Alleged contractor failures on a critical Coast Guard program reflect a culture of poor leadership at leading defense firm Lockheed Martin, according to the whistleblower at the heart of the scandal.

Michael DeKort, who was laid off this year, claims that Lockheed Martin managers cut corners on a program to improve Coast Guard patrol boats, part of the service's $24-billion Deepwater modernization effort. Coast Guard investigations have corroborated many of DeKort's claims.

DeKort had been with the company for 12 years, working on a number of different projects including training simulations, the Aegis radar system and an upgraded command center. "The only project I worked on that didn't have serious ethics issues was Aegis."

On the $500-million simulations project, DeKort says he was encouraged by a manager to use new video switches that cost $40,000 apiece instead of switches that he already had on hand. That same manager eventually left Lockheed Martin to work for MediaTech, the company that manufactured the new switches.

DeKort says MediaTech officials pressured Lockheed Martin to remove him from the project. This year Lockheed Martin filed a lawsuit against MediaTech and partner L-3, claiming the firms lured away Lockheed employees and mined them for company secrets.

While working on the command center, DeKort says, he caught a subcontractor over-billing Lockheed Martin by as much as $70,000. He says that when he raised the issue to management, they asked him why he was worried, since it wasn't his money.

DeKort contends that as result of his conflicts with management over these and other issues, over time he was given decreasingly important work and steadily worse performance reviews. He has been unemployed for months and is unable to find work in his field -- a problem he attributes to his reputation as a "troublemaker.”

But DeKort claims he is just standing up to an epidemic of poor leadership at the nation's largest defense contractor. "It's a cultural thing," he says, adding that the only time there aren't ethics problems at Lockheed Martin is when there is good leadership at the highest levels. "Everything depends on the leadership capability and ethical standards of the person in charge."

Lockheed Martin spokesman Troy Scully contests DeKort's allegations: "Lockheed Martin has a solid program management curriculum. Our folks are very diligently trained. On top of that, we have a nationally recognized ethics program. George Mason University cited Lockheed Martin as one of best companies for ethics. There's no getting around it: Ethics is the blood that runs through our veins."