Did A $100 Billion Corporation Just Murder Another Whistleblower?

Boeing may have just Epsteined a truth-teller named John Barnett

Image credit: John Barnett

Boeing is a crap corporation that doesn’t deserve to exist. 

They lost $2.22 billion in 2023, $4.94 billion in 2022, $4.2 billion in 2021, $11.87 billion in 2020, and $636 million in 2019… plus their outstanding equity is negative $17.23 billion.

Clearly, this is a company run by a.) incompetents or b.) con men.

So which is it?

Yesterday, the Boeing brass may have just tipped the scales in favor of “full-blown corporate criminals.”

Blowing away the whistleblowers

John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years until he retired in 2017.

Barnett publicly blew the whistle on Boeing’s production safety standards and was in the middle of a deposition against the company.

On Thursday last week, the 62-year-old was cross-examined by Boeing’s lawyers for seven hours. Barnett was supposed to answer more questions in court on Day #3 this past Saturday, but he never showed. 

His body was later found dead in his truck, a supposed “suicide” in a hotel parking garage, from a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound. His lawyer Brian Knowles hasn’t ruled out foul play.

So much for the FAA’s Whistleblower Protection Program.

As a quality control engineer, Barnett’s job was to keep the public safe, and in 2019 he told the BBC that Boeing was rushing its 787 Dreamliner jets to market while risking said safety. Barnett believed the emergency oxygen systems had a fail rate of 1 in 4, which is kind of a big deal — imagine one member of every family on vacation suddenly dying from suffocation in the event of a cabin decompression just because Boeing was in a rush to post slightly-less-crappy quarterly returns.

Barnett had been raising these concerns since 2010 — he found more than 300 defects in total — but was ignored by Boeing managers until the FAA eventually corroborated some of his concerns in 2017. (The FAA even found that 53 parts were missing.)

As Barnett predicted, Boeing has been plagued with safety problems:

• Like in January when a door blew off a plane in mid-flight. 

• Or the flight in March that “just dropped” mid-air and injured 50 people.

• Or the Two Boeing 737 MAX planes (Lion 610 and Ethiopian 302) that outright crashed, killing 346 people in total.

• News of Barnett’s death comes on the same day that a Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s autopilot “froze in mid-air,” injuring fifty people.

Are we surprised? This is the same corporation that the FAA found failed 33 of 89 audits, and it was reported that mechanics at Spirit AeroSystems, a leading supplier for Boeing, used liquid Dawn soap as a lubricant for fitting a door seal on the 737 Max.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says Boeing needs “a serious transformation” due to all of these troubling problems.

(The Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Boeing three days ago.)

Now obviously, there’s zero proof yet one way or the other, and this is the stuff conspiracy theorist dreams are made of. But nothing suggests Barnett was suicidal. And it doesn’t make sense — Barnett (from Louisiana) drove to South Carolina… booked a hotel… gave legal testimony… then killed himself in his truck between interviews? 

That’s not very believable, and certainly no less believable than thinking Boeing may have hired someone to murder him.

Cicero and the ancient Romans always asked: Qui bono?

Who profits?

The only people to profit from Barnett’s swift death are Boeing’s executives, shareholders, and key suppliers.

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Questions that need to be answered:

1. Where is the gun? 

2. Is there any proof Barnett ever owned said gun?

3. Is there any non-lobbyable governmental body that could even do a proper investigation?

4. Was this a genuine suicide, a corporate murder, or just a very ill-timed homicide by a mentally ill person?

5. If a murder, who ordered the hit?

6. Was it someone on the engineering team who faced jail time if the truth about Boeing’s risky products came out?

7. Was it perhaps a hit ordered by Boeing’s key supplier, Spirit Aerosystems, who are under even more pressure due to their rubbish quality? (The FAA on Boeing and Spirit “found multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.”)

8. Or does it go all the way to the top?

9. Did Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun know?

10. Did any of the Boeing board members know?

11. Did any of the leading Boeing shareholders — Blackrock, Vanguard, etc — know?

12. Will all Boeing shareholders demand a legitimate public investigation, followed by the possible sacking and arrest of all culpable?

We will likely never know the answers to these questions.

Keeping them secret is far too profitable, so if the people running Boeing are culpable, they will invest heavily in politicians to make sure the truth stays buried.

Here’s what we know for sure:

Either way, this was a self-inflicted death. 

John Barnett pissed off a $117 billion company that literally makes weapons of warfare and has no qualms with taking human life.

Remember, in addition to making super-dangerous passenger planes, Boeing also makes laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles.

They’re one of the world’s largest “defense” contractors, whose military aircraft and munitions have seen combat across generations of conflicts. They are literally incentivized to keep humanity at war.

Barnett aside, human life has zero sanctity for these murderers. 

Everything must be slaughtered on the altar of shareholder profit.

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Okay, here comes the awkward part

Sadly, most Americans are in quiet collusion with Boeing. 

Do you even know if you own Boeing stock? 

If you own 401ks, mutual funds, or indexes there’s a 99.9% chance you do — and it’s likely you just profited from the “suicide” (read: murder) of John Barnett.

At the very least, you’ve profited from the loss of hundreds of lives by receiving profit from a company with a culture of determined carelessness, plus the countless lives and casualties from their decades of war-mongering.

Real repentance = divest and donate.

In honor of John Barnett, do it right now.