A JUST CAUSE ©

Book based on true events by
James H. Holzrichter, Sr.

“When is it ever wrong to do the right thing?”  

A JUST CAUSE is an intensely personal yet sweeping tale of personal integrity and corporate intrigue that speaks to crucial issues we are currently challenged to navigate as a nation and as a people eager to renew our faith in and claim on the American Dream. It is a suspenseful yet inspirational real life story of the power of the citizen, the potential for effective action in government, and the importance of family in trying times. It is a living testament to the enduring best of the human spirit and fragility of democracy. It is, above all else, a celebration of heroes.  

PREMISE: When a seemingly ordinary and seriously underestimated family man discovers evidence of potentially massive mismanagement and fraud on the part of the US defense contractor he works for, his desire to help the company itself and his need to protect his newly healing family and newfound sobriety crash headlong into the seventeen year long corporate assault on everything he holds dear for knowing too much and refusing to deny the truth. 

SYNOPSIS

When James H. Holzrichter, Sr. literally fell into a job with one of the country's largest defense contractors (and developer at the time of the Stealth Bomber), it appeared he had been given his second real break in life to leave behind a tortured childhood, a challenging youth, and the unstable work and constant moving he and his family had experienced for years. In spite of his absence of advanced degrees, his solid knowledge of electronics developed years before in a special program in the Coast Guard and his natural abilities to improve systems for tracking testing of high-tech parts and components led to rapid advancement. Add to this the additional life changing stint in rehab that also helped transform his life and that of his family, and it appeared he and they had been given a genuine shot at the American Dream. 

What he did not know was that his very abilities to create more systematic tracking systems and his almost accidental expansion of duties in doing so  would place his whole existence in jeopardy. As his work increasingly provided a view across normally strictly partitioned need-to-know only information on different projects and even stages of development, he inescapably discovered patterns of apparent mismanagement up to likely known fraud that resulted in mis-billing and over-billing the government and taxpayers of the United States to the tune of probably many millions to potentially billions of dollars per year. When his early distress over what to do and doubts over whom to trust left him nearly paralyzed in determining a plan of action, the arrival on the scene of federal DCIS agents demanding his aid as an essentially undercover secret federal informant genuinely presented a point of no return. The soon to be full on David and Goliath saga that was now in unstoppable full motion would take the next seventeen years to play out in high risk secret information gathering, humiliating family stays in homeless shelters, precedent setting legal battles, and barely disguised attempts on his life (and that of his children) along with the alleged murder by cancer causing poison of his co-complainant.