Blueprint for Free Speech announced the 2024 winners of their Whistleblowing Prize on December 5. The North American winners included all seven of the publicly known Boeing whistleblowers: John Barnett, Sam Salehpour, Roy Irvin, Sam Mohawk, Cynthia Kitchens, and two Spirit Aerosystems employees Joshua Dean and Santiago Paredes. Together, these seven Boeing whistleblowers helped expose life-threatening safety issues at Boeing assembly facilities, calling global attention to massive compliance and quality control failures.
Boeing is the largest commercial aerospace manufacturer in the world and a critical defense contractor for the U.S. Over the course of 2024, the company made headlines for a string of mid-air accidents and allegations of deteriorating quality control inside manufacturing plants. These recent malfunctions came only 5 years after two 737 MAX 8 crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia took the lives of 350 people in what US District Judge Reed O’Connor called the “deadliest corporate crime in history.” The two crashes resulted in the grounding of Boeing aircrafts globally for one year.
In September 2024, a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations took testimony from many of the honored Boeing Whistleblowers. According to Mohawk, the year-long grounding caused financial strain for Boeing that pressured the company to accelerate manufacturing timelines, compromising safety and quality control. In their testimony, the whistleblowers described how company culture was ripe with whistleblower retaliation; they were labeled as insubordinate and suffered negative career and mental health repercussions.
John Barnett, one of the first Boeing whistleblowers to speak out, tragically passed away in March from a self-inflicted gunshot wound amid deposition in his retaliation case against the company. Since speaking out, he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Fellow Boeing Whistleblower and awardee John Irvin spoke of Barnett’s legacy, saying he was a “lighthouse for whistleblower activity … he was probably one of the first pioneers.” Another awardee, Joshua Dean, also passed away this year after suffering from a sudden and aggressive infection in May. His case with the Department of Labor alleging wrongful termination and gross misconduct was still pending.
The 2024 Blueprint for Free Speech Whistleblowing Prize honors the Boeing whistleblowers’ dedication to protecting public safety despite great personal risk. Their disclosures have potentially saved countless lives, and the award celebrates their contributions to society, while also shining a light on their sacrifice.
Also honored with the Impact Award for Positive Social Change was North American whistleblower Scott Smith who spoke out about the environmental and public health damage caused by the 2024 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
After the crash, the Environmental Protection Agency made the hasty decision to burn the remaining train cars which carried 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride, unleashing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins into East Palestine’s air, soil, and water. Exposure to these chemicals increases cancer rates and causes other severe medical problems. Smith made 27 trips to the town to conduct 31 rounds of testing which unequivocally proved the EPA’s mistake had endangered residents, costing him personally $130,000. Subsequent FOIA documents proved that the EPA had skewed their data to conceal the harm. In response, the EPA ran a smear and surveillance campaign against Smith. Smith’s actions brought accountability to those responsible for chemical contamination in the area.