A lot of times right now, when I have dinner, I say: ‘Is this going to be my last supper?’ – Sam Salehpour, Boeing whistleblower

Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour discussed his motivations for sharing the truth in public, and the consequences of this decision.

“I guess nobody wants to wake up in the morning and say ‘I’m a whistleblower’,” Sam (pictured above, from the right) told an audience at Collision in Toronto, but added: “I have promised myself any time I see evidence that is going to result in loss of life, I’m going to speak up.”

However, Sam admitted that blowing the whistle required strength, and left him in fear of his life – especially following the recent suicide of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, as well as the untimely death of another whistleblower at the age of 45.

“We had a second whistleblower, 45 years of age, and he passed away,” Sam said. “So a lot of times right now, when I have dinner, I say, ‘Is this going to be my last supper?’”

Sam’s lawyer, Katz Banks Kumin LLP partner Debra Katz, said that some people directly blamed Boeing for the death of Mr Barnett. “It is a very chilling and terrifying thing for other whistleblowers,” Debra said. “John Barnett was valiant and he did everything he could, and Boeing broke him”

Whistleblowing is ‘not for the faint of heart’

According to Debra, “other people who call us have conspiracy views that actually Boeing killed him – because that’s how bad they feel that the culture is. And that’s very dangerous. John Barnett died tragically, he developed PTSD from the harassment at work. Many of our clients do.”

Debra continued, “It is not for the faint of heart to blow the whistle … people need tremendous support when they come forward.”

Explaining Boeing’s response to safety whistleblowing, Sam said: “Well, the culture at Boeing is they are not really too friendly to the whistleblowers. And you know, they try to eliminate anything that you do, dissenters, you know, to prevent you from engaging.”

Sam added: “They push you aside, sideline you, and eliminate you from all the meetings, everything else, and you basically sit in there doing nothing, you know, that’s one of the approaches that they take.”

“The other thing is, they kind of attack you from all aspects, [saying] that you are not doing the right thing, and this and that. But you’ve got to be a strong person.”

Speaking at Collision in Toronto, the former Boeing quality manager said that ever since the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986 – when serious safety concerns were not acted on, leading to the death of seven astronauts – he vowed to never stay quiet in similar circumstances.

“Ever since the space shuttle Challenger explosion, I have promised myself anytime I see evidence that you know, is going to result in loss of life, I’m going to speak up,” said Sam. “While I was in quality engineering, I saw that Boeing is taking a lot of shortcuts that could result in loss of life. So I spoke up.”

Sam’s journey: Years of persistence and escalation

Sam said that he spent several years trying to raise his concerns internally before deciding to blow the whistle. “I spoke out for about two and a half years internally, trying to see if I can mitigate the problem, but the management didn’t have the appetite to listen. So I had to go to external help and get them to help me so that we can get this thing addressed.”

Sam explained the efforts he went to to have safety concerns addressed, saying: “I think I started with my manager and you know, I’ve had three four managers: I have spoken to every one of them. And every one of them, they told me this is harsh, I need to water it down or something like that. And they wouldn’t hear.”

Sam said that he kept persisting and escalating his concerns, only for his efforts to be scuppered again. “We had to bring some other people in, you know, higher-ups … I had set up a meeting with 30 to 40 non-advocate reviewers to just go and listen [to] my story and tell me whether the hypothesis exists or doesn’t exist. And at the last minute … the rug gets pulled out of your feet … they cancel the meeting, or go to the person who created the problem.”

“So you go talk to the person who created the problem. You think they’re gonna admit that they made the wrong decision?,” Sam continued.

Debra added: “When Sam came to us, he had been banging his head against the wall, as he said, for three years. Facing escalating levels of retaliation from forced transfers, to being ostracized, to being given poor reviews, and to being given a threat of death by his supervisor.”

“And to be clear, what Sam was talking about was the manufacturing of the fuselage of airplanes. We’re not talking about small parts. We’re talking about the part that goes to the overall safety and soundness of airplanes,” Debra added.

“It is really important to get legal help because when people try to do this themselves, there are so many ways that really moneyed corporations who don’t want these issues to come to light can really try to smash the whistleblower.”

Taking Boeing’s history in account

Sam was asked whether this approach by Boeing was to blame for fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes, such as that in Ethiopia in 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near Addis Ababa airport just six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board.

It was the second crash involving a Boeing 737 Max within five months. In October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 was airborne for just 13 minutes before it plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. 

While Sam’s concerns related to different areas, he said there were common threads in the lack of common sense and a move away from traditional best practices.

“The only thing common … [is that] they have eliminated all of the common sense; their best practices,” Sam said. “Whenever you eliminate the best practices, you’re asking for trouble. And in the 737 Max crashes, they eliminated a lot of best practices.”

Recent legal developments involving Boeing

This discussion came just days after a Chicago judge granted a request from the families of the 2019 Ethiopia crash victims to provide the US Department of Justice with confidential documents and testimony obtained in their civil lawsuit against Boeing. 

The families contend the information they want to share with federal prosecutors supports “holding Boeing criminally liable“ beyond the single criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which formed the basis of an agreement between the government and Boeing in 2021.

On Tuesday, Boeing CEO David Calhoun admitted the company retaliated against whistleblowers who have spoken out against alleged production malpractices, telling a special Senate hearing, “I know it happens.”

Testifying at the hearing, the CEO apologized to the families of Boeing crash victims, saying the manufacturer was “totally committed” to future safety improvements.

Whistleblower protection and importance

Whistleblower Aid CEO Libby Liu told the audience at Collision what the organization provides for those who come forward: “We do everything in our power to protect the people of conscience that are putting everything on the line.”

“Part of that is helping them realize their goals for positive social impact. And big tech is an area that we spend virtually 50 percent of our resources on, because tech companies are so large, and they have such an outsized impact on the world around us, that we know there’s an issue with a small number of people who have the wrong incentives making decisions that impact the world”.

Libby highlighted the importance of whistleblowers to companies, saying: “I think one of the best predictors of massive tragedies that we have is to look at leadership at these industry companies that persecute and retaliate and silence whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are actually their opportunity to not go down the path to disaster.”

The comments were made as part of a wider discussion on big tech regulation at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:

• Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
• Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
• Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
• Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password (a cloud-based password management tool)
• Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
• Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
• Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
• Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
• Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

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Useful links

• Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
• Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
• Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
• About Web Summit: about.websummit.com