "There appears to be a systemic issue within BCA [Boeing Commercial Aircraft] involving parallel process breakdowns of mechanics and inspectors involved in assembling and inspecting aircraft, assemblies and parts." The 2004 document also states that the FAA examined 55 issues at Boeing between 2002 and 2003 and found that "24% of these issues have involved instances where the mechanic and inspector created and accepted nonconforming conditions"—i.e. roller-stamping.

In further support of Eastman's claims, other Boeing employees became whistleblowers when they reported that Boeing supplier Ducommun was regularly supplying non-conforming parts to Boeing, according to the whistleblowers' False Claims Act lawsuit obtained by POGO. Now-former Boeing employees Taylor Smith, Jeannine Prewitt and James Ailes were then retaliated against by management because Boeing allegedly did not want to deal with the repercussions of their findings.

For additional information

Boeing Commercial Airplane Group memorandum, " Use of personal stamps in our production system ," October 31, 2000.

Federal Aviation Administration, " Special Technical Audit of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group ," December 1, 1999, through February 11, 2000.

Boeing Airplane Program Systemic Issues Chartered Team 1, " Investigation of 'Dual Failures ,'" January 2004.

United States of America ex rel Taylor Smith, Jeannine Prewitt and James Ailes vs. The Boeing Company and Ducommun, Inc. , Federal District Court of Kansas. Filed on March 11, 2005.

Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

Government Accountability Project: Whistleblower, Gerald Eastman

From:  http://www.fedhallofshame.com/?p=317

Boeing Whistleblower Gerald Eastman

Posted in May 12th, 2008

by C. Yee in Accountability, Current Events, Whistleblowers

Picture not only being terminated from your job for whistleblowing, but being charged with computer trespass and arrested too.  It happened to ex-Boeing employee, Gerald Eastman. 

Here’s a link to an April 7 article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Eastman’s first court ordeal, which ended in a mistrial.  The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) also blogged about Eastman’s disclosures, writing:

Internal Boeing documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight show that the allegations of a former Boeing quality control inspector facing criminal charges have merit.  Quality control problems at Boeing increase the likelihood that defective aircraft parts end up on planes and flaws in the manufacturing of planes remain uncorrected.  This can potentially threaten public safety and drive up the cost of aircraft maintenance.

Gerald Eastman, the former Boeing inspector, is facing a second trial of criminal charges for disclosing Boeing information to the press.  His first trial last month resulted in a mistrial when jurors could not agree on whether Eastman committed “computer trespass.”  Mr. Eastman claims that his involvement with the press stemmed from the lack of corrective actions taken by Boeing and the government in response to his disclosures of wrongdoing to them.

The rest of POGO’s post can be found here.  As POGO notes, if Mr. Eastman is found guilty, it could set a terrible precedent for not just aviation safety, but public safety in general.  Mr. Eastman is set to return to King County (WA) Municipal Court again next week.

2 users commented in " Boeing Whistleblower Gerald Eastman "

Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback 

RLK said,

in May 12th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

Boeing is a criminal enterprise;

RICCO Act–”When three or more parties conspire to carry on an on going criminal enterprise, it can fall under the “RICCO Act.

Boeing should be barred from Gov’t contracts for a year.

Jim said,

in May 12th, 2008 at 8:05 pm

It won’t happen. Once Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, they eliminated the competition. Besides, where would all those SESers and Generals go to work after retiring from Govt. service?

China Launches Its Own Aircraft Manufacturing Company

Now this is interesting and not very surprising.  In fact, I was wondering when this would occur.  With all of the moving of composite materials and parts manufacturing to China and other countries outside of the U.S. and the many instances of espionage, some of which have been noticed,  challenged and the culprits arrested and prosecuted, it seemed only a matter of time before China would be moving into its desired role as competitor to Boeing and Airbus, not just a source of cheap labor and supply for the big two.  Somehow certain U.S. companies appear to just keep shooting themselves in the foot, and taking our economy and everyone else along with them.  GFS

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China launches homegrown jumbo jet manufacturing company

The Associated Press

China established a homegrown company Sunday to make passenger jumbo jets - a step forward in the country's quest to become less dependent on Boeing and Airbus.

China Commercial Aircraft Co. was established in Shanghai with registered capital of 19 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion; euro1.75 billion), the official Xinhua News Agency and state broadcaster CCTV said.

Europe's Airbus has forecast that China's domestic aircraft market will increase fivefold by 2026. Airbus and Chicago-based rival Boeing dominate the market for commercial airplanes carrying 100 or more people.

Xinhua said China Commercial Aircraft Co. will be able to make planes with more than 150 seats.

The central government and the Shanghai government are among the major shareholders, as are China's two main aircraft manufacturing and servicing companies, China Aviation Industry Corp. I and China Aviation Industry Corp. II, which were split off from state-owned China Aviation Industry Corp. in 1999.

The state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission committed 6 billion yuan (US$86 million; euro55.6 million), making it the largest investor.

Given China's limited experience with making commercial airliners, manufacturing jumbo jets would be a significant achievement. China's first commercial jet, a 85-seater developed by China Aviation Industry Corp. I, had its maiden flight postponed last month until later in the year because of delays in the delivery of key components.

China Commercial Aircraft general manager Jin Zhuanglong said in a Xinhua interview that it was too early to say when a Chinese-developed jumbo jet would be taking off, as it would take a long time to develop talent and conduct research.

"According to the development history of Airbus and Boeing, the development and success of civil planes cannot be realized by relying on one or two generations," he was quoted as saying.

China welcomes cooperation with foreign companies and will make full use of foreign technology in developing its aircraft, Xinhua quoted him as saying.

The company's short-term goal is to help market the 85-seat ARJ21, he said.

Chinese carriers have already ordered 181 of the planes. A memorandum of understanding has been signed with GE Capital Aviation Services on a possible order for five jets, which would be the first sale to a major foreign company.

Why Boeing may never reform its business practices

Someone who was doing some research on the Internet sent this article to me today.    The reader found it and thought it did a good job of clarifying the problem of why Boeing and perhaps some other defense contractors do not appear to be willing to clean up their acts.  I am interested in how Boeing has allegedly co-opted the FAA and others regarding safety practices.  It is an interesting and plausible scenario that if Boeing has operated this way with commercial aircraft manufacturing and business, it likely has used it’s influence through the intense lobbying efforts it uses at all levels of government, and availed itself of the very active Revolving Door between Boeing and governmental agencies, particularly DOD and agencies with oversight responsibilities, to reduce or in some cases eliminate requirements Boeing finds inconvenient, too expensive, or gets in the way of certain people’s ambitious plans.  Read and think on it.  GFS

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Why Boeing will never reform itself and end the fraud noted on this site willingly:

After reading this site's contents you might well be baffled as to why Boeing continues to risk another "Druyun/EELV affair" (although this fraud is many times worse than those matters) and continues to also willingly place at greater risk the lives of the public that fly on Boeing jets because of Boeing's acceptance of greater "business risk" by the hobbling of Quality, Safety, and Reliability ensuring practices that has placed the vast majority of this extra "Boeing business" risk not on Boeing itself, but on the lives of those passengers and crew who unknowingly (unless they stumble across this site) bear such extra risk solely for Boeing's quest for ever greater Bottom line value and for whatever part of this "value" gets deducted from Boeing airplane prices and therefore "benefits" airlines (until the inevitable hull loss accident because of this fraud). The first sign that Boeing does not intend to end this obvious fraud willingly has been proven by Boeing's actions in my attempts to bring this fraud to their attention in damning detail on multiple occasions. On those occasions Boeing's actions were just "CYA" extremely limited and biased internal audits that may have made an uninformed person think Boeing had done something, when in fact those audits changed nothing noticeably to end this fraud in order to ensure the "benefits" of the noted fraud continued to add to meeting Boeing's all-important bottom line maximization goals. Boeing's similar and purposeful inaction to end this endemic fraud within the company placing innocent lives at extra risk intentionally for more bottom line dollars after I "broke the story" publicly on this site and in the news media also proves Boeing's inability to take action themselves to reverse this fraud the company has been willingly fostering for years, no matter how public these crimes ultimately become. The most powerful motive for Boeing to resist internal reforms seemingly regardless of the consequences is not because of its (by one highly placed management source within the company) self-described status as "the most arrogant company on the face of the planet." It instead comes to what everything is about at Boeing--the almighty dollar. Boeing is one of the most business plan driven companies in existence. Anything that does not support reaching the business plan's "targets" is in jeopardy, even if legally and regulatory required, such as Boeing's compliance with its Production and Type Certificates goes. This explains not only why Boeing intentionally subverted and intentionally did not comply with its minimum quality system and certification requirements as documented on this site--it also explains why Boeing will willingly do nothing to reverse the "gains" to the business plan made by this fraud. To reverse this fraud would be much more difficult for Boeing than the actions it had to take to put these fraudulent activities in place. Years of QA manager's (and their manager's) and complicit QA Lead's (now "Team Leaders") efforts to turn inspectors into mostly just rollerstampers of paperwork would have to be reversed--not an easy or short time span task. Most of the time "leaned out" of production line flow to enable shorter flowtimes and moving lines was time for inspectors to actually inspect the airplanes, which was not necessary in the rollerstamping quality system put in place by Boeing. However, complying with Production Certificate requirements to have inspectors actually inspect per quality system requirements would require much of that time to be added back into the production schedule and/or an unprecedented number of inspectors per mechanic ratio than that of the past. Boeing will not take these actions willingly due to their cost (effect on meeting the business plan) and the effect on flowtimes. Indeed, because of the above, I don't expect Boeing to ever admit any of the corruption I have documented on this site and elsewhere, because to do so would require Boeing to take some action to stop it, which it does not want to do for the aforesaid reasons, among others (effect on their undeserved reputation, etc.). But if Boeing does fess up to some of these past and present crimes (which will probably happen only because they would calculate greater risks to the company's bottom line if they did not do so, such as ignoring the results of the ongoing review by the DOT OIG might ultimately bring the company), don't even then expect Boeing to end this corruption. Just like after the Special Technical Audit of 1999/2000 where they were "caught with their pants down" "violating" many of even of the most basic requirements of the FAA, expect Boeing only to do the minimum they think they can get away with as far as reform until the "problems" (the auditors) go away and Boeing can then do business again as usual. Also expect another tactic used by Boeing during "C/A" after the STA, implementing programs (with the tacit approval of a similarly corrupt FAA) that actually made compliance with its quality system much worse than before the STA, and indeed, in some cases, eliminated unjustifiably the requirements Boeing had violated, rather than Boeing ever complying with those "burdensome" requirements that were in place to ensure quality, safety, and reliability requirements were met, but were "too prescriptive" and therefore had to go to meet Boeing's overriding goal of enhancing efficiency over everything, including safety. From:  www.thelastinspector.com

Boeing Machinists Contract Talk Announcement

Boeing, Machinists open contract talks

By Dominic Gates

Seattle Times aerospace reporter

Tom Buffenbarger, the powerful national president of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), is optimistic about his union's chances for agreement with Boeing in the contract negotiations that formally kicked off Friday.

Buffenbarger said he believes the company understands what the union wants, and that Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Scott Carson is someone he can engage with.

"Boeing has certainly indicated to us, without tipping their hand, that they want a successful conclusion to the negotiations," said Buffenbarger. "Chances are good we're going to find our way to getting a contract our members will feel good about."

Speaking at his Seattle waterfront hotel before the opening ceremony for the contract talks, Buffenbarger said that in addition to negotiating wages and benefits, the union will press for contract language on job security and will reject a company proposal to give new hires a 401(k)-style retirement plan instead of a pension.

He insisted he's not out to exploit Boeing's vulnerability to a strike this year.

"I'm about getting good contracts for our members," Buffenbarger said. "I'm not about taking advantage."

Yet he knows as well as anyone that Boeing, whose profits are soaring, cannot afford to trigger a strike in September while it struggles to get the first 787 into the air by the next month. In 2005, the union struck for a month.

Boeing's top labor negotiator, Doug Kight, said Friday afternoon that Boeing will offer a pay package that raises entry-level wages but will seek to negotiate alternative forms of additional compensation for higher-paid employees in lieu of a wage hike.

Boeing will also suggest an incentive pay scheme to reward employees for productivity gains.

The company said IAM-represented employees currently earn an average base wage of nearly $27 per hour, or nearly $56,000 annually before overtime, plus benefits valued at more than $24,000 annually. Boeing estimated average total Machinist compensation — including overtime pay, lump-sum wage payments and benefits — at around $91,500 per year.

But Buffenbarger dismissed out of hand one of Boeing's top goals: a proposal to switch new hires from Boeing's traditional pension plan to a 401(k)-style retirement plan.

He said that idea, outlined recently by Kight, meddles with union members' "very sacred benefits."

He said the move would simply transfer risk from Boeing to employees.

"We are not interested on gambling our pension plans on Wall Street," he said.

Boeing also proposes ending early-retiree medical benefits for new hires, an idea the union rejected in 2005.

Kight said both sides Friday reiterated their commitment "to listening to each other in a spirit of openness" on such issues.

Buffenbarger said the union also will press Boeing to include some job security in the contract.

He wants the company to provide more extensive in-house training for Machinists, backed with contract language that provides "a reasonable expectation that a person can take this skill they've developed through to their retirement years."

In past negotiations, the company has balked at assurances of job security. This time, Kight pointed to a company proposal to "stabilize employment and mitigate layoffs," intended to even out the huge employment swings in the cyclical airplane-building business.

Kight said that could be "a win for Boeing and for employees."

Boeing's global outsourcing strategy will also come up in the talks.

Citing production problems with outsourcing on the 787, Buffenbarger said the union will push hard to have Boeing build its next plane right here. "This is where the best aircraft makers in the world come from," he said. "Why would you abandon that to take a gamble on an unproven site?"

Buffenbarger heads a union that represents some 435,000 working Machinists and more than 200,000 retirees. It has a strike fund of some $150 million.

In January, the IAM and Boeing rival Lockheed Martin concluded a contract that Buffenbarger called "the best [contract] we ever got in 75 years and one of the few times we did it without a strike."

Such an outcome here this summer might satisfy both sides.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

Consider the Security Implications of a Shared Assembly Line...

Boeing's Poseidon sub hunter for Navy brings commercial, defense sides together

By Dominic Gates

Seattle Times aerospace reporter

On an assembly line inside Boeing's Renton plant, machinists are putting together a special 737.

The underbelly has a cavernous bomb bay for torpedoes and launching tubes for sonar listening buoys. Missile pylons protrude from its wings. Military antennas bristle on the surface of its nearly windowless fuselage.

This is not the workhorse commercial airliner. It's the first 737 to be transformed into a submarine-hunter jet for a program the U.S. Navy calls P-8A, or Poseidon. On a recent morning, mechanics inside the plane installed wiring, plumbing and other systems. The loud vibrating rhythm of rivet guns came from an adjacent assembly bay where the wings are made.

Poseidon shows off Boeing's new model for how its commercial and military divisions can work as an integrated team — an idea the company would have replicated in Everett had it won the Air Force refueling-tanker program.

In the past, when Boeing converted a commercial airframe into a warplane, military equipment was added later at one of its defense plants.

But on the P-8A, machinists install all the military infrastructure as they assemble the airframe, reaping all the efficiencies that come from a mature commercial production system that rolls out almost 30 civil airliners a month.

Poseidon general manager Mohammad Yahyavi says the P-8A is a full-blown military airplane "designed and built in the heart of Boeing Commercial."

For the government, Boeing's new model should provide cost savings and efficiency.

For this region, it provides jobs. Between 1,200 and 1,300 Boeing employees in Renton and Seattle are working on Poseidon. A few hundred more are in St. Louis at the headquarters of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems division.

The initial contract to build five test airplanes is worth $3.9 billion. Boeing will build three more test planes, then 108 production jets. And it expects to get orders for a 100 more from foreign buyers, with India and Australia first in line as sales prospects.

From 2012 on, the Renton plant plans to roll out 12 to 18 of these sub hunters a year.

In total, the program should bring in around $40 billion over 25 years.

Seven days a week

Every day, seven days a week, Yahyavi holds reviews with managers and visits the assembly crew to assess progress. A balding man with a warm and humble manner, he exchanges handshakes with the workers, who greet him affectionately as Mo.

The Iranian-born Yahyavi came to the U.S. to study as a young officer in the shah's Imperial Navy, just months before the 1979 revolution in his country. He never returned to Iran.

After 28 years as an engineer and manager at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Yahyavi is clearly proud that life has circled him back into a Navy program for his adopted country.

He oversees a showcase project for the Puget Sound region's airplane industry.

And unless Boeing's protest overturns the Air Force tanker award, which in February went to an Airbus plane backed by Northrop Grumman, by the middle of the next decade Poseidon could be the defense giant's only fixed-wing military-aircraft program.

The P-8A is designed to fly low and slow over the ocean, searching for enemy vessels on or under the surface.

Because it must fly for extended periods in severe weather commercial airliners would avoid, it eschews the now-common 737 upswept winglets in favor of raked-back wingtips better suited for icy conditions.

The jet has no passenger windows, just one large rectangular observer window on each side.

Five torpedoes

Doors on the underbelly open to reveal attachments for five large torpedoes. Holes in the fuselage behind that bomb bay are the launching tubes for sonobuoys — listening devices that float just under the surface of the sea. Weapon stations on the wings will carry missiles.

A large rigid tube juts down through the cabin right behind the cockpit. It's the receptacle for the boom from an aerial-refueling tanker.

Along the top of the fuselage, small finlike antennas line up like the spines on a stickleback. Elsewhere on the fuselage, telltale bumps and square plates stick out, varieties of other antennas needed to connect with all the other planes, ships and satellites on the Defense Department's global information grid.

"This airplane will communicate on a network much grander than a commercial 737 would ever need to," said Bob Feldmann, co-program manager and Yahyavi's counterpart in Boeing's defense division.

All these decidedly non-civil aviation features will be delivered by Boeing Commercial Airplanes to the defense division factory-installed.

Separate lines

But instead of building P-8As on one of its two commercial 737 assembly lines, Boeing built a whole new 737 line for the P-8A in the building where it once assembled 757s.

That's because the first planes take relatively long to build, and even the later P-8As will require significantly more assembly work than their commercial counterparts.

Having the P-8As interspersed with regular 737s would have slowed the commercial line too much, said Perry Moore, factory manager for the program.

When a P-8A leaves Renton, it will go to a defense facility on the west side of Boeing Field, where the company already services AWACS jets, topped with their distinctive large rotating radar disks. There, Boeing defense workers will install sophisticated military computer stations and avionics.

The first P-8A is due at Boeing Field early next year after extensive ground tests in Renton.

In December 2006, two years into the Poseidon contract, Boeing quietly delayed the program seven months as it struggled to integrate engineering drawings for the new military features into its commercial 737 production system.

Since then, progress has been smooth and assembly of the first P-8A is going well — in contrast to the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner in Everett.

It took less than five months to assemble the first military plane, with a 737-800 fuselage and an advanced 737-900 wing that was attached May 1.

"We got our first fuselage on time, with zero parts shortages and zero work transferred to Boeing" from suppliers, Yahyavi said enthusiastically.

But Capt. Joe Rixey, who manages the Navy's maritime-patrol programs, wasn't about to send roses to Renton.

"They met the schedule. If that were new military construction, that would be impressive," Rixey said. "But they build planes. And that's what we are trying to leverage. ... That's the advantage we were looking for."

Tapping Boeing's efficient, well-integrated production system was why the Navy awarded Boeing the contract in 2004, he said.

Rixey declared himself "very impressed" with the level of integration. And indeed, he may need the expected efficiency of Boeing's production system.

Last December, metal-fatigue problems forced the Navy to ground 39 of the 161 turboprop sub hunters in its fleet, built by Lockheed Martin. That prompted the Navy to ask Boeing if it could speed up the P-8A program.

Rixey said the Navy is "still in the process of negotiating its options" on that score.

Keeping secrets

Inside the Renton P-8A assembly building, a chain-link fence cordons off the production line to protect the military secrets held by Boeing's defense side. A security code and a special badge are needed to pass through. No foreign visitors are allowed in.

But it turns out that Boeing Commercial Airplanes has its own secrets: It won't share cost data and other sensitive information with the defense unit.

"They are not authorized or allowed" to get manufacturing cost details, said Yahyavi about his counterparts on the defense side. "They don't know exactly how many people [the commercial division] brings in to get the job done. All they need to know is when the job will be complete."

That's because the commercial division does not reveal its costs to customers, who negotiate varying and closely guarded prices for every airplane deal.

In contrast, Boeing's defense division sells to the government on a "cost-plus" basis and must lay out detailed estimates.

So on this Navy contract, as on previous programs, the commercial unit delivers a plane to the defense division and gets paid a fixed price for the work — just like any other subcontractor.

Despite working closely together on the Poseidon, Boeing's two divisions must still maintain some boundaries.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com