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Crypto industry spent big during the 2024 election. How it might impact Washington.
Fresh off crypto’s success in the 2024 election and with the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and XRP soaring, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of the crypto company Ripple, said his company has already contributed $25 million towards an industry super PAC with an eye toward the 2026 midterm elections.
Crypto companies made a third of all direct corporate contributions to super PACs during the 2024 election. Of the 29 Republicans and 33 Democrats the industry backed, 85% won. Garlinghouse sees it as a major victory.
“People are like, “Why did these companies come together and organize and say, ‘This matters’?” Garlinghouse said. “And it’s a reaction to a war on crypto.”
A war on crypto
Garlinghouse said the Securities and Exchange Commission’s approach to the crypto industry inspired Ripple and two other companies to form Fairshake, an industry super PAC, in 2023.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who will step down from his post on Jan. 20, led the federal government’s crackdown on the crypto industry. As SEC chair, Gensler filed more than 120 lawsuits against crypto companies.
The SEC sued Ripple in December of 2020 at the tail end of the Trump administration — before Gensler was chair — alleging that its sale of the cryptocurrency XRP represented the sale of an unregistered security. Garlinghouse said Ripple has spent more than $150 million fighting the SEC in court, arguing that the digital currency XRP shouldn’t be subject to the agency’s registration and disclosure requirements as if it were a stock offering.
“I went to Harvard Business School. I think I’m reasonably intelligent about something like, ‘What is a security?'” Garlinghouse said. “So never once had I considered the possibility that, ‘OK, maybe XRP’s a security.'”
Garlinghouse said it’s unlikely Fairshake would exist if not for Gensler’s actions against crypto companies.
In response, an SEC spokesperson said: “any amount spent by the crypto industry on legal defense or influence peddling pales in comparison to the savings lost by crypto investors to frauds and failures.”
What was behind the SEC war on crypto
John Reed Stark, the former chief of internet enforcement at the SEC, says he doesn’t own any cryptocurrency and has never worked for the industry. He thinks the SEC will take a much less combative approach towards crypto in the new Trump administration, but he doesn’t think the SEC’s actions during the Biden administration were wrong.
“Crypto is a scourge. It’s not something that you want in your society. It has no utility,” Reed Stark said. “It’s just pure speculation.”
Stark argues there’s not enough transparency in the crypto industry. And he says cryptocurrency makes it easier to commit crimes ranging from ransomware to human sex trafficking and money laundering.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction for fraud at one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world is a case study of what can happen without proper oversight. The FTX exchange, based in the Bahamas, collapsed in 2022, imperling $8 billion in customer assets, much of it beyond the reach of U.S. regulators.
“I view that as not dissimilar than if we say Bernie Madoff went to jail, that doesn’t make every hedge fund manager a criminal,” Garlinghouse said. “There’s a lot of good actors in crypto.”
Garlinghouse said his company employs 900 people and has been working with regulated financial institutions to create a faster and cheaper way for people to send money overseas using the XRP digital currency. Ripple has also sold the digital currency XRP to investors. XRP now trades on exchanges, where people can buy or sell it in the hope of making a profit.
Getting involved in the election
Rarely in American politics has a new industry spent so much money, with such apparent impact, as the cryptocurrency business did in the last election. Ripple contributed $48 million to political action committees that supported pro-crypto Republicans and Democrats during the 2024 campaign.
In the final months of a hotly contested Senate race in Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno received $40 million of positive ads from a crypto-funded super PAC. The ads helped Moreno defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and an outspoken crypto critic.
“Do I think that putting that amount of money in the Ohio election had an impact? Absolutely,” Garlinghouse said.
He argues that crypto-backed super PACs educated voters, and that, ultimately, they’re the ones who decide who should govern in Washington.
“I think all citizens should want people in Congress, in the Senate and the House, who are going to look to, ‘How do we use technologies in ways to benefit citizens?'” Garlinghouse said.
Crypto under the Trump administration
This past week, President-elect Donald Trump, who embraced crypto during his campaign, said he intends to nominate Paul Atkins to chair the SEC. Atkins, a former SEC commissioner who has done some consulting work for crypto companies, is expected to take a very different approach than Gensler.
Though he’s no fan of crypto, former SEC official John Reed Stark believes voters have given Trump a mandate to govern..
“As far as these election results are concerned, the clear mandate is the SEC needs to lay off crypto,” Stark said. “And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Trump’s Cabinet picks, including Scott Bessent, his choice for Treasury secretary, have had very positive things to say about crypto.
In September, Trump announced that he would be involved in a new cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial. Three weeks before the election, Trump announced the launch of its new digital coin, which Trump has a financial stake in.
Asked whether this was a conflict of interest, Garlinghouse replied,”Whether or not it’s a conflict of interest, the voters have knowingly said, ‘We want this person to be our president.’ The voters have spoken more so than I have.”
Regulatory changes
Garlinghouse said the strategy of putting money to work in the election was to get rules written. He argues that existing laws don’t fit well with cryptocurrencies, and Congress needs to adopt new legislation governing digital assets.
“We haven’t been asking to be deregulated. We’ve been asking to be regulated,” he said. “So we have been saying, ‘Hey, look, just give us clear rules of the road.'”
Over the summer, FIT21, a Republican bill with bipartisan support, passed in the House. FIT21 seeks to create a new regulatory framework for digital assets. While the SEC would still play a role, the legislation gives more responsibility for regulating cryptocurrencies to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees futures markets for everything from gold to pork bellies and already has some jurisdiction over Bitcoin.
The SEC is a much larger agency than the CFTC with a different mandate, Stark said. He said the SEC focuses on investor protection, while the CFTC is more focused on marketplace integrity.
“I don’t blame the crypto industry for wanting to be under the CFTC,” Stark said. “It’s a much easier regulatory regime.”
It doesn’t surprise Stark that the bill passed in the House with bipartisan support.
“It doesn’t pay for a member of Congress or the Senate, whoever you’re talking about, doesn’t pay for them to be anti-crypto,” Stark said. “There’s no one that’s going to…give them contributions because of that.”
Lawmakers from both parties told 60 Minutes that crypto firms will not escape scrutiny, since there are consumer protections in the FIT21 bill. While it’s not clear whether Republican leaders will reintroduce FIT21 in the new Congress, there is bipartisan agreement that something must be done to plug regulatory gaps and prevent confusion in a market that already exists.
CBS News
Faulty or nonconforming parts go missing at Boeing, whistleblower says | 60 Minutes
Most of you watching tonight have probably flown on an airplane made by the Boeing Company. That’s why you may have been more than a little rattled when a panel blew off the side of one of its airplanes in January, leaving a gaping hole and a lot of questions for the renowned American company.
Since then, four federal investigations have been launched and Boeing hired a new CEO to quote “restore trust.”
But that hasn’t stopped a steady stream of Boeing whistleblowers from coming forward. The FAA says over the last year, it’s received more than 200 reports from whistleblowers. Their safety concerns include mismanagement of parts, poor manufacturing and sloppy inspections at Boeing.
You’re about to hear from some of those whistleblowers. They told us why they weren’t surprised when a Boeing airplane blew open in the Oregon sky.
This was the view from the cabin thousands of feet above Portland. for 14 terrifying minutes…nothing stood between the 177 people on the Alaska Airlines flight and the cold evening sky.
The distress call came shortly after take off when a panel over an exit that’s only opened for maintenance…called a door plug…blew off three miles above the ground.
The plane…a Boeing 737-9 Max, just a few months old, landed safely and remarkably, no one was seriously injured.
A month later, the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation revealed four bolts required to secure the “Max’s” door plug were removed during production at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington and never reinstalled.
Boeing says it can’t find any paperwork to explain how a plane left the factory broken.
Sam Mohawk works at that Renton factory. This is his first television interview.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So in January when you heard about the lost door plug incident? What was your reaction?
Sam Mohawk: Um I was not surprised. I was almost expecting something to happen. I was actually happy that it wasn’t a cata–catastrophic event that took down an airplane. That kind of put visibility, what was going on internally out to the public.
Mohawk has worked for Boeing for 13 years on three different airplane programs. Months before the door plug incident, Mohawk says he warned Boeing and federal regulators about lapses in safety practices inside the Renton factory, which makes about 30% of the world’s commercial jet fleet.
Sam Mohawk: The idea is to keep those airplanes moving, keep that line moving at all costs.
Sharyn Alfonsi: At all costs?
Sam Mohawk: At all costs.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Even safety?
Sam Mohawk: Unfortunately, yes. Yeah.
Mohawk says he started noticing problems during COVID when Boeing was ramping up production and dealing with supply chain issues.
Part of his job as a quality investigator is keeping track of defective airplane parts in what employees call quote “the parts jail.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: Why parts jail?
Sam Mohawk: Because they’re supposed to be under lock and key. And it’s supposed to be, like, a chain of evidence. We’re we’re following that whole part to make sure that that is not a bad part going to the back to the airplane.
But Mohawk says in an effort to keep production moving, some Boeing employees sidestepped protocol and took bad parts out of “the parts jail” when his team wasn’t looking.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Where do you think the parts are going?
Sam Mohawk: There’s so much chaos in that factory that um there’s a desperation for parts. Because we have problems with our parts suppliers. So, there’s, in order to get the plane built and out the door in time, I think unfortunately some of those parts were recycled back onto the airplanes in– in order to build keep building the airplane and not stop it in production.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You think that the faulty parts could be on Boeing airplanes?
Sam Mohawk: Yes, I do. yeah.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Are you talking about a couple bad parts being put on a plane, or is this happening repeatedly?
Sam Mohawk: I think it’s happening repeatedly. We have thousands of missing parts.
And it’s not just bolts but rudders, one of the primary tools for steering an airplane. Mohawk says 42 flawed or “non-conforming” rudders – that he says would likely not last the 30 year lifespan of a jet – went missing.
Sam Mohawk: Those parts came into the– our system. They’re huge parts. And they just completely went missing. Somebody, not through our group, moved all those parts away.
Sharyn Alfonsi: If they’re using non-conforming parts and they’re putting them on airplanes, what’s the concern?
Sam Mohawk: I think without a proper investigation it could– it could lead to a catastrophic event. It might not happen within the first year, but down the road they’re not gonna last the lifetime that they’re expected to last. It’s like Russian roulette, you know? You don’t know if it’s gonna go down or not.
Sam Mohawk’s story echoes another Boeing whistleblower, at another Boeing plant, John Barnett. He appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” in 2019.
John Barnett spent three decades at Boeing. In 2010, he began working as a quality manager on the long haul 787 Dreamliner at the company’s South Carolina factory.
Barnett said managers there pressured workers to ignore FAA regulations such as not tracking defective parts properly, then retaliated against him for speaking up. Claims Boeing denies.
In 2017, he retired and reached out to Rob Turkewitz, a Charleston attorney who’s worked with dozens of Boeing employees over the last decade.
Rob Turkewitz: John Barnett walked into my office and told me about what was goin’ on. And I asked him, I said, “Do you have documents? And he said, “Actually I do.” He said, “I’ve got thousands of documents.”
Turkewitz says Barnett had more than 3,000 internal documents, emails and photos from Boeing to support his whistleblower claim. Seven years later, John Barnett was in the final stretch of his case.
Rob Turkewitz: I think that John Barnett was probably the best witness I have ever seen testify. He knew the facts up and down. And the defense lawyer objected and said, “He’s– he’s not even looking at the documents.” And if I remember right, John said, “I don’t need to. I live this.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: He knew every detail of his case.
Rob Turkewitz: Absolutely.
John Barnett was scheduled to complete his final day of depositions on March 9 of this year.
Rob Turkewitz: And I tried calling John to see if he needed a ride and, you know, let him know I could pick him up at the hotel. And I got no answer. And when I got to the deposition at about 10 o’clock, he didn’t show up.
He drove to John Barnett’s hotel and learned the 62-year-old was dead inside his truck with what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Turkewitz called John Barnett’s family, brothers Rodney, Robby, Michael and mom, Vicki.
Vicki: He was used to people caring and listening, and if somethin’ was wrong, they fixed it. And when he started in Charleston, that wasn’t the case. And he would try to go to his boss, who would not listen. And I guess that’s when he felt under siege, you know. He would be embarrassed at meetings.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What did the fight do to him?
Michael: He put up a good front with us, but you, you know, times when we really had heart-to-heart conversations, you could tell it just wore on him. You know, I’d ask him, “Why do you want to– why do you just keep pursuing it?” And he’s just, like, “Cause it’s the right thing to do. Who else is gonna do it?”
The Barnett family is continuing John’s legal fight. His death inspired other Boeing workers to speak up.
One of them is Merle Meyers. He worked with John Barnett years ago.
Merle Meyers: When the stories came out about how he was treated by managers, some of whom I knew, I was really angry. And um he was just a really, uh, solid airplane man.
Meyers began his 30-year career at Boeing as a parts inspector. He was working as a quality manager at the company’s largest plant in Everett, Washington before he left last year.
He says his concerns first began in 2015, after he discovered defective 787 landing gear axles that had been scrapped were taken by workers and brought back to the factory.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Why were they just taking things?
Merle Meyers: Schedule driven. So that’s– that’s really, um, that’s the order of the day.
Sharyn Alfonsi: They needed a part, they didn’t wanna wait for it?
Merle Meyers: Right. Right.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What condition were these landing gear axles in?
Merle Meyers: They were corroded beyond, uh, repair.
In these photos provided to 60 Minutes, the axles are spray painted red. Meyers says he learned scrap parts marked like this had been taken without authorization for over a decade.
Sharyn Alfonsi: If the faulty parts are spray-painted red, would you be able to look at a part on a plane and go, “that’s faulty?” Are they still red when they get on the plane?
Merle Meyers: Yeah, or it, it would get cleaned up.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How do they clean it up?
Merle Meyers: Well, just cleaner. You know, chemicals. Chemical cleaners.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Like wash it off?
Merle Meyers: Uh-huh (affirm). Yeah.
Boeing says it thoroughly investigated Meyers’ claims and that the defective axles did not make it onto airplanes. But Meyers says the competition for airplane parts continued.
Merle Meyers: And they would talk openly about it at the stand-up meetings, senior managers– that– that flap on that plane ahead of mine is supposed to be on mine, and that was taken by a competing manager. So managers compete.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So they’re fighting for faulty parts?
Merle Meyers: Yeah. And good parts. They’re not too picky.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Wow.
Merle Meyers: Yeah.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And they talked about that openly?
Merle Meyers: Uh-huh (affirm). Yeah. And vice presidents would attend that meeting often, and they would hear this and do nothing about it.
Sam Salehpour might have more reason than anyone to do something about it. He’s worked in aerospace as an engineer for 40 years.
Sam Salehpour: I come from a Space Shuttle background. I don’t know if you’d remember the Challenger explosion, where we lost seven people. Ever since that explosion I have promised myself, “If I see problems that they are concerning, or safety-related, I am gonna speak up until my face is blue.”
Salehpour works on the 777 line in Everett. He says when the jet is assembled, pre-drilled holes are supposed to line up to join pieces together. When they didn’t, Salehpour told federal investigators he observed Boeing employees trying to make them line up.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What were people doing to get the holes to align?
Sam Salehpour: Force. Crane forces, people jumpin’ up and down to align the holes.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Jumping up and down?
Sam Salehpour: Yeah. They were jumping up and down like this. When I see people are jumpin’ up and down like that to align the hole, I’m sayin’, “We have a problem.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: What happens then if you’ve got that pressure on these parts?
Sam Salehpour: That’s like going one time more on your paperclip, okay? And we know that paper clip doesn’t break the first time, the second time, the third time. But it may be breaking’ on you the 30th or the 40th time.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You’re saying this is– was happening over and over again?
Sam Salehpour: It’s still happenin’ right now. Even right now it’s still happening.
In a statement to 60 Minutes, Boeing said it carefully investigates all quality and safety concerns, including those of the whistleblowers we spoke to, telling us:
“Some of their feedback contributed to improvements…and other issues they raised were not accurate. Based on investigations over several years, none of their claims were found to affect airplane safety.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: NTSB safety reports show Boeing plane accident numbers have declined over two decades, that they’re safer than they’ve ever been.
Sam Mohawk: Yeah.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How do you view that?
Sam Mohawk: Right now the MAX is a new program. So these airplanes that are having the quality issues are brand new to the fleet. We don’t know what’s gonna be coming in the future.
Workers at the Renton factory…where they make the Max….. returned to work last month after a 7-week strike… but the FAA says- they have not resumed production and are focused on training and quote “making sure they have the supply chain sorted out.” Sam Mohawk still works there.
In June, he filed a federal whistleblower claim to protect him from possible retaliation.
Sam Mohawk: I put a big target on my back in there.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So why’d you do it?
Sam Mohawk: ‘Cause I’m concerned with safety. Like, at the end of the day my fam– my friends and family fly on these airplanes.
The FAA is still investigating Sam Mohawk’s claims along with hundreds of others related to the Boeing company.
Produced by Lucy Hatcher. Associate Producer, Jessica Kegu. Broadcast associate, Erin DuCharme. Edited by Robert Zimet.
CBS News
Boeing missing parts situation like “Russian roulette,” whistleblower says | 60 Minutes
When a panel known as a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight minutes after takeoff earlier this year, a quality investigator at the factory where the Boeing plane was manufactured says he wasn’t surprised; he said he was almost expecting something like this would happen.
Whistleblower Sam Mohawk is speaking publicly for the first time about the problems he’s seen during his 13 years working in quality assurance at Boeing’s commercial airplane factories. Months before the door plug incident, Mohawk said he warned both Boeing and federal regulators about lapses in safety practices inside the company’s Renton, Washington factory, which is responsible for building about 30% of the world’s commercial jet fleet. Mohawk believes defective or “non-conforming” parts are not being properly tracked there and could be making it onto Boeing planes – a concern he said could lead to a catastrophic event without a proper investigation.
“It might not happen within the first year, but down the road they’re not going to last the lifetime that they’re expected to last,” he said. “It’s like Russian roulette, you know? You don’t know if it’s going to go down or not.”
“A desperation for parts” at Boeing’s Renton factory
A month after the Alaska Airlines incident, the National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded the four bolts required to secure the door plug that blew off the Boeing 737-9 Max were removed during production at that Renton facility and never reinstalled. After an extensive search, NTSB investigators determined the records to document the removal of those four bolts don’t exist. Boeing said it can’t find any paperwork to explain how a plane left its factory without the bolts.
Mohawk said he started noticing problems at the Renton facility during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Boeing was ramping up production and dealing with supply chain issues.
“The idea is to keep those airplanes moving, keep that line moving at all costs,” he said.
As a quality investigator, part of Mohawk’s job is to keep track of defective airplane parts in what some employees call “the parts jail.” It’s called that, Mohawk said, because the parts are meant to be under lock and key and tracked like a chain of evidence. But Mohawk says that amid pressure to keep production moving, some employees sidestepped Boeing protocol and took bad parts out of the “parts jail” when his team wasn’t looking.
Mohawk’s concern is that those bad or “non-conforming” parts he says are getting lost or taken, could be ending up on planes.
“There’s so much chaos in that factory,” Mohawk said. “There’s a desperation for parts. Because we have problems with our parts suppliers. So there’s, in order to get that plane built and out the door in time, I think unfortunately some of those parts were recycled back onto the airplanes in order to build, keep building the airplane and not stop it in production.”
Mohawk believes it’s happening repeatedly.
“We have thousands of missing parts,” he said.
It’s not just parts like bolts that are going missing, according to Mowhawk, but also rudders, one of the primary tools for steering planes. Mohawk said 42 flawed or “non-conforming” rudders, which he says would likely not last the 30-year lifespan of a jet, have disappeared..
“They’re huge parts,” he said “And they just completely went missing.”
NTSB safety reports show the number of Boeing plane accidents has declined over the last two decades, but Mohawk is still concerned.
“Right now, the Max is a new program,” he said. “So these airplanes that are having the quality issues are brand new to the fleet. We don’t know what’s going to be coming in the future.”
The Max line, certified by the FAA in 2017, has drawn scrutiny since its first year in service.
Workers at the Renton factory, where they make the Max, returned to work last month after a seven-week strike, but the FAA said production has still not resumed, and Boeing is focused on training and making sure the factory has “the supply chain sorted out.” Mohawk still works there. In June, he filed a federal whistleblower claim to protect himself from potential retaliation. Mohawk also reported his concerns to the FAA, which is investigating his claims, and hundreds of others directed at the company.
“I put a big target on my back in there,” he said.
Despite that, he felt it was important to come forward.
“At the end of the day my friends and family fly on these airplanes,” he said.
Stories out of Renton echo those in Charleston
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, whistleblowers at Boeing submitted more than 200 reports over the last year. Their safety concerns include mismanagement of parts, poor manufacturing and sloppy inspections at Boeing.
Mohawk’s story echoes another Boeing whistleblower at another Boeing plant, John Barnett. He spent three decades at Boeing and began working as a quality manager on the long-haul 787 Dreamliner at the company’s South Carolina factory in 2010.
Barnett said managers there pressured workers to ignore FAA regulations, such as not tracking defective parts properly. He said Boeing then retaliated against him for speaking up. Boeing has denied his claims.
In 2017, Barnett retired and contacted Charleston attorney Rob Turkewitz, who’s worked with dozens of Boeing employees over the last decade. Turkewitz said Barnett had more than 3,000 internal documents — emails and photos from Boeing — to support his whistleblower claims.
Seven years later, Barnett was in the final stretch of his case.
“I think that John Barnett was probably the best witness I have ever seen testify,” Turkewitz said. “He knew the facts up and down.”
Barnett was scheduled to complete his final day of depositions on March 9. He never showed.
Turkewitz went to Barnett’s hotel to search for him and learned the 62-year-old whistleblower had been found dead inside his truck. Police said it was a suicide.
Turkewitz called Barnett’s family, including his mom, Vicky Stokes, and his brothers, Rodney Barnett, Robby Barnett and Michael Barnett.
“He put up a good front with us, but you, you know, times when we really had heart-to-heart conversations, you could tell it just wore on him,” Michael Barnett said. “You know, I’d ask him, ‘Why do you want to — why do you just keep pursuing it?” And he’s just, like, ‘Because it’s the right thing to do. Who else is going to do it?'”
The Barnett family is continuing his legal fight.
More Boeing workers speak up
Barnett’s death also inspired other Boeing workers to speak up. Merle Meyers, who’d worked with Barnett, said he was angry when he learned how Barnett was allegedly treated.
Meyers started his 30-year career at Boeing as a parts inspector. He worked as a quality manager at the company’s largest plant, located in Everett, Washington, before he left last year. Meyers’ concerns first began in 2015, when he said he discovered defective 787 landing gear axles that had been scrapped, back at the factory.
“They were corroded beyond repair,” Meyers said.
Meyers said workers, driven by schedule pressure, took the axles to avoid stalling production.
Photos provided to 60 Minutes show the axles spray-painted red and clearly marked as “scrap.” Meyers said he learned scrap parts marked like this had been taken without authorization for over a decade. Sometimes people used chemical cleaners to remove the paint, Meyers said.
Boeing says it thoroughly investigated Meyers’ claims and that the defective axles did not make it onto airplanes. But Meyers says the competition for airplane parts continued.
“They would talk openly about it at the stand-up meetings, senior managers,” Meyers said.
They’d compete for parts, both good and bad, he said.
“They’re not too picky,” he said.
Meyers alleges company vice presidents were at those meetings and would do nothing about what they heard.
“Speak up until my face is blue”
Boeing employee Sam Salehpour worked in aerospace as an engineer for 40 years. Earlier in his career he worked on rockets, including for companies supporting the Challenger Space Shuttle, which exploded in 1986, killing seven people, though Salehpour didn’t work on the Challenger.
“Ever since that explosion I have promised myself, ‘If I see problems that they are concerning, or safety-related, I am going to speak up until my face is blue,'” Salehoupour said.
He now works on the 777 line in the Everett factory, where Meyers worked. Salehpour says when the jet is assembled, pre-drilled holes are supposed to line up to join pieces together. Salehpour told federal investigators that when they didn’t, he witnessed Boeing employees trying to force them to line up.
“They were jumping up and down like this,” Salehpour said. “When I see people are jumping up and down like that to align the hole, I’m saying, ‘We have a problem.'”
Salehpour described how he believes that kind of pressure on parts could impact the lifespan of a plane.
“That’s like going one more time on your paperclip, OK? And we know that paper clip doesn’t break the first time, the second time, the third time,” Salehoupour said. “But it may be breaking on the 30th or the 40th time.”
Salehoupour alleges this is still happening at Boeing.
Boeing responds to whistleblowers
In a statement to 60 Minutes, Boeing said it carefully investigates all quality and safety concerns, including those of the whistleblowers 60 Minutes spoke with. Boeing said:
“Every day, thousands of Boeing airplanes take off and land around the world, and we are dedicated to the safety of all passengers and crew on board. Our employees are empowered and encouraged to report any concern with safety and quality. We carefully investigate every concern and take action to address any validated issue.
The current and former Boeing employees interviewed by 60 Minutes previously shared their concerns with the company. We listened and carefully evaluated their claims, and we do not doubt their sincerity. Some of their feedback contributed to improvements in our factory processes, and other issues they raised were not accurate. But to be clear: Based on investigations over several years, none of their claims were found to affect airplane safety.
Commercial air travel is the safest form of transportation – and our industry continues improving its exceptional safety record – in part because people do speak up about potential issues. We encourage and welcome employees’ feedback and will continue to incorporate their ideas to make Boeing better.”