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this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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It's important to remember that whistleblowing is extremely stressful, so much that it's one of the main things the government talks about on their whistleblowing site:
https://whistleblower.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/whistleblower.house.gov/files/whistleblower_survival_tips.pdf
Researchers have found the same thing, being a whistleblower is terrible for your mental health:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6604402/
In addition, "Half of Patients With Suicidal Thoughts Deny It"
https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.9
So, just because he denied he was suicidal doesn't mean that's necessarily true. He might have been trying to appear strong to everyone while suffering in silence.
This should definitely be investigated as possibly being murder. And, even if the investigation does determine that he shot himself, they should keep looking to see if he was being blackmailed or if he might have been pressured into suicide.
I just can't imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man. But, what I can imagine them doing is hiring a team of private investigators to go through this guy's entire life and dig up every bit of dirt on him. It could be they found something really embarrassing and were going to blackmail him with it. It could be that they found something innocent that they could frame as being awful, like to make him look like he was a child molester or something.
Really? That's weird, I totally can. It's an exceptionally narrow-minded and short-sighted knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat of one's executive career. Most coked-out executives already have a massive god complex once they get their MBA and are installed above the ~~proles~~ workers. I can absolutely realistically imagine one Boeing executive getting angry enough and coked-out enough to just decide, "fuck it, I'm going to fix this problem for us before he threatens my career and reputation any more".
The information you present about whistleblowing being stressful is fair. He may indeed have been driven to kill himself instead of being straight-up assassinated like others believe. I refuse, however, to give the benefit of doubt to a massive corporation who has already demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human life and an extremely poor track record of moral and ethical decision-making. This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality. Unless you'd rather that nobody blows the whistle on anything in the future - you've already demonstrated that it's an incredibly stressful action. If there's the lingering remote possibility that you can be simply assassinated over it and everyone will look the other way, nobody will ever raise their voice again. The nature of his actions before his death demand a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation into if any person from Boeing had anything to do with it whatsoever, or whistleblowing will continue sliding into something only the insane consider.
While Boeing executives may be criminals, they're pretty much exclusively white collar criminals. They went to business school, not the military. They come from rich households. They don't have gang or organized crime affiliations. How would they know anything about hiring hit men?
Hiring a firm to do PR and to dig up dirt on a whistleblower, sure, that's within their skillset. That's even something they can brag about in board meetings because it's legal. It's the kind of thing they can google, or have a secretary research for them. It doesn't matter if transcripts leak. But, hiring a hit man, how do they know they won't get caught -- and this time for the kind of crime where people actually get sent to real prisons?
Sure, they should work under the assumption that it was a very careful hitman who made it look like a suicide. They should be 10x more careful than they normally would if they even suspected it might be a suicide. But, I still think driving him to suicide is much more likely.
IMO, the kind of press this is getting is part of the reason I don't think it was a hit. If this were Russia, sure. A hit sends the message to anybody else that they better not think of doing the same thing. The press will tell whatever story the government wants. Even on social media nobody very few people will speak up in Russia. But, in the US, this death is going to draw so much more attention to Boeing. Just look at how many articles there are about the whistleblower's death vs. how many there were about him beforehand. Corporations are used to managing news cycles when it comes to legal cases and congressional hearings. Those are boring and don't tend to go viral. But a whistleblower dying as he was giving testimony, that's exciting, it's like the movies, so it's all everyone's going to talk about.
Unless he had even more damaging information that he somehow didn't give to anybody yet, despite the fact he had already been testifying, it seems like the damage his death does is much higher than the damage his testimony would have done.
You didn't think executives would resort to violence?
Let me introduce you to Coca Cola and Shell. And the East and West India Companies before them.
These guys approved MCAS knowing it could create situations that were were unrecoverable. They aren't above killing people for profit.
They've been found guilty of killing people on American soil? I hadn't heard that, do tell.
Yeah, the 1400s are really relevant here.
Yes, white collar crime.
Get your history correct atleast. East India Company was in charge of India until 1857 and squeezed it dry. It was basically an early blueprint of modern day capitalism and imperialism.
I, personally, have been harmed by people paid by Boeing.
Your naiveness is super precious. You can't see someone with incredible amounts of wealth hiring someone else to make a problem go away?
OK! Next time, you should try a couple of Google searches before wasting all that time typing out nonsense. I didn't even finish the first page of search results, there were so many. And they are just the ones dumb enough to get caught.
https://www.insideedition.com/husband-of-murdered-microsoft-execs-ex-wife-arrested-after-allegedly-hiring-hitman-to-carry-out
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/erik-maund-hired-hitmen-kill-mistress-holly-williams-blackmailer-william-lanway-indictment/
https://patch.com/california/venice/westside-ceo-sentenced-hiring-hitman-kill-partner
https://nypost.com/2022/06/12/ex-amazon-mexico-ceo-juan-garcia-paid-hitman-9k-to-kill-his-wife/
You watch far too many movies, making you adorably naïve.
Did you even read this link? It wasn't a hit ordered by an exec, it was an exec that was killed in a hit ordered by the husband of his ex-wife.
Again, did you even read this link? This isn't an executive in a multi-billion dollar defense contractor. This is an "executive" at a family-owned auto dealership.
Another one I know you didn't read. Again, this isn't a multi-billion dollar defense contractor, this is a tiny company with only 50 employees. And, most importantly, he tried to hire a hitman and failed.
Yet another one you didn't read. Yes, it's "Amazon", but it's Amazon Mexico. The hit happened in Mexico City. It was also his wife that he arranged to have killed, not an enemy of Amazon's business. And, importantly, if his goal was to get away with murder, he failed. The hitman he hired testified against him.
If you think this happens, find an example where it's:
You probably believe you can find one of those, because you're adorably naïve and watch a lot of exciting movies. But, I'm betting you won't find any. But, great job googling "exec" and "hitman", you really showed your google-fu. I just wish you'd read the links you posted and saved me some time.
So what do you mean by white collar crime? Does it include killing people or not? Because knowingly bringing about systems that result in the death of people, having a private security contractor that you know will shoot striking workers in your third world countries plantation or ordering a hit on someone are all the same. It is decided that people will die for the companies profit and just because the people who order it dont do it directly themselves, doesn't change the gravity of it.
Also there os myriads of examples from today, where western companies directly or indirectly order people to get killed, just usually in third countries. The idea that a defense company with billions of profits at stake every year doesn't have access to hitmen is unconvincing. Why wouldn't they? Just as the mafia is branching into white business, white business of size are employing criminal means.
If you still think there is some unpenetrable divide, all you need is a private detective agency that has a history of dealing with problems "reliably" in the past.
It's a pretty well defined term.
It may mean being responsible for their deaths, but not in a way in which you could be charged for murder.
Almost always indirectly, and almost never on US soil. Not hiring a hitman to stage a suicide in the US. The kinds of things that US corporations do are the kinds of things they can talk about at board meetings without worrying that they'll go to jail of the meeting is bugged. They can talk about hiring SecuriCo in Zambia to deal with unrest at the mine. Or, they can talk with hiring the law firm Goldman, Burke and Mott to deal with the bad PR from the whistleblower. They're not going to chat about going onto a dark web server to hire a hit man to kill a whistleblower. That's movie stuff, not reality.
If that's "white collar crime" then so is hiring a hitman.
You're being rather naive. Sure, those bosses would have a hard time doing violence on other people, personally. But through another person? Nah. The same as approving MCAS, knowing it will kill people.
Also, you need to take a basic history lesson. "1400's" is a really bad guess.
And you watch too much TV.
I haven't had one in ~14 years.
I do live in a bad part of town and this guy used to be my neighbour (before he died a few years ago.)
Chill guy all in all (except when someone snitched and he lost like 2 pound of meth). Interesting stories as well.
Made really good risotto.
I don't need a TV. :)
No, it isn't. If you hire a hitman you can be tried for conspiracy to commit murder. If you approve a system that could be unsafe for an airplane, your company might have to pay a fine. They're vastly different crimes, even if one results in a lot more deaths.
You watch too many movies.
They might have the mindset required to hire a hitman. But, they don't have the connections. They also don't want to take on the personal liability of doing that. These are almost all finance guys who have MBAs. They wouldn't make a decision like this on their own, and they wouldn't be able to talk about it in a board meeting without risking a conspiracy charge.
The MCAS decision is ridiculous, but it exactly the kind of thing they can discuss in a board meeting without risking criminal charges. Even if the meeting had been recorded, the transcript would be boring board-room talk, nothing that they could be indicted for.
Frankly speaking, whether or not a hitman was hired, Boeing is culpable.
Organizing a concerted effort to drive someone to suicide is just as illegal as murdering them. End of story.
If there's evidence they organized a concerted effort to drive someone to suicide, definitely. Otherwise they're just culpable for gross violations of safety that have cost lives of airline passengers.
I would also say it could be manslaughter if the stress from the retaliation from whistleblowing caused him to kill himself
Attention sure, nothing will happen to Boeing though. They own too many politicians, and too many powerful people need them to stay where they are. I have no doubt they killed him.
There's more of a chance of something happening now than there was before the whistleblower died.
Laws don't apply to rich people. They'll find a fall guy.
Very much so. It would be hard to believe they would do it themselves. However, enrolling the right assistance should not be too difficult for them. They even have access to more options than the average business executive.
They are not military, but they have plenty of contacts there. Boeing is a big player in the military industry, they certainly know a lot of people in that world, both in government positions and the private sector.
Several of them don't, but organized crime is within reach. Illegal recreational drugs are not uncommon in the business world. Dealers are more often than not connected to the organized crime. Networking in that world is something within business people's skills.
Hey, who knows, maybe some of those execs started working many years ago as humble machine gun and bazooka salespeople. And who knows what kind of interesting characters they met during those days. While totally not burying their heads into a mountain of white powder sitting in the middle of the table.
It is very likely. High stress would have played against him if he was being bullied or threatened. Also, less involved than having them murdered.
Depends on what you consider damage here. The testimony could have been perceived as a threat to important business deals (and to bonuses). It is not infrequent to see executives caring only about their profits, even in detriment of the company as a whole.
They may have contracts with generals, but not much in the way with soldiers on the ground. If it were a defence contractor that made small arms, then maybe. But, this is Boeing.
Sure... but executives don't go to the bad parts of town to get them. The guy they're buying from is most likely someone who can travel in C-Suite circles and not draw attention. Maybe they're also a member of the golf club and have a legitimate business as a cover. The execs aren't getting in their Mercedes and cruising down to the ghetto to score. The dealers may have connections to organized crime, but not in a way that is obvious to anyone.
We know, their profiles are public.
The Boeing CEO, David L. Calhoun:
The COO, Stephanie Pope:
The CFO, Brian West:
The Chair, Supply Chain Operations Council, William A. Ampofo II:
Just look through their execs and find anybody with even a hint of dirt under their fingernails:
https://www.boeing.com/company/bios
Sure, so they hire PR firms, and private investigators, and call up friendly reporters to try to get them to publish a negative article. They aren't going to order a hit and make it look like a suicide.
Someone has never seen the first RoboCop movie.
Ah yes, thank you for proving my point. People who watch too many movies think that real life is like movies.
What's next? Getting shot makes you fly backwards through the air? Getting knocked out makes you unconscious for hours, but you wake up with nothing more than a sore head? Silencers go "thwpt" and nobody can hear them from more than a meter away?
Dude, relax, no need to be rude. It's just a humorous Internet forum comment, that makes a valid point.
Or are you trying to tell me that powerful corporations don't have very strong security departments with connections?
They have security departments filled with normal people who the execs couldn't trust to do something like this (or order something like this) without ratting them out. They don't order hits. That's movie stuff, like every grocery bag must have a baguette and greens poking out of it, or turning on your TV at the exact moment a news report starts.
They fucking killed him with a hit man dude...
And your evidence for that is?
I'll testify about it tommorow...
k
STOMPYI, was never heard from again...
Of course they didn't this isn't a movie
In the real world companies like Boeing don't hire hit men, they use the cia
Yikes. A hit man was hired.
Oh really? You have evidence of that?
Mainly my sense of humour, and biased belief in equal parts.
Murder by proxy.
There's maybe an absurd theory no one has considered: He worried that the accusations weren't going to be taken seriously, so he killed himself in a relatively suspicious manner/timing, to make sure public trust in Boeing disappeared.