Seems extremely unlikely that they would decide to kill themselves after 32 years at Boeing and deciding to blow the whistle.
"Barnett, who spent decades working for Boeing at its plants in Everett, Wash., and North Charleston, S.C., had repeatedly alleged that Boeing's manufacturing practices had declined — and that rather than improve them, he added, managers had pressured workers not to document potential defects and problems. "
I can also see someone whistle-blowing in good faith, getting harassed by ex-coworkers/managers or the court of public opinion, and just getting overwhelmed by the negative attention and feeling bad for the betrayal and killing themselves.
I can't really see a company faking the suicide of someone that already whistleblew and got national attention. That seems like a great way to exacerbate a problem that, if you leave it alone, probably won't be made worse by your leaving it alone. Like, what, a Boeing executive hired an assassin off the dark web with the click of a button to kill someone that already did the thing he was going to do? Executives can make some pretty poor decisions, so I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it would be a pretty wild mistake to make.
This is a good micro-example. Scrap bins! Sounds horrible! But is it? Do you know? Or is it just common practice? Is it called a scrap bin in the media to drive a narrative, when really it's just a parts bin like any other?
We don't know.
I particularly recall one with titanium (AFAIR) Hi-Lok bolts[1] that didn't pass the xray for defects. They told us those would be melted.
They looked flawless and were all brand new, nicely anodized. We were allowed to grab a few each, as souveniers. These are not cheap (I think the guys said they cost around 10 EUR each, at the time, but I may misremember) and a plane uses a shitload of them.
Now lets say you're out for whatever reason. That would halt your production line. If your safety culture is shitty, you may decide to just use those Hi-Loks that passed xray with 95% or whatever threshold suits you overcoming your shortage ...
And the above sounds to me like that's what the whisteblower suggested happened at Boeing.
[1] https://www.lisi-aerospace.com/en/product/hi-lok-and-hi-lite...
This can include parts that have been assembled only to be disassembled because an issue was found before it left the shop.
As far as your point is “the whistleblowers could be lying, the video investigations could be staged/one-offs, and the ongoing massive increase in safety incidents could be unrelated to the publicly-bragged-about intentionally-done corner cutting”, that’s fair, the jury is still out. Figuratively, ofc, because they aren’t yet facing any real weighty investigations AFAIK, only small ones.
But “maybe the you’re supposed to use parts from scrap bins”? No. Not for fucking airplanes
EDIT: an analogy; is it ever okay to store passwords in plain text? Maybe, if by “plain text” you mean the text that’s encrypted by a normal auth system. But that’s just not how that word is used, and is giving an absurd benefit of the doubt to people who do not deserve it