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.  We have reached a significant turning point.  Either we will achieve more transparency 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 talk of this  and encourage others to visit his website to read his first Press Release in order to better publicize his experiences as a legitimate whistleblower caught up in a most unpleasant relationship with his former employer.  

Mr. Eastman's 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 at Boing and other contractors 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 addresed 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 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 talk about it and 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, as well as pay several million dollars in fines.  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, besides Mr. Eastman's case.  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 posed 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 ptich 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 possibly overly influence judges and attorneys as well.  So far, only the jury has not gone along with their plan. 

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 the law enforcement arena.  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 Mr. Eastman's press release at his website 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, and TPM is a good place to start talking about it!