fdr
Expecting the criminal defense attorney for the former chief technical pilot to plan, initiate and complete a factual investigation which would go beyond and go deeper than the investigations already conducted probably is unrealistic. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the House of Representatives conducted investigations a lot more focused and effective than what one typically sees from the Congress. Other lawsuits also have yielded (presumably) a lot of factual material - prime example, the shareholder derivative lawsuit in Delaware. To think that this defendant in federal district court in a criminal case would have resources to dig deeper and into other subparts of the overall subject matters might be playing a devil's bargain or game.
To my knowledge there isn't any format in United States law and government for a process like an inquest in which the sole, exclusive, solitary goal is to unearth all the relevant and material facts, or as close to all such facts as humanly possible. Even the House T&I Committee staff work - which I've commended in earlier posts on this thread and others - is constrained by the "every two years cycle" of the Congress, perhaps to a significant extent. And -- while there obviously have been several "administrative" inquiry panels, notably the JATR, if at this late date there are factual gaps about precisely how and where this defendant was a cog in the machine, then those gaps represent and constitute a deeper problem.
Perhaps Boeing's role as a major defense supplier has deterred more aggressive and effective inquiries, or emboldened Boeing to get ahead of the game where it could - or both. And I've read stuff, not that I would be able to cite it here, articles that draw links between participants and members in a network of contacts built around people keeping Boeing's legal skirts clean. (Melvin Belli, the famed 1960s-era "King of Torts", once remarked that he wanted to hire only those young lawyers who wanted to get into the courtroom to vindicate rights of people who had been wronged, rather than mercenary types whose goals in law practice were nothing more than keeping some corporation's "legal skirts clean." Belli was interviewed in The Playboy Interview in circa 1967 and the quote is from there.) Whether the legal eagles for Boeing have been more like vultures, I don't know and would not speculate - but it has been suggested in the press.
How to assess possible solutions to a business enterprise's "culture" which has shown itself to be broken as badly as Boeing's has shown itself in this case, that is beyond the scope of this post and probably also beyond this forum.