Florence Foster, 68, an electronics technician who blew the whistle on a Los Angeles-area outpost of Northrop Corp., that led to a massive criminal case involving the falsification of tests on cruise missiles, died July 30 of renal failure at a Covina, Calif., hospital. After becoming one of about 30 employees in 1983 at a small division of Northrop, Foster immediately knew "something was terribly wrong," she said several years later. Worried that nuclear weapons with faulty guidance systems destined for the Air Force "could be the start of World War III," Foster mustered the courage to speak up about what she witnessed at Northrop's Western Services Department, she said in a 1989 interview.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
