Boeing and nuclear profiteering factsheet

Boeing doesn’t just produce 747s—it also manufactures some of the deadliest machinery on earth, including military aircraft, missiles, and multiple components of the US ballistic missile defense system. Furthermore, its corporate history maps US nuclear history:

1. The Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a Boeing B-29.

2. Boeing co-managed a nuclear testing facility, the Santa Susana Field Lab, about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, where a partial meltdown occurred in 1959. The meltdown released the third largest amount of radioactive iodine in nuclear history but the incident was largely kept under wraps until Boeing recently settled a class-action suit filed by local residents who suffered from cancer and thyroid abnormalities. The site was shut down in 1989 and still has yet to be cleaned up to EPA standards.

3. Boeing supports the US-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, as it hopes to pick up aerospace contracts in India as a result of the accompanying lift of the ban on technology transfers to the country. The US-India deal would allow India to import nuclear material and technology from the United States for use in civilian nuclear energy reactors, which means India will now be able to use more of its indigenous nuclear material for use in nuclear weapons.

4. Boeing recently tested its Massive Ordnance Penetrator—a bunker buster designed to destroy other countries’ (specifically, North Korea and Iran’s) underground nuclear facilities. Bombing nuclear facilities is incredibly dangerous, as it has the potential to disperse radioactive materials into the environment. Such an attack would violate Protocol I to the Geneva Convention, which states, “nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.”

Corporation Website: www.boeing.com [1]

CEO: W. James McNerney, Jr.

Corporate Headquarters: Chicago, IL

For corporate watchers: Boeing’s major production facility is located in Everett, Washington, about 30 miles north of Seattle. It’s Weapons Enterprise Capability Center is located in St. Charles, MO.

This fact sheet was prepared by Ray Acheson, Reaching Critical Will of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.