» 2011 » May Ms Sparky

A DynCorp contractor in Afghanistan

Posted on: May 11th, 2011 at 10:00 am — by Ms Sparky

Afghani police use a rifle training course in Kabul as a DynCorp employee looks on

David Isenberg – The PMSC Observer & Huffington Post

Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq (Praeger Security International)

I received the following email from a Dyncorp contractor working in Afghanistan. He works as a trainer to the Afghan National Police. His comments below are worth reading.

But before you do you might remember that DynCorp is a member of the International Stability Operations Association, which has an elaborate Code of Conduct detailing how its companies are supposed to treat its employees. But judging from the below it appears DynCorp missed or ignored Part 6.11.

“Signatories shall provide their personnel with the appropriate training, equipment and materials necessary to perform their duties.”

For whatever reason Dyn upper management has a severe disconnect between them and the actual workers on the ground. They have, so far, provided very little support in either equipment or services to us. I don’t think I would choose to work for them again.

My job here is to train and assess the Afghan National Police. They want us to train them in “community policing” and teach them how to run a professional police department. The soldiers themselves are happy to have me because I provide a lot of experience many of them don’t have. As for the success of the mission, I am skeptical. The Afghans do not think like us and they have a very different culture. I feel that they know we will eventually leave and that things will go back to the way they were prior to our arrival. Therefore they intend to get as much from us as possible while we are here. Were I in their shoes I imagine I would do the same. But ultimately I think our mission here will fail. (Read the rest of the story here…)

Posted in GOV. CONTRACTORS, Security Contractors. Tags: Afghan National Police, David Isenberg*, DynCorp CIVPOL*. 10 Comments »

Army veteran’s lawyer argues to reinstate KBR lawsuit

Posted on: May 10th, 2011 at 12:38 pm — by Ms Sparky

By Brian Bowling, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A federal appeals court should reinstate an Iraqi war veteran`s lawsuit against a defense contractor because the contractor delayed revealing information that would have allowed doctors to diagnose and treat the veteran’s illness, a lawyer for the Pleasant Hills man argued today.

Fred Jug, one of the lawyers representing Glen Bootay, 32, said KBR Inc. of Houston had an obligation to warn Bootay and other soldiers in April 2003 about the danger of being exposed to sodium dichromate that was spread around the Qarmat Ali water treatment facility they guarded while KBR employees restored it to service.

Instead, the company went so far as to immediately transfer one of its own employees who raised the question of warning the soldiers, he said. “That is outrageous,” Jug said during the hearing at the federal courthouse, Downtown.

Kurt Hamrock, a lawyer for KBR, urged the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry`s Sept. 9 ruling that the company had no duty to warn the soldiers about the danger of being exposed to the chemical.

Bootay sat in a wheelchair at the back of the courtroom during the hearing. Rob Bootay said his brother was too exhausted to talk afterward. The chemical exposure has given the former combat engineer chronic health problems that include constant headaches, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, extreme fatigue and short-term memory loss, according to his lawsuit. (click HERE for original article)

Posted in A Soldiers Story, CHEMICAL AND OTHER EXPOSURES, GOV. CONTRACTORS, LAWSUITS, Lawsuits Against KBR, Qarmat Ali Lawsuits, RIO-KBR, Senate & House Committee Hearings, Senate DPC Hearings, Sodium Dichromate @ Qarmat Ali. Tags: Glen Bootay, Hexavalent Chromium, Lawsuits Against KBR, Qarmat Ali, Sodium Dichromate. No Comments »

Prudential Insurance screws survivors of our fallen heroes

Posted on: May 10th, 2011 at 12:26 pm — by Ms Sparky

Military Families Can Take Prudential to Trial for Fraud

CHRIS FRY - SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (CN) – Prudential Insurance Co. of America cannot dismiss a lawsuit that accuses it of misappropriating hundreds of millions of dollars worth of life insurance benefits from fallen members of the U.S. military, a federal judge ruled.

The decision clears the way to trial for four class actions against Prudential, which has a government-sanctioned monopoly that Congress authorized during the Vietnam War as insurers were unwilling to underwrite service members.

U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor handed down the ruling in connection to the lawsuit filed last year in the District of Massachusetts. Earlier this year, three other similar complaints filed in the District of New Jersey were transferred to Ponsor’s court for consolidated proceedings.

Though Prudential is required to disburse the life insurance proceeds to the beneficiaries of the fallen service members and veterans, the families say the giant insurer will not send them an actual check. Instead it has been lining its own pockets with interest earnings accrued on lump sum insurance benefits owed to families of deceased service members, according to the complaint.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Posted in A Soldiers Story, LAWSUITS. Tags: Alliance Account, Fraud, Judge Michael Ponsor, Prudential Insurance Co.. No Comments »

The Uncounted Contractor Casualties

Posted on: May 9th, 2011 at 7:38 am — by Ms Sparky

David Isenberg – The PMSC Observer & Huffington Post

Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq (Praeger Security International)

Of all the things said and written about private military and security contractors working for the U.S. government in various war zones one of the least discussed is the sacrifices they make. And like regular military forces they also pay the ultimate sacrifice, as in dying. Unlike regular military personnel their deaths rarely get any notice, aside from a company press release and a few paragraphs in the hometown newspaper. (click HERE for Fallen Contractors Memorial at American Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan)

Their sacrifices are so unrecognized that if Washington, D.C. were to build yet another war memorial on the mall The Tomb of the Unknown Contractor would have to be considered a viable candidate for selection. To paraphrase the old saw about regular military forces, one might say in regard to recognition of contractors wounded and killed, “nothing is too good for our contractors so that’s what we’ll give them. Nothing.”

Admittedly there is slightly better recognition of the wounded and dead contractors than when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq but that is not saying a whole lot. There simply has not been much detailed analysis of this subject. That is why a recent paper strongly deserved attention. It is Dead Contractors: The Un-Examined Effect of Surrogates on the Public’s Casualty Sensitivity by Prof. Steven L. Schooner and student Collin D. Swan, both of the George Washington University Law School, was recently published in the Journal of National Security Law & Policy.

In the paper they examine the “casualty sensitivity” effect. Economists define this as an inverse relationship exists between the number of military deaths and public support. Currently, most studies suggest that “majorities of the public have historically considered the potential and actual casualties in U.S. wars and military operations to be an important factor in their support.” (Read the rest of the story here…)

Bloopers, boondoggles and other news

Posted on: May 8th, 2011 at 7:03 am — by Forseti

U.S. War Spending to Drop to “Only” $360 Million a Day
Now, it’s “really” down—to $131.6 billion—for 2012. That averages out to about $360 million a day…or $250,000 a minute. ~ Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

Boondoggle (project), term for a scheme that wastes time and money

Commentary: Army reservists helped Ugandan women escape human traffickers
Mary Sanchez – The Kansas City Star – May 8, 2011 – Word spread quickly among the desperate Ugandan women:

If you can somehow escape from the Iraqi household, go to the “Flying Man” statue. The Americans will help you.

Eventually, 17 women, many beaten and raped by their enslaving employers, made it inside the U.S. base in Baghdad in 2009.

The women were not U.S. citizens, nor hired by U.S. contractors, and the Americans had no jurisdiction beyond the walls of their base, having turned security matters over to Iraqi forces months earlier.

So, it would have been easy for the men of the 326th Area Support Group, an Army Reserve unit from Kansas City, Kan., to do nothing, to not get involved, to avoid risk of an international incident. That’s not the choice they made.

“I don’t know if I could have lived with myself,” said Lt. Col. Ted Lockwood, who organized the sanctuary where the victims of a human trafficking ring hid.

At least 150 Ugandan women, maybe more, are believed to have been lured into Iraq with the promise of jobs on an American military base. Instead, some were sold to wealthy Iraqi families for about $3,500 each. (Click HERE for article)

Watch: Osama’s Blooper Reel, Courtesy of the Navy SEALs
Spencer Ackerman (Danger Room) – May 7, 2011 – In life, Osama bin Laden carefully crafted his image as a pious, anti-American leader. In death, he surely wouldn’t appreciate the U.S. government releasing his blooper reel.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Defense Contractors Convicted of Fraud Often Continue to Receive Multi-Million Dollar Contracts

Posted on: May 6th, 2011 at 5:31 am — by Ms Sparky

Sen. Franken Presses Attorney General Holder on Contractor Fraud at Senate Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 4, 2011 - Today, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) questioned Attorney General Eric Holder at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on why, over the past three years, hundreds of billions of dollars have been awarded to defense contractors who have previously been convicted of fraud. The senator noted that this raises questions about government contracting more generally.

“Over a three year period, DOD paid over $270 billion to more than 91 contractors who were found to be civilly liable for contract fraud,” said Sen. Franken in his questioning. “What is even more astounding is that 30 contractors who were convicted of criminal fraud against the government received another $682 million in contracts from DOD, after they had been convicted…. We’re awarding billions of dollars in new contracts to entities we know can’t be trusted.”

Sen. Franken suggested that we should be more aggressive at targeting corporate executives, particularly when there is evidence that the executives had knowledge of or authorized criminal activity. He also suggested that we should be more creative about suspending or debarring divisions or departments of large corporations, especially when it may not be appropriate or in the government’s best interests to go after the entire corporation. This approach was recently used by the Department of Health and Human Services when it notified the CEO of Forest Laboratories that it intended to exclude him from doing business with the government following the company’s settlement of civil and criminal charges related to the marketing of antidepressants to children.

Posted in GOV. CONTRACTORS, Politics, Reports & Investigations, Senate & House Committee Hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee. Tags: DoD Contractors, Fraud Waste and Abuse, Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Al Franken*, U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). 3 Comments »

Contract unbecoming of a department of the U.S. Government

Posted on: May 5th, 2011 at 5:14 am — by Forseti

Triple Canopy Investigation, Deposition of Ronald Boline

Two More Merc Firms Get Big Iraq Contracts

Spencer Ackerman – (Danger Zone) – Two more security firms have won contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to build the State Department a private army in Iraq. The department confirms to Danger Room that longtime Iraq contractor Triple Canopy and newcomer Global Strategies Group will contribute to State’s planned protection force of 5,500 contractors.

In September, the State Department announced that eight security firms would share in a $10 billion contract to guard diplomats. Both Triple Canopy and Global were among those firms, which have the right to bid on so-called “task orders” for protecting specific department operations around the world. One of the first task orders awarded was to SOC, to safeguard the Baghdad embassy, a deal that would net the company up to $973 million over five years.

At the time, that looked like a slap to Triple Canopy, which has provided security forces for the massive compound since 2005, earning itself $438 million in the process. But it turns out Triple Canopy won’t be going anywhere — despite a warning about the firm from State’s own watchdogs.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Posted in Reports & Investigations, Security Contractors. Tags: Adam Hermanson*, Blackwater/Xe, DOS*, Global Strategies Group, Ronald Boline, Triple Canopy. No Comments »

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