If Boeing bosses intended CEO Dave Calhoun’s performance during a Senate hearing to mitigate the company’s abject turmoil, they were sadly mistaken.
Calhoun was forced on Tuesday to officially answer whether the embattled aerospace company had retaliated against any of more than a dozen whistleblowers who raised concerns about the company’s safety and ethical standards, and he gave the response that many already suspected was true.
“I know it happens,” he said Calhoun, adding that the company took action against those who retaliated.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who posed the question to Calhoun, also read testimony from the late John Barnett, a Boeing whistleblower who was found dead in his vehicle from what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his opening remarks, Blumenthal he said that Barnett “committed suicide under the immense pressure the company put on him for raising safety claims.”
Barnett, who raised concerns about missing parts, was apparently called by one of his supervisors 19 times in one day and told, “I’m going to push you until you break.”
Blumenthal recounted Barnett’s testimony in which he said one of his co-workers was physically assaulted for raising safety concerns. The senator asked if Calhoun had followed up on this report, and the CEO said he didn’t know.
Calhoun was also completely decimated by a surprisingly strong line of questioning from blatantly opportunistic Senator Josh Hawley, who demanded that he resign. But after the hearing ended, Calhoun’s humiliation was far from over.
Nadia Milleron, whose daughter died in a 2019 Boeing crash, stormed into Calhoun on Tuesday night during a CNN interview for her opening sorry to the families of people who died in two 737 Max crashes. “I apologize for the pain we caused,” he said, turning to the family members present in the Senate Chamber. “I want you to know that we are fully committed to safety-focused work.”
Milleron wasn’t so convinced. “It wasn’t a real apology. What he was doing is not wanting us to know the details of how this happened,” she told CNN’s Abby Phillip.
Milleron retold making eye contact with Calhoun as he apologized. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I said, ‘Are you sorry? Are you sorry for the bombs that Boeing produced that kill innocent children in Rafah? Are you sorry about that too?
Boeing helped develop Israel’s missile defense system and continued to arm the Israel Defense Forces while it conducted its brutal military campaign in Gaza, which killed more than 37,000 people, including thousands of young children.
“Like, how can he sleep?” MIlleron asked rhetorically. “This person is a psychopath. We can’t have people running these companies who don’t care about human life. We need to have responsible people running these companies.”
