Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in South Carolina

Barnett was in Charleston this week to give a formal deposition in relation to a defamation lawsuit he had filed against Boeing, the BBC reported. He was expected to appear for further questioning on Saturday, but failed to appear. He was found dead in his truck in the hotel's parking lot, the BBC said.

The death of John Barnett, 62, was confirmed by the Charleston County Coroner. The office said in a news release that he died from "what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

durangodawood said:

The stakes are very high for Boeing. Moreso every day it seems.

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It'll be interesting to see if anything odd turns up in this one.

Usually, conspiratorial explanations should be the "last resort", and not the first theory.

But there's a few things that strike me as a tad odd with this one.

1) if it was nervousness/stress about appearing in court, why would it happen when the process was nearly at an end? (he's already gone through the first several days of the process). And he'd already gone through the hard part, the depositions with Boeing attorneys, the last day was just supposed to be questions with his attorneys.

Per the CBS article, it appears that his attorneys also found it a tad peculiar:
"John was in the midst of a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case, which finally was nearing the end. He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn't see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it," the attorneys added. "We are all devasted. We need more information about what happened to John. The Charleston police need to investigate this fully and accurately and tell the public what they find out. No detail can be left unturned."

And the mindset of someone who's so distraught that they're on the verge of suicide doesn't seem to match what his family was seeing either:
Barnett's family told CBS News in a statement that "he was looking forward to having his day in court"


2) Based on this Seattle Times piece, it sounds like he'd be the victim of some targeted harassment before where the company had sent people to South Carolina to harass him, for which he filed an internal ethics complaint about the harassing conduct, but to no avail.

durangodawood said:

I used to be rah rah Boeing American pride. Now they're just another company who's been throwing away everything for quick financials. It's the new American capitalism.

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Well, and apart from commercial airliners, they're one of the largest defense/military contracting companies in the world. And spend countless sums on lobbying with congressmen and senators who push pro-war agendas.

The intercept ran a piece showing how profitable the 20 years in Afghanistan was for defense contractors...


So clearly they have no qualms with the concept of "it's fine if some people die as long as we keep profits high"