Meet Nadia Milleron: Her Daughter Was Killed in 2019 Boeing Crash, Now She's Running for Congress

Boeing CEO David Calhoun appeared before the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations Tuesday to face questioning about how the Aerospace Giants responding to safety concerns amidst ongoing investigations by authorities just hours before cun's testimony the Senate subcommittee released a damning report on Boeing based on a number of whistleblower complaints and previously undisclosed government findings which found Boeing lost track of hundreds of substandard aircraft Parts eliminated quality and ectors and put manufacturing workers in charge of signing off on their own work Boeing's been under scrutiny for years amidst a series of high-profile incidents beginning with the crashes of 737 Max jets in Indonesia and 2018 in Ethiopia in 2019 that left all 346 people on board dead at Tuesday's hearing Calhoun began by turning to the families of victims of the two crashes who were in attendance and issuing an apology before I begin my opening remarks I would like to speak directly to those who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 in the Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 I would like to apologize on behalf of all of our Boeing Associates spread throughout the world past and present for your losses they gutr and I apologize for the grief that we have caused and I want you to know we are totally committed in their memory to work and focus on safety for as long as long as we're employed by both oh again I'm sorry during Tuesday's hearing the Boeing CEO came under Fire for the company's lapses in safe manufacturing procedures violations of safety regulations retaliation against whistleblowers this is the chair of the Senate sub Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal what we've seen since from whistleblowers is that in fact the manufacturing issues the retaliation against whistleblowers non-conforming Parts quality inspections skipped and issues concealed from the FAA evidence hidden all have continued and there is mounting evidence that the Deferred prosecution agreement concluded in 20121 with the United States Department of Justice has been violated in fact there is near overwhelming evidence in my view as a former prosecutor that prosecution should be pursued when you were named as Boeing's chief executive uh Mr Calhoun we were told that you were the right person to correct course and you committed to quote strengthen Boeing safety culture and rebuild trust with our customers Regulators suppliers and the flying public Tuesday's hearing marked the Boeing CEO's first appearance before Congress since an inflight door panel blowout aboard a 737 maxjet in January which did not substantially injure anyone but brought new legal and political scrutiny meanwhile the families of victims of the 2 737 Max crashes sent a letter to the justice department Wednesday seeking aggressive prosecution of Boeing and criminal prosecution of its then corporate leadership as well as the imposition of a24 billion fine we're joined right now by Nadia milleron Aviation safety Advocate whose daughter Samir Ros stumo was killed along with 156 others when eth e opian Airlines flight 302 of Boeing 737 Max crashed in 2019 Naga milleran attended the hearing on Tuesday she's one of the signatories of the letter to the justice department and she's now running for congress in the first district of Massachusetts as an independent njja milleran joins us from Sheffield from her home uh welcome to democracy now najja you were there holding up um together um with your husband the picture of Samia your daughter who died in that Ethiopian Boeing flight uh can you respond to First the CEO turning around to all of you and apologizing yes he actually walked down the um line of us and apologized to each person he looked at me in the eye and so I looked at him back and I said how can you apologize are you also sorry for the deaths of innocent people that bombs are causing in Rafa and at that point he just turned away from me so if you are really sorry if you really are not wanting to profit from Death then you would respond you would stick it out you would look at the person another mother started crying when he apologized to her again when she started crying he just turned away walked away from her so that is a rehearsed apology and he is benefiting from all kinds of deaths so he can he's gotten bonuses for killing all of our family members he has an 40 I think they estimated as 42 in um per increase in his salary um causing during causing the Alaska blowout so it's on his watch that that happened so he he's very disingenuous he kept saying I've only been here since 2020 yes he's only been the CEO since 2020 but he's been involved in all these decisions he's been on the board he's been integrally involved in keeping the max flying SI during his tenure of Boeing so it's disingenuous to talk about 2020 he can't you know stick it out and and really listen to um us highlighting what he is doing earning money from the death of Innocence so I just want to paint an entire picture of a character that appeared that hearing showed a human being and what is he about a person who needs to be prosecuted his company needs to be prosecuted can you talk about what you feel Boeing needs to do right now and the revelations that keep on coming out about um the lack of oversight or people overseeing their own work and the whistleblowers coming forward and the whistleblowers who have died so John Barnett who they say died by Suicide um his whole family was there at the hearing and they were holding pictures of John so John Barnett was a person who was very skilled in Boeing and he was moved from Seattle to South Carolina to make sure that they did the work properly and in South Carolina the people harassed him and harassed harassed him just because he wanted the planes to be safe and he wanted the work to be done correctly they harassed him for seven years when the CEO Dave Calhoun was asked by the Senate panel uh what what happened to the person who harassed all these whistleblowers what happened to those supervisors he said he didn't know but most of them are in their jobs and most of them have gotten promoted so you know the fact that he said he did know it's completely disingenuous the culture of Boeing is to reward so just let's step back a second why is Dave Calhoun paid $32 million he's paid that money to cut costs that's what he's good at so he's not good at production he's not an engineer he he's paid to strip mine the company and that's what he's doing so so he promotes people the company promotes people the the culture of the company is to short their product which is opposite to success of the company that we would like them to do is make good products and the I think this letter that we just sent the justice department is absolutely a brilliant solution because Boe is motivated by the by money and so if they have a fine hanging over their head and an outside monitor we believe that this is a way that they would actually change their behavior so Boeing has metrics they had metrics in 2015 they and and Richard Blumenthal the senator he pointed this out during the hearing and he showed a chart so in 2015 when they were fined and they were fined many times and for Boeing fines are just the cost of doing business and also they Ed insurance to cover debts so so that's also a cost of doing business so they're not they they don't feel any pain from these from deaths or or these problems that are coming up so what we're proposing to the justice department is that there's an outside Monitor and that this huge fine be over Boeing's head and that the outside monitor makes sure there's compliance and then because the fine is going to the government so it doesn't actually benefit anybody so so what we want is behavior change on the part of Boeing and that they actually comply with their own metrics so in 2015 they they said we're going to do this and this and this and then in 2024 they said the same thing we're going and they cut and paste the words so it's the same metrics that they're saying they're going to comply with but they didn't do anything between 2015 and 2024 it's the same metrics that they have that they're not complying with so that's what we want we want them to produce safe planes it's pretty simple a new whistleblower a Boeing quality assurance investigator Sam mohawk recently reported the systemic disregard of potentially defective Parts at the 737 Factory uh can you talk about what this means it's just part of the same problem where people are not focused on production you know that they need a CEO who knows how to who knows about manufacturing who cares about manufacturing and who can attend to the details they need to clean house well they need to clean house in terms of their leadership because their leadership is not pro is not producing their good product that they used to produce so they need you know I can't believe I think it was one of the Senators who told um Dave Calhoun that he should resign he should resign for the health of his company he's destroying the company now J are you calling for criminal prosecutions um talk about of the company and of individuals yes we're definitely calling for criminal prosecutions of mberg because there's a lot of evidence that was the CEO at the time yes yes yes so there's a lot there's plenty of evidence to prosecute him and I personally think that Dave Calhoun should also be prosecuted but the justice department is saying they don't have sufficient evidence right now to prosecute him but I think it is there talk about your decision uh to go a step further to actually run for Congress and why you're taking on Richard Neil one of the most powerful uh men in Congress formerly head of the Ways and Means Committee um uh in the 2020 uh filing the largest recipient of corporate pack money in Congress y yeah so Richard Neil was non-responsive to us in our efforts to get Aviation safety that bill passed bipartisan it passed unanimously in a divided um Congress and under the Trump Administration so that was a tremendous achievement and we had to walk all over Congress and go to every single office and talk to every single person and while I was doing that I was also grieving so I was crying but it w we were tremendously effed effective everybody flies so it's an issue that everybody can agree on but Richard Neil didn't help us and and then I found out that he doesn't help a lot of his constituents and so it's really important these issues are systemic in our society you know we're not we're not attending to uh for for example just look at this Confluence of events uh um you know uh Boeing is is bombing participating in bombing in Palestine and then uh they don't sell any max planes last month and so who buys all the max planes Israel but we're actually it's our tax dollars that are actually paying for all of this so we're we're paying we're giving all this money to for foreign aid to a country that already has complete health care for all their people and housing and those are things we need our people our tax money needs to be here we have so much suffering going on in our country and in our district and so Richard Neil is participating in all this he's Pro genocide he's thrown he's he's throwing more and more money at this situation and I'm against it so I would spend that money here at home and that's what our constituents need and that's what they want we have a shortage of doctors in our district people are suffering from extreme health problems because they can't be seen so Richard Neil is not in touch with the district he doesn't meet with people he he is he's responding to his funders and he has $3.4 million to run this race but only 28,000 from individuals so I have to appeal to individual people so uh I'm running I I I I I need to somehow get to a million dollars to compete with his $3.4 million and and I have to tell people to go to NAIA for congress.com so um I I I have to appeal to individuals for that that kind of fun

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 10,831

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: RNc_WM0fXLc

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024