Boeing leaks ‘for the greater good,’ Eastman said

Ex-worker says he meant no harm

By ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTERWithout a doubt, Gerald Eastman violated Boeing company policy when he spoke with reporters. A King County Superior Court jury will decide if he also violated the law. Eastman, accused of 16 counts of computer trespass, testified Monday that he had met with Seattle Times reporter Dominic Gates, and had shown him portions of documents that Boeing views as sensitive. But the quality assurance inspector said he did so only to highlight what he calls corruption at Boeing. Boeing searched for three years to root out the source of numerous newspaper articles citing internal Boeing documents. The company’s investigation culminated with Eastman’s arrest in May 2006. Each count against Eastman corresponds with a document that charging papers say was the basis for a Seattle Times article.Senior deputy prosecutor Scott Peterson on Monday called his big gun witness: Former 787 program chief Mike Bair. Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ senior leadership team is so cautious about information leaks that it meets in a room without exterior windows, Bair said. The room is also swept for recording devices, and wireless technology is not allowed.”We were nervous that somebody could intercept it in the parking lot,” Bair said.Bair said that the leaks to The Seattle Times were so disturbing that Boeing considered a polygraph test of its leadership team.”Initially, we thought the source of the leaks had to be one of the 10 or 12 people on the leadership team, or the two or three support people in meetings during conversations,” Bair said. But management scrapped the polygraph idea when it “decided that would look bad when that leaked out,” Bair said.”Everyone knows we live in a duopoly with a competitor that is heavily subsidized by the French, German and U.K. governments,” Bair told the jury. “And every day is intensely competitive with Airbus.”Boeing investigators questioned those privy to the information, and checked phone and e-mail records, Bair said. Among the files confiscated from Eastman’s home computer, the biggest “heart-stopper” concerned airplane concessions, Bair said. Concessions are the closely guarded difference between the list price of an airplane and what Boeing actually charges customers.”This is as close to the jewels you can get in terms of sensitive information,” Bair told the jury. If an airline buys a jet and then finds out that its competitor paid millions less for the same plane, “We’d have a social problem with that customer,” Bair said.On cross-examination, Bair admitted that the concession data never appeared in any media reports. Eastman later testified that he did not give concession information to The Times, “because it was my intention not to hurt Boeing in any way or release any info that would hurt Boeing.”Eastman told the jury that he needed to access Boeing documents to expose that the Chicago-based company did not do a thorough job of inspecting planes in production. While working as a quality assurance inspector in Tukwila, he wrote to Boeing management, the Federal Aviation Administration and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell about what he viewed as fraud in Boeing’s airplane production. Eastman said he was building up a relationship with Gates to prepare him for a larger story on inspections.”I was serving the greater good and Boeing, trying to stop what Boeing was doing,” Eastman said on cross-examination. “The public’s lives were at stake. They may not be strangers like the jury here, but they were still people’s lives and I care about them.”During a three-year relationship with Gates, Eastman said, “I was very judicious in giving only stuff that would not damage the company.”One of the jurors upon seeing Bair remembered that he used to work for him. Bair still works at Boeing, but is no longer 787 program chief.The juror works on the 787 program, and has worked as a finance estimator who helped prepare the type of long-range business planning documents that Eastman is accused of leaking.Judge Monica Benton excused the juror and sent him home, leaving 13 jurors including one alternate.Jurors were let out early Monday because one juror had a self-inflicted injury involving scissors.Closing arguments are set for Tuesday.

COMPUTER TRESPASS

Under state law, felony computer trespass is the act of accessing a computer system or database without authorization and with the intent to commit a crime.In the case of former Boeing employee Gerald Eastman, he is accused of accessing proprietary Boeing files with the intent of theft.P-I reporter Andrea James can be reached at 206-448-8124 or andreajames@seattlepi.com.