LOGCAP III – KBR – Ms Sparky

Archive for the LOGCAP III – KBR Category

Court Revives Suit Over Electrocuted Guardsman

By Ms Sparky | Filed in A Soldiers Story, Chris Everett-US Army, Electrocutions/Shocks, GOV. CONTRACTORS, Larraine McGee vs KBR/Arkel, LAWSUITS, LOGCAP III - KBR

Larraine Mcgee holding a photo of her son SSG Chris Everett during a hearing about Iraq electrocutions

Cameron Langford – (Courthouse News) – March 1, 2012 – A defense contractor may be liable under Iraqi law for the electrocution death of a National Guardsman, the 5th Circuit ruled.

Sgt. Christopher Everett of the Texas Army National Guard was electrocuted at Camp Taqaddum in Iraq on Sept. 7, 2005, while using a power washer to clean a Humvee.

The Army attributed the 23-year-old’s fatal accident to an improperly grounded wire on the generator that supplied the power washer with electricity. It relayed these conclusions to Everett’s parents, Larraine McGee and Patrick Everett, in December.

Everett’s parents filed suit in Texas state court against contractors Arkel International, KBR Technical Services and Kellogg, Brown & Root Services in August 2008. They claimed to have only learned four months earlier about the alleged involvement of Arkel, a Baton Rouge-based company that maintained the generator at Everett’s base.

By September 2008, the couple filed identical claims in Louisiana state court.

Both cases were removed to federal courts, but the Louisiana case was stayed pending a ruling in the Texas proceedings.

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Tags: 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Arkel, Camp Taqaddum, Chief Circuit Judge Edith Jones, CPA Order 17, Electrocutions, Judge Leslie Southwick, KBR, Larraine McGee, Patrick Everett, SSG Chris Everett

After four years of fighting the good fight and spending countless hours at my computer documenting the rampant Fraud, Waste and Abuse of U.S. tax dollars in the hands of DoD contractors, I have submitted a petition on We the People.

We the People was set up by President Obama to take action on important issues facing our country. I think lying and stealing from the taxpayer is an important issue. Harming our troops in the name of profit is an important issue. I believe violating the FAR/DFAR is an important issue. I think the powers that be, need to get off their collective asses and hold someone accountable.

If you agree with the contents of the petition, I ask that you please sign it. I believe MsSparky.com readers are as fed up and disgusted with this as I am. If the petition meets the signature threshold of 25,000 signatures in 30 days, it will be reviewed by the Administration and an official response will be issued. Here is the link (Click HERE).

If you are not already registered with We The People, there is a VERY short registration required before you can sign or generate petitions. While you are there, please peruse the list of other petitions and sign those that are important to you and if you have an issue, by all means generate a petition. My petition is below:

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Enforce the law by prosecuting the corporations & criminals who have stolen $60 billion from the U.S. taxpayer

The Commission on Wartime Contracting estimates waste and fraud have amounted to as much as $60B during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defense contractors have subjected US military personnel to substandard services, shoddy work and chemical exposure resulting in permanent injury and death.

While the Pentagon may deem egregious behavior as satisfactory and indemnify this negligence as a cost of doing business, we the people do not. We call upon our government to hold accountable the corporate entities and individuals responsible for the heinous acts committed against the citizens of the United States and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

War profiteering has never been so profitable for the wrongdoer and so dangerous for our troops and the taxpayer. (SIGN HERE)

We want out $60 Billion back! And if someone ended up going to jail for it, that would be nice too!

~Ms. Sparky

Tags: DFAR, DoD Contractors, FAR, Fraud Waste and Abuse, LOGCAP, President Obama, We The People

That bird won’t fly and other news

By Forseti | Filed in Civilian Contractors, GOV. CONTRACTORS, Indictments, Convictions & Arrests, LOGCAP III - KBR, LOGCAP IV - KBR, Security Contractors, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Hold that Revolving Door! Four-Star General Coming Through
Dana Liebelson – (POGO) – January 28, 2012 – The revolving door that carried former Department of Defense honcho William Lynn III to a well-paying job with an Italian defense contractor keeps on spinning – now Gen. James Cartwright, who retired as the nation’s second-highest ranking military officer in August, is following Lynn into the private sector.

Cartwright is joining the Board of Directors at Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor. Earlier in the week, DRS Technologies named Lynn as its chief executive officer. (Coincidently, before Lynn was tapped as deputy defense secretary, he was a top lobbyist for Raytheon.)

“General Cartwright’s deep understanding of defense and broad experience in military operations and matters of national security will be of great value to our Board,” Raytheon Chairman and CEO William H. Swanson said in a press release.

Well, Cartwright certainly has a deep understanding of defense: He’s a four-star general with 40 years of service in the Marine Corps, including four years as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But then there’s that sticky “great value to the Board” comment. And that’s where the problem with the well-oiled revolving door that leads from the Pentagon to the defense industry rears its ugly head. (Click HERE for article)

Former United Nations Employee Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison
(DoJ) – WASHINGTON - January 27, 2012 – Jeffery K. Armstrong, 52, of South Riding, Va., was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for obtaining more than $100,000 in salary payments by fraudulently holding concurrent jobs at the United Nations (U.N.) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He was ordered to serve a three-year term of supervised release following his sentence and to pay $128,153 in restitution.

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You’ll pay for that & other news

By Forseti | Filed in Agility/PWC/GCC, GOV. CONTRACTORS, Indictments, Convictions & Arrests, KBR, LOGCAP III - KBR, Politics, Security Contractors, U.S. Army

“When I served four years in the military, it wasn’t so that Bechtel, KBR, Halliburton and all the other corporations could make money and buy politicians to further drag out the war and create policies that support all that,” Bodell said. “I fought for the Constitution, for representation and for freedom of the American people.” ~ Kole Bodell, Salt Lake City, UT

Ex-officer indicted for coercing soldiers
(Windsor Star) – January 21, 2012 – A former Danish officer has been indicted for threatening to send troops under his command to the Afghan front line if they refuse to pay a fine for certain errors, website Politiken said Friday.

The 33-year-old, in charge of a royal guard unit in Afghanistan, “put pressure on a number of soldiers in Afghanistan daily to contribute to a system of illegal financial penalties,” said the website.

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David Isenberg: Gun? Check. Radio? Check. Lawyer? Check!

By Ms Sparky | Filed in CHEMICAL AND OTHER EXPOSURES, Fisher vs KBR, GOV. CONTRACTORS, Huffington Post, LAWSUITS, Lawsuits Against KBR, LOGCAP III - KBR, LOGCAP IV - KBR, LOGCAP-Dyncorp, Qarmat Ali Lawsuits, Rape, Hazing, Discrimination & Harassment, Security Contractors, Sodium Dichromate @ Qarmat Ali

David Isenberg – (Huffington Post) – January 20, 2012 – Some things just seem to go together: day and night, bread and butter, Romeo and Juliet, Abbott and Costello, Crosby and Hope, Batman and Robin, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Cheech and Chong, Sonny and Cher, Beavis and Butthead and sharks and suckerfish (remora) for example. In light of that last pair, another symbiotic pair is private military and security contractors and lawyers.

When historians try to calculate the various benefits that the past decade of privatized contingency operations has brought, one hopes they won’t forget to include the huge number of billable hours that various law firms representing various plaintiffs and defendants have amassed. Firms like KBR, Blackwater and DynCorp alone have doubtlessly enabled scores of lawyers to pay for their children’s education all the way up through doctorates.

For example, earlier this month the security company once known as Blackwater, now Academi, agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by six victims or their families in the Sept. 16, 2007 shootings in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, an incident that remains a lightning rod over the use of private contractors in war.

According to Charlotte, North Carolina law firm Lewis & Roberts, who represented the victims in this case, the lawsuit was the “last active civil suit stemming from the incident,” in which five Blackwater guards were accused in 14 deaths of civilians.

Also this month the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), announced that DynCorp International, a Falls Church, Va.-based private military contractor and aircraft maintenance company, will pay $155,000 and furnish other significant relief to settle a sex-based harassment and retaliation lawsuit.

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