A friend of John Barnett said he predicted he might wind up dead

While I can't see "Boeing" (as a whole command structure) can be blamed for his death I do see the possibility of some corrupt person in a high position fearing what he had on him personally and ordered a strike against him.

Wouldn’t the time to have killed him be before he testified?

“Appears to be”? It’s right there in the article’s original title:

'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death

Because in Russia it is an open message to the public 'don't mess with the KGB or we kill you and maybe your children'. Everybody knows and understands who is the sender and the message. Classic mafia move of intimidation. It is a message to the living.

In the Western World the secret services kill to silence people, not to broadcast messages to the public. Quite the opposite PR strategy.

Just speculating here but isn’t jumping out a window in Russia usually an implication it was ordered by the Russian state (ex: FSB) while in the US a framed suicides are assumed to be done by numerous non-associated actors. So in one place a single entity is responsible and in another it’s multiple entities.

It doesn’t seem surprising to me that there would be an affinity towards a particular method within entities.

DGSE (French secret service) really like to drown people, so avoid cities with canals and/or river if you feel you can be a target :)

We don't know that this was the result of a state actor. It could also have been someone who bought a ton of Boeing calls before the safety scandals.

Not random. In Russia, they blame it on an open window in a tall building. In America they blame it on a black guy with a gun.

Man in Sioux Falls, South Dakota shoots himself in penis and tries to blame black guy:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-shoots...

‘We failed the city of Boston’: how a racist manhunt led to chaos in 1989:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/dec/07/we-fail...

Blake Masters blames Black people for gun violence. But remember, he's no racist:

https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2...

With Yevgeny Prigozhin, the method was ingestion of surface-to-air missile: https://babylonbee.com/news/leader-of-failed-russian-uprisin...

One might deduce a number of factions offering those services from clustering the methods used.

Ever since my friend’s father (a police officer reviled for lacking the requisite appetite for corruption) “committed suicide” I’ve been a little more than a little skeptical about convenient suicides.

I was one of the first on the scene. The passenger window of his car was shattered, all of the glass on the inside of the car. No blood on the glass. The car was still in drive and had driven itself off the road. A gun was found on the floor under the seat, a gun that was unknown to family members.

Ruled a suicide and multiple attempts to open an investigation all the way up to the federal level were ignored, and his son received numerous, documented death threats warning him to stop perusing an investigation.

The USA is just another banana republic, only with a higher price of admission to the table.

I think most people know that these kind of “suicides” or “accidental falls” from hotel balconies are not suicides, yet we all know we are powerless to root out this level of imbedded corruption.

What most people fail to understand is that it isn’t so much the work of corrupt politicians or shadowy crime bosses, but more often is rooted in the C-Suite. Since criminal and sociopathic characteristics are often rewarded at the executive level , it should be no surprise that crime and corporate governance are frequently intermingled.

First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons

Is there anything supporting this theory other than the fact the death benefits Boeing?

The mafia took over the Boeing Corporation...

Coca Cola paid death squads to murder workers who were organizing

Not a US corporation but when it came to light that French defense contractor Thomson-CSF (now Thales) had bribed Taiwan official to award them a defense contract, no less than six whistleblowers died, three of them defenestrated; most famously Thierry Imbot, who fell from the fourth story closing his window shutters on a windy evening, supposedly the night before he was to meet a journalist.

There's mounting evidence that someone could had dismissed safety to get more profits, and then some planes fell off the sky. That could escalate to involuntary manslaughter quickly.

Karen Silkwood comes to my mind.[0] Kerr McGee whistleblower back in the 1970's. Maybe not your lifetime but definitely in mine.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

See: Octopus murders.

Not in your lifetime but wasn’t Jefferson murdered by the banks for wanting to ban interest on the dollar? Same for President Jackson, he was shot but not killed for the same reason.

Coca-Cola ordered some Colombian workers killed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co%2...

This happens way too often

1. What some other recent occurrences?

2. What's the baseline rate of suicides we should expect for people in high stress positions, like being a whistleblower? How many people could plausibly be categorized as "whistleblowers"?

It is the way of the world. Television, magazines, social media, etc do their best to conceal it, but it is always there in the background. It boils down to power. Boeing can make fighter jets, I can't. This is where the socialists err. "If we just take their money!" They'll make it all back within the year. "If we just had a law!" They'll buy legislators, bribe judges & law enforcement. If that doesn't work, they'll kill people. The public will clutch its pearls over this, for a while anyway, then promptly forget.

The only solution is to remember and to retaliate on an individual basis (stop the wars, don't fly, shun execs, boycotts). And not just until they relent, because they are machines, and have no conscience. Do this until they hit the pink sheet, and then keep doing it.

There's another "easy" answer: friends and family of the deceased make up these claims, because they want to ensure a thorough investigation of any potential homicide to put their suspicions to rest and so make it look as suspicious and scandalous as possible in the public eye.

Not saying that's what happened here, of course.

This happens way too often, and I'm genuinely curious why.

It's probably what you're paying attention to.

There are lots of shocking occurrences that most people don't notice. Or don't want to notice. Death is among the things we'd rather not think about. Unseemly death more so.

Consider how many US military deaths are suicide every year.

https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/summaryData/deaths/byYear...

Or how many people are killed by police in the US every year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

Or consider that suicides are more common than either firearm or car crash deaths.

https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/us/per-year/

In my view, almost all of these are accidents or suicides and people watch way too many hollywood films.

The Hastings thing is classic mania for those of us who know people who have experienced that.

Also reminds me of ex TYT journalist Michael Brooks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Brooks_(political_co...

This is a poor take. People don't find themselves in this situation normally and we should not be expecting them to have TV-murder-mystery style hypervigilance.

I would think that you are implicitly stating your want to live by the fact you are alive.

Also - would all that really move the needle? Surely the only way is 24/7 surveillance. Even then I'm sure there are remote methods of execution that seem natural...

It depends a lot upon how certain he was of the risk. He might have said it to a friend as an expression of anxiety or fear, not recognizing how pressing the threat really was. A lingering worry might not motivate someone to be diligent about a post-assassination alibi.

This is the rational thing to do, yes. I'm not sure I would've thought of getting that notarised myself.

I mean he could just not have expected to be murdered?

If you're a whistleblower and truly expect there to be a high chance you get suicided, sure, you tell as many people as possible, but if it's not something you think is likely to happen, just telling one friend seems reasonable.

Also, you record your testimony.

They don’t even know the details of the weapon, but in the minute of it being published, they claimed to know it was “self-inflicted”.

On one side I agree with you, on the other, such statements are far from conclusive proof of anything.

Let's make a small mental exercise:

- you end up being a whistleblower against your company

- every of your former friends hates you, your family isn't super supportive either for what you caused to the rest of the family (in reputation, attention, possibly financially)

- you decide to end it

- you leave such statements before ending it to clear your name / further punish the company

I am not saying that this has happened, but people can have millions of motivations and victims being vengeful or lying is actually a surprisingly common phenomenon even though they may really be the victims of the whole situation.

I don't know about the game theory of the whole thing.

If a group does want to murder a whistleblower, they presumably want to do it for two reasons:

- To prevent them from testifying further - To scare other potential whistleblowers into not testifying

A public statement of "if something happens to me it wasn't suicide!" is certainly not evidence enough. But it's a strong hint...which is actually the most favorable outcome to the murdering org, since it maximizes the chilling effect of the murder.

TLA = three letter agency?

The problem is that even then you'll be able to get people to dismiss it with a "well, but he was mentally disturbed enough to lie about what we did, so clearly he just wanted to get one last dig in when he committed suicide". In other words, I don't think it'd be any significant deterrent to anyone prepared to call in a hit - anyone ready to do that would already have accepted that it will look dodgy and be prepared to counter it by smearing you.

If you want to deter a hit in a situation like that, I think the only way to do that is to ensure you have very significant additional data (or at least convincingly imply you do) and make it clear they'll be released if you "commit suicide".

Billions. Its annual profit not revenue is 7.7B a 10% decrease in revenue this decade is worth 7.7B and a 10% decrease in valuation is worth 11B

The "case" in question is a defamation suit he initiated against Boeing. This has nothing to do with the recent 737 MAX incidents, and the 787 issues he did whistleblow on was litigated to death years ago.

Stress and pressure can lead to performing actions that you thought you couldn't do. They don't specify how early this event took place but mentions that deposition was yet to take place. So a lot could have changed after that as there's kind of no turning back.

I don't think people are misaligned on the P(suicide) it is just due to the recent behaviour of Boing that P(murder|Boing) is elevated.

also everyone saying they wouldn’t avoid certain planes and there is so much redundancy that little simple non-aviation folks shouldn’t worry themselves.

We’ve got a fishy death, no documentation on the door plug, and more incidents.

What public backlash? It seems people here are content to call those who suspect Epstein suicide "very gullible"...

It's interesting how the English language labels people "conspiracy theorists", like how the totally batshit crazy ones gets lumped together with those that actually seem to be suspect.

It is appalling that as many details as possible are immediately leaked (or were they outright released by the police) about it being a suicide: gunshot to head in a remote location, "there is a note", "family said he had PTSD and was under stress".

A major whistleblower dies in any non-natural manner should be a major investigation by the highest levels of the FBI, not immediately handled and released by the podunk no-resource local police that don't want to touch the case with a ten-foot pole.

That's what is most galling. The media and police work in lockstep to immediately brand it a suicide. The only headline should be "Boeing whistleblower found dead, FBI is investigating".

So you’ve never made a comment about something in passing that turned out to be true? Completely reasonable for this to be said in conversation with a friend but not taken seriously enough to write it down.

While evaluation of someone's behaviour to work out the truth is a valid endeavour, I find people have a tendency – and I notice it often in our community – to expect perfect rationality in humans at all times. I guess as it makes it easier to criticise them.

People who are stressed, sick, anxious, depressed etc often operate more on emotion and in aa reactive way rather than with foresight, clarity and rationality.

I expected riots and protest

Why did you expect this?

Due to majority of worker being spinless and complicit to corner cutting and other unethical practices.

I think companies that might end up doing that kind of stuff first off cultivate that culture. Either in their entire company, or with the people who are going to engage with criminal activities. Security people, upper management, ... Like in the ebay case linked above

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal#Stalking...

I'm not sure we can deduce that most employees of the corporate world are cynical and unethical from just individual cases like this

Due to majority of worker being spinless

Are you seriously accusing most employees of being pions?

I’m disappointed that so many people immediately jump to conspiracy instead of more common/likely conclusions.

He already gave his deposition. And the information is on the record. It was also him suing Boeing, he was not a witness for the government or some other party in these proceedings.

I’m 100% supportive of a thorough investigation.

I’m 100% against running with the idea that this man was murdered without any evidence of it.

It’s a huge jump from “Walmart hires off-duty cops for security” to Walmart having “the cartels” murder whistleblowers.

And neither of your links have anything to do with major corporations.

There is also another thing that comes into play: rich people go to rich places and come into contact with other rich people. Not all those rich people are honest business men, so to speak. So connections into shady things is not that difficult if you hang around in those social circles.

Even Google assassinated some of its Xooglers. Totally normal.

Option 0: people tend to be blindsided when someone in their life suffering from depression kills themselves. This is because if you see it coming, usually you go all out to intervene. It is ridiculously common for people to report that someone who seemed like they enduring mental hardship "was doing better" in the days before their suicide.

I'm finding the immediate "it was an an assassination" rhetoric gross and unproductive here, because what it's dismissing is a very real problem: becoming a whistleblower tends to ruin people's lives between the media scrutiny, the legal scrutiny, the career jeopardy and being in and out of court rooms. Marriages breakdown, and people get depressed or develop substance problems.

"He was assassinated" is just casually ignoring the fact that Boeing can kill this man dead completely legally through the normal shitshow which is the legal wringer whistleblowers get put through.

Any other alternative should surely be dismissed immediately in the land of the brave and home of the world police, the bonafide benefactors.

if he suspected he was a target why didn't he buy some home surveillance equipement

Will a gun protect you when your car accelerates to 150 mph directly into a tree? A couple micrograms of toxin being sprinkled into your coffee? The CIA had a heart attack gun 50 years ago. Not difficult to imagine the capabilities they have today.

Bro, where do you get your food? Do you grow it in your house? Where do you get your water from? Hell, where do you get your air from? How do you think getting a security system fixes it?

https://youtu.be/YjVdq5tJSto?si=3u16AEx9tll_uga9

Obama: I'm Boeing's second biggest salesman

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/f/fc/images/13761232.0043.314-000...

That isn't how manufacturing consent works. The journo that published this will just silently harder go at it in the future.

Thats an easy signal from the page to me that they really dont want me to read their content, so I just dont. There is 0 need for a cookie for me reading an article, so 0 need for a cookie disclaimer/consent box.

Yup. Webb also killed himself many many years after telling his story. His story that was generally considered unreliable and inaccurate.