Whistleblowing, Now on YouTube

August 29th, 2006 by Alex

The Washington Post today reports on the story of a 41-year-old engineer with Lockheed Martin disturbed by what he saw as serious flaws in a project he was working on for the Coast Guard. The engineer, Michael De Kort, tried and failed to get the attention of supervisors, congressmen and investigators — so he went to YouTube.

“My thought was, ‘What could I do that would be novel enough that it draws attention to itself, and through drawing attention to itself, something gets done?’ ” De Kort said in an interview from his home in Colorado. He is unemployed after being laid off by Lockheed Martin days after he posted the video. Lockheed said that the video did not influence the decision to lay off De Kort and that he had had been notified earlier this year that he would be out of a job.

De Kort’s video has been covered by defense trade magazines, and yesterday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to the Coast Guard asking for an answer to De Kort’s “extremely distressing” allegations.

Raw Story has the video.

 
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