michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: In testimony before Congress, the chief executive of Boeing said, quote, “If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision.” So what did Boeing executives know, and when did they know it? It’s Thursday, October 31. So Natalie, for the past six months, we have been talking to you about what went wrong with Boeing’s 737 Max, this jet that crashed twice, basically back to back, over the past year and both times killed everybody on board. Remind us what you have uncovered about those crashes up until now. What went wrong?

natalie kitroeff

So the first 737 Max crashes in October. It’s not really clear what’s going on. It seems like it’s a new automated system on the plane. Less than five months later, another plane crashes in Ethiopia. And at that point, the U.S. and regulators around the world ground the plane. That’s when we really started digging into what went wrong here.

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michael barbaro

Natalie Kitroeff is a business reporter at The Times.

natalie kitroeff

And one of the central questions we’ve been trying to get at is, how was this plane designed, and how was it certified? And what we found out was that what contributed to both accidents was this MCAS system that was supposed to help pilots, but what it actually did was constantly push the nose of the plane down. So they had to struggle with it in both accidents, and the system pushed both planes into fatal nose-dives. And so there were design weaknesses there that were built into this system from the very beginning. And on the regulator side, we learned that the Federal Aviation Administration basically handed Boeing the responsibility for determining the safety of much of this aircraft. Boeing was regulating itself, to a certain degree. And Boeing never really fully explains this system, MCAS, to the regulators, and this is the system that contributes to both of the crashes. But one of the central questions that remained was, what did Boeing know? What did the executives at the highest levels of the company know about potential problems with this plane, about potential flaws in this system? And when did they know it? And that’s why the C.E.O. of Boeing, Dennis Muilenburg, was hauled up to the Hill to testify in front of Congress this week for the first time since both crashes — because lawmakers had the same questions that we did.

archived recording (roger wicker) This hearing will come to order. Thank you all for being here today.

michael barbaro

Right, and you were there. So set the scene for us of what this was like inside the Capitol.

natalie kitroeff

So the hearings start on Tuesday in the Senate, and the room is palpably tense. There is a row of family members of the victims of the crashes that are holding signs showing the faces of their loved ones.

michael barbaro

Wow.

natalie kitroeff

And then Dennis Muilenburg files in, and he takes his seat, and he begins delivering his opening statement.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Cantwell, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to join you today, and we share your commitment to aviation safety.

natalie kitroeff

He’s not someone who’s known as a very comfortable public speaker. He sometimes has a wooden affect.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Before we start today, I’d like to speak directly to the families of the victims who are here with us.

natalie kitroeff

But he begins his opening statement by immediately apologizing to the families.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) We are sorry — deeply and truly sorry. As a husband and father myself, I’m heartbroken by your losses. I think about you and your loved ones every day, and I know our entire Boeing team does as well.

natalie kitroeff

He says that the company knows that it made mistakes, and he vows to make improvements.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) We can and must do better.

natalie kitroeff

This is someone whose entire career, basically, has been devoted to the Boeing Company.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) I started at Boeing as a summer intern in Seattle. I was a junior at Iowa State University, studying engineering, having grown up at a family farm in Iowa. I was awestruck to work at the company that brought the jet age to the world and helped land a person on the moon.

natalie kitroeff

He’s saying, look, we share your commitment to safety, and that’s what he’s there to really persuade them of. And he says that he is looking forward to their questions — questions that turn out to be a pummeling from senators.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

natalie kitroeff

Well, the senators, from the get-go, are really laying into Mr. Muilenburg.

archived recording (jon tester) I’ve got to tell you — and I think I told you guys this in an office some time ago, I would walk before I was to get on a 737 Max. I would walk. There is no way.

natalie kitroeff

And the one who really goes the hardest is Senator Ted Cruz.

archived recording (ted cruz) Mr. Muilenburg, I have to say, the testimony here today has been quite dismaying.

natalie kitroeff

Senator Cruz starts in on a really intense line of questioning about this set of instant messages from November 2016, long before the crashes, that Congress just recently got its hands on.

archived recording (ted cruz) This was a text exchange between Mark Forkner, who was then Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the Max, and Mr. Gustavsson, Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot, is that right? archived recording (dennis muilenburg) I believe that’s the case, Senator, yeah. archived recording (ted cruz) So this exchange is stunning.

natalie kitroeff

In the messages, one of the pilots, a guy named Mark Forkner, is talking about how MCAS, this system, is causing him trouble in the simulator.

archived recording (ted cruz) Mr. Forkner, “Oh, shocker alert! MCAS is now active down to M2. It’s running rampant in the sim on me.”

natalie kitroeff

He says, it’s running rampant in the flight simulator. That’s this giant machine that’s used for testing. And then he says —

archived recording (ted cruz) Mr. Forkner, “So basically, I lied to the regulators unknowingly.”

natalie kitroeff

— so I basically lied to regulators unknowingly.

michael barbaro

And what does he mean by that?

natalie kitroeff

Well, The Times revealed in an investigation earlier this year that Forkner, months before these messages, had asked the F.A.A. to take MCAS, to take this system, out of the pilots’ manual. And at the time, he described it as a system that would almost never activate in a normal flight and that wasn’t all that significant. He played down the risks.

michael barbaro

It seems like he’s realizing that this system, MCAS, is more problematic than he thought and that he had told the F.A.A.

natalie kitroeff

That is one possibility, and it’s certainly what many senators on Tuesday seemed to think was happening.

michael barbaro

O.K., and how does Muilenburg respond to this line of questioning, especially from Senator Cruz, who’s coming so hard at him about it?

natalie kitroeff

Well, Muilenburg says that he became aware of these messages between the pilots before the second crash, but he says he did not dig into the details until very recently. And that’s the point on which Senator Cruz really hammers him. He says, “You’re the C.E.O.”

archived recording (ted cruz) The buck stops with you. Did you read this document? And how did your team not put it in front of you, run in with their hair on fire, saying, we got a real problem here? How did you not, in February, set out a nine-alarm fire to say, we need to figure out exactly what happened, not after all the hearings, not after the pressure, but because 346 people have died, and we don’t want another person to die?

natalie kitroeff

He’s basically saying to the C.E.O., you should have been on this. You should have wanted to know what was in those messages before the second crash happened. And senators were asking him this question —

archived recording (ron johnson) The fact that it took another tragedy to actually ground the airplane so you could actually have a fix that worked —

natalie kitroeff

— why didn’t you act sooner?

archived recording (ron johnson) Why didn’t we react? Why didn’t we ground that aircraft a lot sooner so that another tragedy wouldn’t happen?

natalie kitroeff

Why didn’t we ground the plane earlier?

michael barbaro

Before the second crash?

natalie kitroeff

Exactly. We could have avoided a second tragedy. And —

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Senator, we have asked that question over and over. And —

natalie kitroeff

He said, if we could go back and do it over —

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) If we could go back, we would have made a different decision.

natalie kitroeff

— we would ground the plane after the first crash. If we had the information then that we have now, we would have acted differently. But the lawmakers have a different view. I mean, many of them are saying, you did have some of this information. And the question they’re asking is, why didn’t you act sooner, given what was already on your desk?

michael barbaro

Right. So the central question about what Boeing knew, when it knew it, at least part of the answer is starting to become a little bit clearer, according to these senators, which is that the C.E.O. knew something before the second crash. And they’re saying that something should have been the basis for action that could have prevented the second crash.

natalie kitroeff

That’s right.

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michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. What happens next in these hearings? How do they keep pursuing this question of what was known inside Boeing?

archived recording (peter defazio) Committee on Transportation Infrastructure will come to order.

natalie kitroeff

Well, they pursue it by continuing to dig into documents. On Wednesday, these hearings move to the House. And the chairman of the Transportation Committee, Peter DeFazio, brings new documents.

archived recording (peter defazio) And I put up another document. It’s right in front of you there. And at 12/17/2015, I don’t know if you’ve — aware of this, but this was raised by one of your engineers.

natalie kitroeff

He brings one document that shows that in 2015, two years before the Max was cleared to fly, a Boeing employee raised concerns about the fact that the system could trigger based on just one sensor.

archived recording (peter defazio) Are we vulnerable to a single A.O.A. sensor failure with the MCAS implementation, or is there some checking that occurs?

natalie kitroeff

And the employee basically said, wait a minute. Doesn’t that make this system vulnerable to a single point of failure? The concern is if one sensor is responsible for all of this, then if that sensor fails, the whole system is in jeopardy. And that is precisely what happened in both of the crashes.

michael barbaro

So that’s a very specific warning and a warning that came, according to DeFazio, years before the plane was even on the market, which feels like a very significant and potentially damning revelation.

natalie kitroeff

Right.

archived recording (peter defazio) And then we have information provided to the committee by Boeing, which will now be the second slide.

natalie kitroeff

We also saw a document that showed that Boeing employees determined in June of 2018 — this is after the plane is flying, but months before the first crash — that if pilots took more than 10 seconds to intervene after an MCAS malfunction, the result could be catastrophic.

archived recording (peter defazio) And it says, “A slow reaction time scenario, 10 seconds, found the failure to be catastrophic.”

natalie kitroeff

Meaning the plane would go down.

archived recording (peter defazio) That a 10-second delay, which doesn’t seem like a lot of time to me, particularly —

michael barbaro

Just 10 seconds? There was basically no margin for error, and the plane could crash?

natalie kitroeff

Right. Now, keep in mind, 10 seconds for a pilot is longer than it seems, but what we saw in these accidents is that pilots weren’t immediately responding to this system. There were so many warnings in the cockpit as this system was going off, as it was malfunctioning, that they became overwhelmed, it seemed. And that’s part of why what you saw was they’re fighting against this nose-down movement until the planes both went into fatal nose-dives.

archived recording (albio sires) I’d like to read from an email that was sent to the general manager of the 737 program in June 2018.

natalie kitroeff

And we also heard about an exchange between a Boeing employee and the general manager of the 737 program from June 2018. Again, this is months before the first crash, in which this employee says that —

archived recording (albio sires) “I have some safety concerns that I need to share with you as the leader of the 737 program. My first concern,” he states, “is that our workforce is exhausted.”

natalie kitroeff

— the workforce is exhausted on the 737 line. Employees are fatigued.

archived recording (albio sires) “Employees are fatigued from having to work at a very high pace for an extended period of time. Fatigued employees —

natalie kitroeff

“Fatigued employees make mistakes.”

archived recording (albio sires) — make mistakes.”

natalie kitroeff

And that schedule pressure, combined with fatigue, is creating a culture where employees are either deliberately or unconsciously circumventing established processes. This employee points to process breakdowns and says, look, all my internal warning bells are going off.

archived recording (albio sires) “And for the first time in my life, I am sorry to say that I am hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”

michael barbaro

Wow. So in this second day of hearings, as these documents are being presented or described, does it become clear whether Muilenburg or any of the senior executives at Boeing saw them when they were being generated and, of course, before the planes crashed?

natalie kitroeff

Well, we don’t know in every case, but we know for sure that he received the warning about how the 737 line workers were fatigued and potentially cutting corners, because that email went directly to him.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Congressman, I’m familiar with that last communication that you referenced, and we did have several follow-up sessions with him. I told him I appreciated the fact that he brought up those issues and concerns.

natalie kitroeff

And —

archived recording (peter defazio) Just one quick follow-up.

natalie kitroeff

— Representative DeFazio asked Mr. Muilenburg, did you slow down production after you received this message?

archived recording (peter defazio) Did you reduce the rate of production at that point in time, given his concerns?

natalie kitroeff

And Muilenburg said no.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Sir, we did not change the production rate. archived recording (peter defazio) O.K. All right, thank you. archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Again, I think it’s very important that when you change a production rate in a line like ours, any change, up or down — archived recording (peter defazio) Sir, I understand there’s a whole supply chain. Understood.

natalie kitroeff

He said that the 737 factory kept churning out the planes at a rate of 52 a month. He said that it would have compromised safety to slow down production all of a sudden. It wasn’t exactly clear what he meant by that.

michael barbaro

Natalie, what does it say about Boeing that all these puzzle pieces, all these various concerns that have been revealed over the past few days, that they never really came together for Boeing and its top executives, at least in the telling of the C.E.O., to the point where the company felt it needed to act?

natalie kitroeff

Look, I think Boeing is wrestling with that question right now. On the one hand, you can see how, inside the biggest aircraft maker in the world, there are sometimes emails that go to the C.E.O. that might go unnoticed. There are issues that people have that might not be taken seriously at the time because engineers always have disputes. These things are always discussed. In retrospect, it can look much more significant. But at the time, it’s just viewed as part of the process.

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natalie kitroeff

On the other hand, this isn’t just any other giant corporation. This is the biggest airplane manufacturer in the world. The job is to produce safe airplanes. And when there are two catastrophic accidents that kill 346 people, it’s obvious that lawmakers, investigators, family members of the victims are going to comb through every warning, every potential concern that either was elevated to the highest levels or should have been. And they’re going to ask, why didn’t you do more?

michael barbaro

So after these two days of testimony, it’s very clear that Boeing’s C.E.O. is sorry. But it sounds like his overall message is that Boeing, knowing what it knew at the time, did what it could do, but that the puzzle pieces did not come together in a way that would have really allowed Boeing to prevent these two plane crashes. And I wonder if that seems credible to these lawmakers.

natalie kitroeff

I have to say, I think, overall, they believed that he was genuinely sorry, that he genuinely wanted to make improvements. But they seemed unconvinced that Boeing did all it could do, and really what they were pressing on was the question of accountability. They want someone — maybe more than one person — to be held responsible for these accidents.

archived recording (stephen cohen) Let me ask you this, Mr. Muilenburg. You said you’re accountable.

natalie kitroeff

At one point, Representative Stephen Cohen of Tennessee was basically yelling at Muilenburg —

archived recording (stephen cohen) What does accountability mean? Are you taking a cut in pay? Are you working for free from now on till you can cure this problem? These people’s relatives are not coming back. They’re gone.

natalie kitroeff

— asking him, “What does accountability mean?”

archived recording (stephen cohen) Your salary is still on. Is anybody at Boeing taking a cut or working for free to try to rectify this problem?

michael barbaro

And what does Muilenburg say?

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Congressman, it’s not about the money for me. That’s not why I came — archived recording (stephen cohen) Are you giving up any money? archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Congressman, my board will conduct a comprehensive review. That’s — archived recording (stephen cohen) So you’re saying you’re not giving up any compensation at all?

natalie kitroeff

He said, basically, my pay is up to the board. He noted that executives at the company weren’t going to be getting a bonus this year.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Again, our board will make those determinations. archived recording (stephen cohen) You’re not accountable then. You’re saying the board’s accountable. archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Congressman, I am accountable, sir. I take responsibility for these two accidents that occurred on my watch. I feel responsible to carry that through. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up on a farm in Iowa. My dad taught me responsibility.

natalie kitroeff

He said, I’m an Iowa farm boy. I was taught by my dad that you work through these things.

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) What he told me is to — when they’re faced with challenges, to carry through. And I don’t want to run away from challenges. My intent is to see this through.

natalie kitroeff

When asked if he was going to step down —

archived recording (debbie mucarsel-powell) And I want to ask you, are you going to be stepping down as C.E.O. of Boeing?

natalie kitroeff

— he said directly —

archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Congresswoman, I — no. archived recording (debbie mucarsel-powell) No?

natalie kitroeff

— no. But the lawmakers really didn’t let this issue of accountability go. At one point, one of the representatives said, “Mr. Muilenburg, turn. Face the families. Look them in the eye.”

archived recording I want you to take a look at them just for one second, because obviously you haven’t spoken to them. archived recording (dennis muilenburg) Look, Congresswoman, I — archived recording So I’m going to continue. Thank you, Mr. Muilenburg.

michael barbaro

So Natalie, how did these two days of hearings end?

archived recording I thank the gentlelady. I ask, in unanimous consent —

natalie kitroeff

So at the conclusion of all of this, as the final hearing is wrapping up, I step outside with Nadia Milleron, who’s the mother of Samya Stumo, who died in the Ethiopia crash.

natalie kitroeff I just want to know, after two days of hearings, how do you feel now?

natalie kitroeff

And I asked her, “How have these hearings been for you? What do you make of this?” And she says she’s not satisfied. In fact —

nadia milleron I am horrified that he’s getting a $15 million reward after these air crashes.

natalie kitroeff

She’s outraged by how much Muilenburg makes. And she can’t believe these new revelations — the idea that there’s new evidence that Boeing and that Muilenburg knew about employee concerns before the crashes.

natalie kitroeff It sounds like you feel like there have been new pieces of information that have — nadia milleron Definitely. natalie kitroeff — that have come to life? nadia milleron Definitely new pieces of information. Those slides were definitely shocking to me. That people waved their hand at Boeing and said, “Things are wrong,” and then he basically ignored them.

natalie kitroeff

I mean, it just has her incensed. And then — and she says to me, I actually need to go, because I want to go confront him, face to face, when this thing ends.

michael barbaro

Wow.

natalie kitroeff

So we go back inside.

archived recording [GAVEL SLAMMING]

natalie kitroeff

DeFazio hits the gavel. The hearing’s over. Everybody’s filing out. And Nadia marches over to Muilenburg and meets him, face to face. And you could tell his people want to get him out of there. There’s a security guard around, but he talks to her. One of the things she says to him is —

nadia milleron You were talking about your performance and, like, how you’ve been in this company.

natalie kitroeff

You kept saying that you’re an Iowa farm boy.

nadia milleron And then you start talking about Iowa. And you talked about Iowa just, like, one too many times. And the whole group said, go back to the farm. Go back to Iowa. Do that.

natalie kitroeff

Well, we, the family members of the victims, want you to go back to the farm.

nadia milleron And it’s because when you make all — mistakes like that, and you can acknowledge them, then maybe someone else should do that work.

natalie kitroeff

She’s saying, we don’t think you’re the guy that should be in here trying to solve this.

michael barbaro

We don’t trust you?

natalie kitroeff

That’s what she’s saying. She’s saying, we don’t want you in there. And he says —

dennis muilenburg I respect your inputs there. Let me just tell you, we are very focused on safety. And you have my commitment, my personal commitment, and the commitment of our company that we’re going to make the safety improvements we need to make.

natalie kitroeff

And so at the end of this, they’re at this kind of impasse where she’s saying, we want you out, and he says, I hear you, but I’m not going anywhere.

nadia milleron Transparency — thank you on your transparency. dennis muilenburg Thank you, thank you.

natalie kitroeff

At that point, they turn and walk away from each other. She walks over to the group of families, and he walks out of the hearing.

michael barbaro

That all sounds kind of unsatisfying to everybody.

natalie kitroeff

Yeah, I don’t think anybody walked out feeling particularly good about what happened in that room.

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michael barbaro

Natalie, thank you.

natalie kitroeff

Thanks for having me.

michael barbaro

The Boeing 737 Max remains grounded. The company’s board of directors is standing by Dennis Muilenburg, and Congress says its investigation will continue. We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. In the latest testimony before impeachment investigators, a Foreign Service officer assigned to the White House, Catherine Croft, offered new insight into the campaign to fire the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. The officer testified that a well-known former Republican congressman, Robert Livingston, now a lobbyist, repeatedly told her that Yovanovitch needed to be removed because she was an ally of President Obama with a liberal agenda — the same dubious claims made by President Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Both Trump and Giuliani viewed Yovanovitch as an obstacle in their attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals. And —

archived recording Well, right now, the fire is encircling the Air Force One pavilion where, obviously, the famous Air Force One sits. It’s a national treasure.

michael barbaro

— the latest California wildfire in Ventura County burned its way to within 100 yards of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, whose executive director, in an interview with CBS News, said that the flames had encircled the pavilion holding Reagan’s private plane.

archived recording So far, the library has been protected, but we’re surrounded on all sides by the fire right now.

michael barbaro