whistleblower

WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: New Netflix documentary Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, investigates the story of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who was found dead in his truck in 2024

John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years before turning whistleblower and dying in mysterious circumstances.

New Netflix documentary, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, explores the story of Barnett, who publicly condemned Boeing’s safety processes before he was found dead in his truck. He was in the process of testifying against the company.

From 2010, Barnett was employed as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant, which built the longhaul 787 Dreamliner, before retiring in 2017 on health grounds.

After Boeing merged with a former rival McDonnell Douglas, several former Boeing employees alleged the company started focussing more on increasing profits rather than safety and quality.

Barnett told the Today Show before his death: “From day one, it’s just all been about schedule, and hurry up, and just get it done. Push a plane out. We’re behind schedule. We don’t have time to worry about issues that y’all bring up.”

He alleged there were severe production and safety flaws such as defective oxygen systems and metal shavings near critical wiring on the 787 Dreamliner program.

Just before he left Boeing in 2017, Barnett filed a complaint against the company, accusing bosses of retaliating against him for raising safety concerns. He was outspoken on the issue with journalists – and in 2022 appeared in acclaimed director Rory Kennedy’s investigative film Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.

But then, on March 9, 2024, Barnett was found dead in his truck with a gunshot wound to his head.

Deeply affected by Barnett’s death and ongoing concerns about Boeing’s safety culture, Kennedy reunited with her team to produce the documentary sequel, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, which is being released on August 19, 2026.

Speaking to the Guardian about Barnett’s death, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kennedy said: “I was horrified and heartbroken. I spoke to his mom pretty immediately after we had heard that news. She said to me, ‘We need to make sure John’s story gets out there,’ and that was a big part of why we decided to revisit this.

“I’ve never done a documentary follow-up in this kind of way, but we all felt that Boeing is such a big company, and we all fly these airplanes all over the world. I don’t want one of these planes falling out of the sky, and I feel like I have a lot of inside knowledge and also connections to understanding what’s going on inside of Boeing, and I just felt like we’ve got to stay at this.”

Details of the circumstances surrounding Barnett’s death came to light when his mother sued Boeing in a wrongful death suit in March 2025. The complaint alleged that Barnett was subjected to a campaign of harassment, abuse and humiliation after he raised concerns about safety issues. It further claimed that the conduct of the company was “the clear, foreseeable cause” of his death. In September that year, Boeing settled the lawsuit, agreeing to pay at least $50,000 to Barnett’s mother, who, in return, agreed to drop her claims that the company contributed to her son’s death by suicide.

The complaint contained a copy of Barnett’s suicide note, and the annexes presented the full police report concluding that he died by his own hand.

In conversations with Fortune in March 2025, the family’s longstanding counsel Rob Turkewitz added further details on his client’s last hours.

He said that on the evening of March 8, 2024, Barnett left the law offices of Boeing’s outside counsel in Charleston after testifying for two days in his OSHA case against the company. OSHA rules make it unlawful to retaliate against a whistleblower.

Barnett was giving his account of how Boeing allegedly violated its own policies and procedures, and FAA rules, during his seven years as a quality inspector at the North Charleston plant.

He’d delayed a trip back to his home in Louisiana to finish his deposition the next day, which was a Saturday. Videos cited in the police report show Barnett leaving the hotel around 8:30pm, and getting in his orange Dodge truck.

When Barnett failed to show up the next morning for his final round of testimony, Turkewitz called the Holiday Inn to conduct a welfare check. It was then that a hotel employee saw Barnett slumped in the front seat of his vehicle.

Charleston police arrived to discover Barnett barefoot and clutching a Smith and Wesson pistol in his right hand. His right temple showed a bullet entry wound, and an exit wound appeared in the back of his head.

On the seat next to Barnett’s body lay a message written on a single page of a red-covered notebook, with sentences written in all directions.

It contained phrases including: “America come together or die!!! Pray that the motherfk…ers who destroyed my life pay!!! I pray that Boeing pays!!! Bury me face down so that Boeing and their lying ass leaders can kiss my ass.”

Elsewhere: “I can’t do this any longer!!! F-k Boeing!!! Family and friends, I love you’ll [sic].”

“To my family and friends, I found my purpose! I am at peace! I love you more John/Mitch Barnett aka Swampy Fununcle Mitch.”

The complaint also included a heartbreaking email that Barnett sent Turkewitz in 2021, which read: “I can understand the direct costs that we can establish, ie lost pay, bonuses, etc. What I’m struggling with is how do you restore a person’s overall outlook on life? I used to be a very happy-go-lucky guy who loved his job and the products he built. I had a very positive outlook on life. Boeing absolutely destroyed my outlook on life. What is a person’s ‘outlook on life’ worth? How to put a price on that?'”

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is scheduled to debut on Netflix on August 19, 2026 .

For mental health support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch

Los Angeles police Officer Daniel Flores may have broken the law when he secretly recorded his colleagues making ugly, unacceptable comments that were variously racist, homophobic, misogynistic or otherwise gross and unprofessional at best.

So L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman is right to take this, or any, violation of the law by a badge-wearing member of our police force seriously, no matter what Flores’ intent was.

But Monday, Flores was arraigned on 16 felony counts that could lock him up in state prison for 13 years (he pleaded not guilty).

That court hearing was preceded by an unusual and disturbing summary of the case filed with the court by Hochman. It seemed like an inappropriate attempt to smear Flores as a money-grubber with a convoluted plan to sue taxpayers into a sweet retirement (as opposed to intending to expose misconduct), while simultaneously giving an aw-shucks, it-was-all-in-good-fun defense of the ugly commentary of the recorded officers.

Regardless of what Hochman’s intent is in throwing the book at Flores, the result is one that will haunt this city for years to come: a police force in which the officers are clear that if you rat out the cops for misconduct, you get what you get.

“The message to everyone in the police department is keep your mouth shut,” said David A. Harris, a law professor at University of Pittsburgh and an expert on police misconduct. “You cannot stand up for principle or even for the policy of the police department, except at the risk of your own career and your own well-being, and perhaps your freedom.”

Hochman spoke with me for nearly an hour about his reasons for what many, myself included, see as his prosecutorial overreach in this case. Before I tell you the reasons why I think Hochman has it wrong — dangerously wrong — in the decision to charge Flores’ so harshly, I’ll tell you where we agree.

First, we agree that cops shouldn’t do things such as refer to Black people as “monkeys,” as my colleagues Libor Jany, James Queally and Richard Winton reported allegedly happened in this case.

Cops, we concur, should not call women “bitches.” They also should not call women “rapeable,” even if, as Hochman’s filing assures us, “the use of the phrase ‘rape’ was not in a sexual context.”

I am not sure what the nonsexual context of rape is, but OK.

Cops should not make fun of, in no particular order, people with disabilities; candidates applying for jobs; co-workers; Asian people; Hispanic people; or people who may be overweight — as the officers in this case allegedly did.

“These comments are deplorable. They’re despicable. They’re racist. They’re homophobic. They’re sexist,” Hochman told me. “There’s no place in our society for them, and they should be punished.”

So Hochman and I agree that Flores may have broken the law, and that the comments of his fellow officers are unacceptable.

And now the roads diverge.

Because faced with those competing truths, Hochman could have used prosecutorial discretion — the art of tempering the law with the mores and ethics of the community.

He could have used that discretion to cut Flores a break, charge him at a lower misdemeanor level or not at all, and put the focus where it belongs — on the officers who disgraced their badge with their behavior, and what is seemingly a culture of disrespect and degradation within the unit charged with choosing the next generation of officers.

These are the officers charged with recruiting the officers of the future, so the stakes here are high. This is misconduct that the people of L.A. need to know about, because if these officers are so casual in their hateful comments, can we trust their judgment on hiring?

“On one hand, being a whistleblower doesn’t give a person the right to violate the law,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley’s law school, who did an investigation on police culture in the LAPD in 2000 in the wake of the Rampart scandal. “On the other hand, I would hope that the district attorney would take context into account. And 16 felony charges seems really excessive.”

LAPD Officer Daniel Flores, left, listens as his attorney Alan Jackson speaks to reporters Monday.

(Libor Jany / Los Angeles Times)

But Hochman argues that a “message has to be sent” because it’s a police officer who broke the law.

“If you don’t hold police officers accountable, it’s very hard to hold anybody accountable,” Hochman said. “I believe that no, we’re not going to let the ends justify the means, even if the ends may be laudable, like exposing bigotry, because it leads us down a very slippery slope.”

Hochman said Flores simply could have taken notes on the inappropriate comments and turned them in to superiors or the independent inspector general, which strikes me as either sweetly naive or disingenuous.

“The officer would be shunned; his career would be over, and he would probably find himself on the receiving end of some kind of retaliation,” Harris, the law professor, said of the likely outcome of that plan.

Chemerinsky said retaliation against whistleblowers has long been a part of the culture of the department. Make a complaint, his report in 2000 found, and an officer might get “freeway therapy,” transferred to someplace far from where they lived to send a message, or even find themselves without backup in a dangerous situation.

This decision to treat Flores so harshly, Chemerinsky said, comes off as “part of that long history of LAPD trying to very much crack down on whistleblowing.”

Hochman told me that he wants to make it “crystal clear” that “nothing in this prosecution should be read that we are in any way trying to chill whistleblowers.”

He added that he did use discretion.

“I hope you note in your article that the district attorney could have brought 122 felony charges, or 122 misdemeanors, or some combination of felonies and misdemeanors up to 122,” Hochman said.

Flores made 122 total recordings of 16 people. Hochman charged on the number of people recorded, not the number of recordings, he pointed out.

So sure, we can count that as discretion, I guess?

This is where Hochman has his messages dangerously backward. Sure, hold Flores reasonably accountable for taking matters into his own hands, if he broke the law in doing so. Certainly, Flores knew there would be consequences to his actions.

But that Hochman is trying to frame this as a fair and reasonable prosecution, while protecting the officers who made the comments by giving us their weak-sauce excuses about having no ill intent, does not provide this city the justice it expects and deserves.

Hochman, you may recall, replaced George Gascón, a prosecutor who was accused of forcing his own values on the city.

Now, Hochman seems to be doing the same with his heavy-handed approach to Flores.

Hammering on Flores does not reflect the values of the majority of the Los Angeles community that wants a police force in which integrity and respect are fundamental, impunity is the outcast, and whistleblowers aren’t attacked, even if it turns out their motives aren’t pure.

Personally, I don’t care what Flores’ intent was in making the recordings. I don’t care if the officers caught on tape didn’t intend to offend, and I don’t care what Hochman intends the message to be with his vast over-charging of Flores.

I care about the result: a city in which misogyny and racism are just locker room talk, but breaking the blue wall of silence is a serious crime.

A Democratic senator alleges that whistleblowers have detailed several problems stemming from rushed or improper reconstruction of the Kennedy Center, adding a new layer to the travails of the arts complex after President Trump tried to seize control of it and its name.

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a release Saturday that he had received a whistleblower disclosure from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower protection group, alleging that “the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December.”

“The Center’s subservience to the President’s desires and its corner-cutting contracting practices have resulted in steel columns that are rusting through fresh paint, a reflecting pool that may have to be torn out and rebuilt, and a brand-new bathroom floor torn out over an offending tile color,” Whitehouse said. “This is waste, and it treats a national memorial to President Kennedy as if it were a private renovation project.”

Whitehouse released a letter he wrote to the Kennedy Center’s executive director, Matt Floca, seeking answers by July 23. He said the whistleblower report included “firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs.” He also included an 83-page appendix full of internal center documents, emails and photos of apparently shoddy construction.

The allegations in the letter include that the center rushed work before it was authorized by Congress because it wanted it to be complete for Trump to accept the so-called FIFA Peace Prize that the soccer federation awarded him.

In doing so, the letter alleges, the center didn’t follow required contracting guidelines and wasted money replacing a bathroom because the president didn’t like the color and inking no-bid contracts. One $8-million contract to replace the concert hall’s floor went to a firm with no experience in concert halls, Whitehouse contended.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump seized control of the arts and culture venue named for President Kennedy at the beginning of his second term. Trump ousted the center’s leadership and replaced it with a Board of Trustees that named him chairman and added his name to the building.

Democrats sued to remove it, and a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off the venue, noting that only Congress has authority to rename it. Trump also tried to close the center for two years, only to be ordered by the court to keep it open.

Many artists have boycotted the venue in protest of the president’s actions.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.