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?
This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality.
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.
These guys approved MCAS knowing it could create situations that were were unrecoverable.
Yes, white collar crime.
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.
If that’s “white collar crime” then so is hiring a hitman.
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’re being rather naive
You watch too many movies.
Sure, those bosses would have a hard time doing violence on other people, personally. But through another person? Nah
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.
They might have the mindset required to hire a hitman. But, they don’t have the connections.
Anyone can find a hitman online, all it takes is 15min to get to know how deep web markets work. They’re by far the least reliable service ofc, but it is sold and there are escrow services as well. How well they work in cases like that is a whole other matter, but I, personally, find it rather ludicrous a suggestion that a high-level Boeing boss who manages the complexities of a job like that (especially when simultaneously playing Jenga with airline safety) wouldn’t be able to figure out how to access a black market.
Especially when they could always hire a person to do that for them. Do they trust anyone at all, with any of their criminal shenanigans? Well surely the co-conspirators at least. These massive, systemic changes that made Boeing go from trusted airline to killing whistleblowers weren’t the actions of one man.
And if there was a group of men, then it’s shared responsibility. Even if they conspire to hire a hitman. It doesn’t feel as much like a violent crime when it’s done in white-collars and agreed on in a fancy hotel suite.
Especially when they could always hire a person to do that for them. Do they trust anyone at all, with any of their criminal shenanigans?
Yes, and that’s the problem. This isn’t the sort of thing an executive would do on their own without talking to other execs about it. If they did that they’d have to trust that the other execs would back them up and not turn them in. And, this is a real, serious crime. This isn’t a crime where the company has to pay a fine. This is a crime where they would personally be liable for conspiracy to commit murder.
These massive, systemic changes that made Boeing go from trusted airline to killing whistleblowers weren’t the actions of one man.
Exactly my point. Those took a whole group of executives discussing their plans openly in meetings. They wouldn’t discuss actually breaking the law in meetings like that. Instead, they’d talk about who they’d have to lobby to get the laws changed how they wanted, what pressure they could put on regulators, what kinds of PR campaigns they’d need to run, etc. Those are things that people might see as dishonest and unethical, but they’re all legal. If someone in the meeting objected to the decisions, they’d have a little debate and then some decision would be made. The other execs wouldn’t have to worry that the conversation would leak and they’d be charged with serious crimes. If the conversation leaked there might be a bit of embarrassment, they’d have to hire a PR firm, and done.
The decisions they made almost certainly cost lives, but even if you had transcripts for those meetings, even an ambitious prosecutor probably couldn’t find any actual crimes being committed. The execs at Boeing almost all have finance backgrounds, so most of the meetings would have been about money, and how much they could save while keeping an “acceptable safety margin” – which we might not think is acceptable, but they’d have the lawyers to argue that it was acceptable.
You don’t go from open discussions about how to increase profits by outsourcing work to discussing how to hire a hitman to kill one of your whistleblowers. That’s suddenly stuff where the people in the room would be chargeable for conspiracy to commit murder.
The Mitchell & Webb parody proves my point. Removing Webb’s character makes it back into a movie scenario. His character shows just how ludicrous those movie scenes really are. At some point when murder is being discussed, someone is going to actually have to check “just to be clear, you mean murder, right?”. Because you’re not going to order to have someone murdered just because the CFO used an ambiguous term.
Sorry for the second reply, we’re both avid talkers and I’ve already taken half an ambien.
At some point when murder is being discussed, someone is going to actually have to check "just to be clear, you mean murder, right?
With all respect, I disagree. And I’ve been friends with actual murderers. Well a murderer. I mean, I only knew him after his sentence, dk what he did when he did the murdering. Just that I’ve been in circles with a lot of people’s who’ve done various crimes, and unless theyre referring to their trials or sentences or something, they never mention the crime. It’s all euphemisms.
The actual confirmation bit would be online with an escrow service, after finding s reliable one.
unless theyre referring to their trials or sentences or something, they never mention the crime. It’s all euphemisms.
I can imagine that if you’re someone who assumes they’re being bugged all the time. Like, Mafiosi wanting to talk business without actually saying something that could be used in court against them. But, I don’t think that’s the world that Boeing execs live in.
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.
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.
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 may mean being responsible for their deaths, but not in a way in which you could be charged for murder.
Also there os myriads of examples from today, where western companies directly or indirectly order people to get killed
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.
But, in the US, this death is going to draw so much more attention to Boeing.
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.
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.
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 went to business school, not the military.
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.
They don’t have gang or organized crime affiliations.
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.
driving him to suicide is much more likely.
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.
it seems like the damage his death does is much higher than the damage his testimony would have done.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
Just the bottom line this, we’re not going to agree, but you’d have to be pretty naive to think that those kind of things, with billions of dollars and economies hanging in the balance, doesn’t really happen.
Life imitates art in some ways, but people getting shot in the shoulder still have fucked up shoulders and often die, no matter how much movies want you to believe that it’s a wound you can just shrug off.
Similarly, executives make business decisions that result in thousands of people dying. But, executives in multi-billion dollar companies don’t contract out to hitmen to murder people who hurt their companies. That’s just movie stuff, and you’re naive to think it happens in reality.
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.
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.
Anyone can find a hitman online, all it takes is 15min to get to know how deep web markets work. They’re by far the least reliable service ofc, but it is sold and there are escrow services as well. How well they work in cases like that is a whole other matter, but I, personally, find it rather ludicrous a suggestion that a high-level Boeing boss who manages the complexities of a job like that (especially when simultaneously playing Jenga with airline safety) wouldn’t be able to figure out how to access a black market.
Especially when they could always hire a person to do that for them. Do they trust anyone at all, with any of their criminal shenanigans? Well surely the co-conspirators at least. These massive, systemic changes that made Boeing go from trusted airline to killing whistleblowers weren’t the actions of one man.
And if there was a group of men, then it’s shared responsibility. Even if they conspire to hire a hitman. It doesn’t feel as much like a violent crime when it’s done in white-collars and agreed on in a fancy hotel suite.
I imagine it looked something like this, except Webb’s character wasn’t there
Yes, and many people who try are caught in a sting operation by the police.
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/newlywed-thirty-years-murder-sting/story?id=13836957
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RentAHitman.com
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/alleged-hit-man-plotting-nyc-murder-arrested-in-fbi-sting-with-guns-ammo-old-man-mask/4144188/
Yes, and that’s the problem. This isn’t the sort of thing an executive would do on their own without talking to other execs about it. If they did that they’d have to trust that the other execs would back them up and not turn them in. And, this is a real, serious crime. This isn’t a crime where the company has to pay a fine. This is a crime where they would personally be liable for conspiracy to commit murder.
Exactly my point. Those took a whole group of executives discussing their plans openly in meetings. They wouldn’t discuss actually breaking the law in meetings like that. Instead, they’d talk about who they’d have to lobby to get the laws changed how they wanted, what pressure they could put on regulators, what kinds of PR campaigns they’d need to run, etc. Those are things that people might see as dishonest and unethical, but they’re all legal. If someone in the meeting objected to the decisions, they’d have a little debate and then some decision would be made. The other execs wouldn’t have to worry that the conversation would leak and they’d be charged with serious crimes. If the conversation leaked there might be a bit of embarrassment, they’d have to hire a PR firm, and done.
The decisions they made almost certainly cost lives, but even if you had transcripts for those meetings, even an ambitious prosecutor probably couldn’t find any actual crimes being committed. The execs at Boeing almost all have finance backgrounds, so most of the meetings would have been about money, and how much they could save while keeping an “acceptable safety margin” – which we might not think is acceptable, but they’d have the lawyers to argue that it was acceptable.
You don’t go from open discussions about how to increase profits by outsourcing work to discussing how to hire a hitman to kill one of your whistleblowers. That’s suddenly stuff where the people in the room would be chargeable for conspiracy to commit murder.
The Mitchell & Webb parody proves my point. Removing Webb’s character makes it back into a movie scenario. His character shows just how ludicrous those movie scenes really are. At some point when murder is being discussed, someone is going to actually have to check “just to be clear, you mean murder, right?”. Because you’re not going to order to have someone murdered just because the CFO used an ambiguous term.
Sorry for the second reply, we’re both avid talkers and I’ve already taken half an ambien.
With all respect, I disagree. And I’ve been friends with actual murderers. Well a murderer. I mean, I only knew him after his sentence, dk what he did when he did the murdering. Just that I’ve been in circles with a lot of people’s who’ve done various crimes, and unless theyre referring to their trials or sentences or something, they never mention the crime. It’s all euphemisms.
The actual confirmation bit would be online with an escrow service, after finding s reliable one.
I can imagine that if you’re someone who assumes they’re being bugged all the time. Like, Mafiosi wanting to talk business without actually saying something that could be used in court against them. But, I don’t think that’s the world that Boeing execs live in.
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.
Ok, care to elaborate?
I was actually hired by Boeing as a hitman once, didn’t pay very good tbh
No.
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/
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
So huge multi-billion corporations wouldn’t hire the best of the best, when it comes to security?
Life imitates art.
Just the bottom line this, we’re not going to agree, but you’d have to be pretty naive to think that those kind of things, with billions of dollars and economies hanging in the balance, doesn’t really happen.
Unfortunately.
Life imitates art in some ways, but people getting shot in the shoulder still have fucked up shoulders and often die, no matter how much movies want you to believe that it’s a wound you can just shrug off.
Similarly, executives make business decisions that result in thousands of people dying. But, executives in multi-billion dollar companies don’t contract out to hitmen to murder people who hurt their companies. That’s just movie stuff, and you’re naive to think it happens in reality.
And you know this how?
Common sense? The lack of historical precedent? The fact I can watch movies and be aware that they don’t represent reality?