'Blood money': One woman’s fight for justice against corporate America
Naoise Connolly Ryan with a photo of her late husband, Mick.
When Naoise Connolly Ryan left her hotel in the early hours of Friday morning, November 18, she walked along the still-dark streets of Washington, passing the White House, on her way to a 7am appointment at the US Department of Justice.
She had taken along a framed photograph of her husband, humanitarian worker Mick Ryan, who was killed in a Boeing Max crash in 2019, and made a point of putting it in front of her as she took a seat right beside Glenn Leon, US Department of Justice attorney.
She was joined by 100 family members who lost loved ones in two Boeing Max crashes, at a highly charged, six-hour meeting with department officials, but she was one of only three people to attend in person.
“It was important for me to come over [from Cork] and sit down face-to-face with officials and look them in the eye.”
The families, most of whom joined the meeting virtually, were looking for answers. They wanted to know why their relatives were killed in two preventable Boeing 737 Max crashes — Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019.
And, more importantly, they wanted to know why Boeing executives are still immune from criminal prosecution.
As Nadia Milleron, who attended in person with her husband Michael Stumo, asked: “Had an average citizen committed a crime that resulted in the death of 346 people, would that person be walking the streets free of criminal prosecution?” The couple lost their 24-year-old daughter Samya Rose Stumo in the Ethiopian crash, but they didn’t get an answer to their question.
Indeed, there were no answers.
As Naoise Connolly Ryan describes it: “There was a lot of huffing and puffing from Glenn [of the US Justice Department] next to me. He fumbled and he turned away, but you don’t get away with huffing and puffing. Our lawyer had all the information at his fingertips, but every time we asked a question, he had no answer.”
One of the relatives’ key objectives is to rescind the secret deal struck between Boeing and the Justice Department in 2021. None of the victims’ families were consulted about the final settlement, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, which included a $244m fine and a $500m compensation fund for victims. (The dollar and the euro are almost at parity; one dollar is worth 96 cents.) “It’s blood money,” says Naoise, who has refused to accept compensation as part of a settlement that gives Boeing officials immunity from prosecution.
He was fired in 2019 for allowing the global airplane manufacturer to cut safety corners in order to get planes to market more quickly.
It is also telling that the controversial deal was struck during the last days of the Trump administration. Details were announced to the press the day after the Capitol Hill riot in January 2021.
![Naoise Connolly Ryan: 'It was important for me to come over [from Cork] and sit down face-to-face with officials and look them in the eye.'](/cms_media/module_img/6613/3306572_16_articleinline_LC_20aircrash_2004.jpg "Naoise Connolly Ryan: 'It was important for me to come over [from Cork] and sit down face-to-face with officials and look them in the eye.'")
When asked if that was a deliberate ploy to bury the story in a busy news cycle, the Justice Department had nothing to say. What has particularly angered Naoise and others, however, is that the department appears to be no more open to victims’ concerns under Democrat President Joe Biden than it was under Republican President Donald Trump.
Part of the reason must have something to do with Boeing’s standing as a central plank in the very fabric of American industry. If Boeing is under attack, it might be construed that the USA itself is being targeted.
That has meant the families’ struggle to force the Department of Justice to annul its deal has been something of a David and Goliath battle, but not one without significant victories.
Last month, US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the US Justice Department had violated the rights of the victims’ families by failing to confer with them when it struck a deal in 2021 that spared Boeing from criminal prosecution.
He ruled that the families should be considered crime victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and said the next step was to decide what remedies the families should get for being kept in the dark.
The ruling prompted the Department of Justice to set up this month’s “meet and confer” sessions but, as Naoise Connolly Ryan says, it was nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.
“Everything they have done looks like they have given the criminals preferential treatment,” says Naoise.
And ‘criminal’ is the appropriate word, according to Judge Reed who found that the deaths of 346 people in two aviation disasters were the direct result of criminal behaviour on the part of Boeing and its leaders.
He said: “The court finds that the tragic loss of life that resulted from the two airplane crashes was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of Boeing’s conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
While Naoise accused the Department of Justice of inflicting new wounds, she said she was glad to sit in the same room and look its representatives in the eye.
None of the officials present was able to look directly at the photograph of her husband Mick Ryan, a native of Co Clare and deputy chief engineer with the UN’s World Food Programme.
“It is the cruellest irony that Mick worked in some of the most dangerous places in the world, yet he was in most danger when he boarded a plane made by a company that put profits before people,” his widow says now.
In 2020, Mick Ryan was posthumously awarded the Irish Red Cross Humanitarian of the Year Award. It was a welcome honour, but cold comfort in the daily reality of knowing that he will not see his young daughter and son grow up.
Naoise doesn’t want to focus too much on her personal pain as she wants to make life as normal as she possibly can for her two young children. However, she is utterly tenacious in her determination to expose the failings of people in high places.
Boeing’s litany of shortcomings have been exposed in several reports since the crashes in 2018 and 2019, yet she says it seems as if the Department of Justice is backing Boeing at all costs.
Just days before meeting families, department lawyers and Boeing sent almost identical briefs to the court saying that the victims had no remedies, even though they had not asked them.
“They are gaslighting us,” says Naoise.
Although she found the meeting a “complete disappointment”, she was heartened by the determination shown by families to hold the people in power to account. At one point, they asked that two government lawyers, who were seen “palling around with” Boeing attorneys at a previous court hearing, leave the room.
They refused to leave but, says Naoise, “we did not let officials away with their printed, pre-ready answers”.
At one point, a relative on Zoom said: “You should not be called the Department of Justice. You should be called the Department of Injustice.” Relatives have called for Department of Justice lawyers to be recused from the case because, they say, they have shown themselves to be “in bed with Boeing”, as Nadia Milleron put it.
The department did not agree to any of the relatives’ demands, with one exception. It agreed to a full arraignment of Boeing where victims can talk to the judge. The date of a court hearing has yet to be set.
After six contentious hours, it was the relatives’ families rather than officials who called an end to the marathon meeting. It concluded with a minute’s silence for the 346 people who died in two preventable accidents.
It might have been a sham, but it was not pointless, says Naoise. She was glad, too, that it was the families who called time as she felt they had the upper hand for one very poignant moment.
It is also important, she says, the world sees that the US Department of Justice seems to be siding with a company shown to have placed profit before safety.
“Boeing sought to deflect blame on to the pilots and shielded information from regulators about the flawed software system that plunged both planes to their catastrophic end. Much more needs to be done to root out the individuals and the culture they fostered that created this problem,” she said.
As new Boeing Max models await certification, it is more important than ever that aviation regulators internationally bolster their own oversight and enforcement, she adds. “Boeing can no longer be trusted to essentially self-certify its aircraft as it did with the Max 737.”
Her command of dates, facts, and figures is impressive as she discusses details of every aspect of the case. What is most evident, though, is her determination to ensure that someone is held to account for hundreds of deaths, including that of her husband, who died shortly before his 40th birthday.
Naoise Connolly Ryan remains undeterred in her fight for justice.
