October 25, 2007
Just Business: Buying a US Embassy Contractor
An Update: Apparently, the sale of the Baghdad embassy contractor's US partner is a done deal -- or nearly a done deal. (Sorry about the earlier typos... I was typing in the dark in an SUV in the back country.)
According to documents: Robert Farah, Paul Jureidini and Robert K. Kelley are the key players to taking control of Grunley Walsh International (according to documents), which recently won over $200 million in new State Department contracts for embassy and consulate construction in Saudi Arabia, Gabon and Indonesia. The Baghdad embassy contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting is the prime subcontractor to the three new contracts.
First Kuwaiti is being bombarded these days by allegations of shoddy construction, horrid labor abuse, worker smuggling, sloppy security and bribery.
Farah of Alexandria, Va., Jureidini of Mechanicsville, Va., and Kelley of Chevy Chase, Md., have apparently formed a Delaware corporation called FJK Holdings, according to documents provided to me that appear to be prepared by the Washington law firm, Morrison & Foerster. (The firm is a big reader of this silly blog. Say hello to my site meter guys!)
Robert Farah: Is the former Washington representative to First Kuwaiti. He has represented the controversial Kuwait-based, Lebanese-run contractor at State Department meetings. Lebanese by birth, Farah is also a former information officer and secretary-general for political affairs of the Lebanese Forces political party from 1986 until at least 2001. His first recorded political contribution to a US national election was in June 2006 when he gave $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Farah began making moves around September 2006 to purchase Grunley Walsh’s newly-formed Grunley Walsh International soon after Grunley landed its first embassy work with First Kuwaiti as its prime subcontractor.
Paul Jureidini: Appears to be an associate of Armitage and Associates for many years, an organization run by the former Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005, Richard Armitage. Armitage was a campaign foreign policy adviser to George W. Bush in 2000 and part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans.
Robert K Kelley: Is a vice president of the public relations firm Audreac and Associates and serves an adviser to Bell Pottinger USA in Washington, DC., according to one document, which claims that Pottinger presently has classified contracts with the Multinational Corps Iraq at Camp Victory, Iraq. First Kuwaiti has a large logistics presence at Camp Victory, as well. Pottinger's mother ship owner is UK-based and ran public relations efforts for the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004.
Posted by davidphinney at 09:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
Baghdad Embassy Contractor Wins More US Contracts
Despite allegations of poor construction, lousy and abusive labor practices and missed deadlines for completion, the Kuwaiti contractor building the new $592-million-and-counting US Embassy in Baghdad has been quietly bagging new lucrative contracts to build US diplomatic compounds around the world.
In September, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., won a $122-million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, McClatchy reporter Warren P. Strobel has confirmed. Additionally, First Kuwaiti has won US embassy and consulate work over the past 13 months in Libreville, Gabon and a consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia.
Total Amount of Contracts: Well over $200 million.
First Kuwaiti has only been able to win more US State Department embassy work because it partnered with the US firm, Grunley Walsh LLC of Rockville, Md. Apparently, First Kuwaiti wields a hefty influence over management of Grunley Walsh's international operations.
Why? Because US law requires that only U.S. firms can bid on embassy construction as the prime contractor.
Strobel notes:
But industry analysts said that First Kuwaiti appears to be the financial muscle behind the partnership with Grunley Walsh. Lebanese businessman Wadih al Absi founded the company in 1996. News reports and Middle East experts say that Absi is a supporter of Lebanese Christian politician Michel Aoun, an ally of Syria and the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
Last year, First Kuwaiti's Washington representative, Robert Farah, began negotiations to buy Grunley Walsh. Farah told me recently that the negotiations were ongoing, but one State Department source believe that Farah and two other unnamed partners were successful in the purchase.
Most Amusing: First Kuwaiti has hired the public relations firm, Saylor Company, according to Strobel. The firm claims to specialize in "crisis" public relations and " is known for handling high stakes communications."
Posted by davidphinney at 10:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Iraq Revokes Security Contractor Immunity
The Iraqi government has decided to revoke immunity from prosecution that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority extended to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country, according to journalist Ammar Karim.
"The cabinet held a meeting yesterday and decided to scrap the article pertaining to security companies operating in Iraq that was issued by the CPA (Coalition Provision Authority) in 2004," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
Article 1 of Section 2 of CPA order 17: Issued by then US administrator for the CPA, Paul Bremer, stipulates that the "multinational force, foreign liaison missions, their personnel, property, funds and assets and all international consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process."
The immunity granted to private contractors has become controversial since a series of shootings involving foreign security guards, the most infamous of them a September 16 shooting in which employees of the Blackwater firm killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.
Posted by davidphinney at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Happened to Saba and Nashat?
Iraqi officials jailed two young men in the summer of 2005 for allegedly pocketing the wages of hundreds -- if not thousands -- of Iraqis working for the Sandi Group, a Washington, DC, firm doing a multi-million-dollar business in Iraq as the leading subcontractor to DynCorp's $1.2-billion Iraqi police training contract, according to sources familiar with the two men.
People working with Sandi who should know the details of the young Kurds, known as Nashat and Sabah, say they don’t know or ignore the question.
How much money did they allegedly skim from payroll? Company executives with The Sandi Group declined comment, but inside sources say salaries for Iraqi security workers averaged around $600 a month, and Sabah and Nashat are thought to have skimmed $200 off each monthly salary. Sandi documents represent Sabah as the chief of finance for the Sandi Iraq operations and Nashat as the chief of staff. If the two were in charge of a thousand workers, that could be $200,000 a month. Multiplied by 12 months and it starts adding up to big money: $2.4 million.
"When a worker complained, he would be threatened with being fired," one former Sandi employee says, who recalled Nashat driving around Iraq in a car with trunk loads of cash for payroll.
The Sandi Group and its affiliates once boasted of employing 7,500 Iraqi workers and claimed to be the largest employer in Iraq during much of 2004 and 2005.
MORE BELOW FOLD
Former Sandi employees recall Nashat and Sabah as two handsome and charming men from an area around the northern Iraqi town of Zakho, near the Turkish border. Zakho also is the hometown of Rubar Sandi, the hard-driving businessman and head of the company bearing his name. Employees recall Sandi fondly introducing Nashat and Sabah as his relatives -- some say Nashat even changed his name to Sandi. But the familial relations were more an expression of close national bonds and affection rather than blood. (Others remember Nashat's last name as either Younis or Hamed; and Sabah's as Permos or Bermos. Records represented as belonging to The Sandi Group provided by one former security guard identify them as Nashat Y. Hamed and Sabah Abdul Waheed Bermos.)
After immigrating to the United States in the 1970s, Sandi earned advanced degrees in business and economics and staked out a successful career as an entrepreneur, developer and financier. Now in his mid-50s, Sandi also cultivated friendships with prominent Republicans and became an active voice in pushing for the liberation of Iraq at the US State Department where he was an advisor in a pre-war planning effort, the "Future of Iraq Project."
Sandi returned to Iraq with the 2003 liberation and quickly scooped up interests in major hotels that were leased to other contractors, took an immediate interest in reconstruction, invested in the Al-Ahali Newspaper, and assembled the largest private security force in Iraq -- said to have numbered in the thousands.
"The Sandi Group was like an octopus," one former employee says.
At one time, sources say Sandi even entertained a bid for building the new $592-million US embassy in partnership with Philip Bloom, an American businessman who pled guilty in April 2006 to conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection to contracts in Iraq unrelated to Sandi. Although Sandi lost out on the embassy project, the State Department did award the company an open-ended agreement for work in Iraq when needed, including on the new embassy project.
Rubar Sandi boasted of his willingness to hire thousands of Iraqis and said it was fundamental to demonstrating support for the Iraqi people; something he encouraged other companies to do as well. Among those Iraqis that the company hired were Nashat and Saba.
"They knew Baghdad," said Louis Brown, who ran Sandi’s Iraq operation until autumn 2005 and was then based in Washington, DC as vice president of special projects until last spring before resigning. "I trusted them with my life."
Nashat, who began work with Sandi as a driver, and Sabah as an interpreter, soon rose to the highest levels of management in Iraq, Brown said.
Asked in March what happened to Nashat and Sabah and where are they now, Brown replied tersely: "I don't know."
One source laughed when told of Brown professing ignorance of his two Iraqi lieutenants, Nashat and Sabah. Loyalty and friendship may just be trumping candor.
"That sounds just like Lou," said the former employee. “But he knows exactly what happened to them and why.”
Posted by davidphinney at 12:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
Iraq's Police Training Program Records in Disarray
The State Department so terribly managed a $1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it can't figure out what it got for the money spent, a new report says (pdf).
Total Disarray: in invoices and records on the project -- and because the government is trying to recoup money paid inappropriately to contractor DynCorp International, LLC -- auditors have temporarily suspended their effort to review the contract's implementation, said Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr.
Maybe investigators should look into DynCorp's relationship with its prime subcontractor, Corporate Bank, aka, The Sandi Group, aka, TSG.
This is what I found in Sandi documents:
When DynCorp hired Sandi’s Corporate Bank in October 2004 to build a regional camp with 24 living trailers at Ad Diwaniyah, Corporate Bank billed $1,194,197. One month later, Corporate Bank then hired the Hozan General Construction Company of Baghdad for $605,000 to do the work. Similarly, DynCorp agreed to pay $833,680 for a 16-trailer camp at Al Kut. Corporate Bank then hired Hozan for $388,000. In Karbala, DynCorp agreed to pay $809,520. Corporate Bank turned to Hozan for $388,000.
Here's a taste of those documents....
Where to Look: Other than my thumb drives, perhaps Sandi's new office. Sources confirm that a fire broke out in Sandi's old office in December 2006. Some say all the records disappeared. Others say the records were untouched by flames because the fire took place in the basement and first floor and all of accounting and proposals were kept on floors 2 through 4.
According to Bowen's Report: Records prior to October 2006 could not be validated at the State Department. However, since October 2006, incoming invoices from DynCorp have been validated.
Sandi's Interesting Staffing:
Tim Crawley: Left DynCorp as vice president of contracting last June (2005), joined Sandi as executive vice president and general manager. At DynCorp, Crawley was responsible for "making sure that any subcontracts awarded were in compliance with all laws, regulations, and company policies -- including (where required) competitive bidding, cost-price analysis, and eligibility for award of government contracts," according to a DynCorp source. Crawley has since left Sandi, I am told.
"There’s a lot of confusion about this,” Crawley said of the contracts between DynCorp and Sandi.
Russell Hugo: Served as the Regional Director for Oversight and Support for the Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In this role, he was responsible for financial controls and oversight for over twenty-five countries in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe -- presumably including DynCorp contracts. He is now Sandi's chief financial officer and senior vice president.
See: Marking Up the Reconstruction:
Of the seven major regional training camps ... none were visited by the State Department. The government contracting officer who authorized the spending on the projects told Bowen’s investigators that he "never visited the sites" because of security concerns and that he relied on reports from others regarding the status of the camps.
Posted by davidphinney at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2007
Baghdad Embassy Coverup
A project manager and the State Department Inspector General covered up "enormous problems" in the management of the $592-million embassy project in Baghdad, McClatchy newspaper reporters Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay report today.
Problems became apparent after a mortar shell smashed into the sprawling new U.S. Embassy last May, damaging a wall and causing minor injuries to people inside the building:
The State Department contractor in charge of the project, James L. Golden, attempted to alter the scene of the blast, according to government officials familiar with the incident. The State Department inspector general prevented Department officials from investigating the incident, according to interviews and documents.
Meanwhile: A congressional committee is examining whether the walls of the still-unfinished embassy complex, which are supposed to be blast-resistant, performed as they should have during the mortar attack.
More Delays: Problems with the fire suppression system were "serious," according to Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's director of management policy.
Joints in underground water mains supplying the sprinklers leaked when they were tested -- but he emphasized that this and other problems were discovered as part of OBO's rigorous inspections.
Asked when the structure would be ready to occupy, Kennedy said, "Soon. But I'm not going to tell you whether soon is in two weeks, or six weeks or eight weeks."
More details to follow when I get a moment.
Posted by davidphinney at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2007
Baghdad Embassy Contractor Aims for More Business
Sloppy construction, safety problems, bribes, slave-like labor practices, missed deadlines, internal disputes and inflated costs -- the new $600-million US embassy compound in Baghdad is swamped in a rising deluge of allegations from lawmakers and the news media.
Meanwhile, the former Washington representative for the Kuwait-headquartered contractor now building Baghdad embassy project is actively negotiating to buy the contractor’s US partner company -- along with contracts for classified embassy work around the world that the US State Department awarded the two companies.
Alexandria, Va., real estate agent and businessman Robert Farah has repeatedly represented the Baghdad embassy contractor First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting at State Department meetings in Washington. Riding on the success of winning the Baghdad deal for the largest diplomatic compound in the world, First Kuwaiti then partnered up last year with Grunley Walsh of Rockville, Md., to win other US embassy and consulate contracts in other countries worth more than a $100 million dollars.
The wedding with a US firm appears to be a key strategy for First Kuwaiti's efforts to winning more State Department business because only US-owned and headquartered companies may perform classified embassy work. And soon after the Grunley Walsh won three new contracts in Africa, India and Indonesia in September 2006 as the lead partner, Farah began making moves to purchase Grunley Walsh’s newly-formed Grunley Walsh International for an undisclosed sum along with the new embassy work.
Nothing precludes Farah from purchasing the company, although the Lebanese national and naturalized US citizen (and a former information officer and secretary-general for political affairs of the Lebanese Forces political party from 1986 until at least 2001), could be prevented from taking on classified embassy work if he used other than US-sourced financing.
Nevertheless, Farah's timing and his affiliations with First Kuwaiti as well as First Kuwaiti's apparent muscle in the ongoing management of Grunley Walsh does raise eyebrows. As one State Department career officer noted: "It's a bit strange for a newly-formed firm to win three contracts worth $150 to $200 million and then sell the company."
But that is exactly what appears to be going on according to a draft letter laying out the terms for Farah's proposed buyout. The three-page, Dec.22, 2006, document stresses that Grunley Walsh holds "secret-level security clearances issued by the U.S. Government," which are deemed essential to a potential deal. "Given that the State Department contracts require the renamed Grunley Walsh International LLC to hold a security clearance, the acquisition can occur only if the (US State Department) doesn't rescind the current security clearance based upon the name change or the change in ownership."
Attorney Robert Nichols, who drafted the letter for Farah, also had recently represented First Kuwaiti, as did Miller Chevalier law partner Angela Styles, President Bush’s former procurement policy director. Both Nichols and Styles have since moved to a new Washington law firm, Crowell & Moring, where the two continue to represent First Kuwaiti.
One February 12, 2007, Grunley Walsh also began working with staff from a Lebanese firm closely associated with First Kuwaiti, according to a document provided by a source familiar with the companies.
A document obtained by me seeks approval from the State Department for 19 senior GMD employees working with Grunley Walsh for clearance on the newly-awarded embassy contracts. GMD, also known as Global Management and Development and based in Lebanon, took part in designing and building the Baghdad embassy project as well as First Kuwaiti headquarters in Kuwait, according to the document.
In addition to representing First Kuwaiti at State Department meetings, Farah represents and is president of the Global Management and Development Group. Farah said it is only a coincidence in the similarity of names and that Global Management and Development Group is based in Virginia.
"It can be very confusing. Everyone uses the words 'Global Management,'" Farah said in a telephone interview.
Meanwhile, the marriage of Grunley Walsh and First Kuwaiti continues to be promising. First Kuwaiti and Grunley Walsh International are thought to be poised for building a State Department project in Saudi Arabia. They also were believed to have been at the top of the list for building a new US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, that the US State Department nixed this summer after protests from the U.S. ambassador there who said the area was unsafe.
Canceling the project caused a stir within the State Department because the department’s Overseas Building Operations division, known as OBO, had already purchased land for the project for more than $22 million, according to ABCnews.com. Friction became so great that the U.S. Embassy refused to allow a State Department official managing the project, James Golden to enter the Lebanon by denying normally standard "country clearance."
Golden is an independent contractor hired by OBO to lead the independent contractor who plays an influential hand in the award of embassy construction in trouble spots around the world, including the Baghdad embassy. Multiple sources say he has spent much of his time in Kuwait and Baghdad where he played a guiding role in awarding contracts to First Kuwaiti and its subcontractors
Asked about his affiliation with First Kuwaiti, Farah said he had not worked the company for "six or seven" months, but that he was still actively negotiating a purchase of Grunley Walsh International. "Money is not a problem."
Representatives of Grunley Walsh and First Kuwaiti have not responded to numerous inquiries about their association, although it appears First Kuwaiti does wield a hefty hand in Grunley Walsh's management, according to emails and documents obtained from State Department sources.
First Kuwaiti's general manager Wadih al Absi wrote in an email to Grunley Walsh president, Kenneth M. Grunley and Farah (using a First Kuwaiti email address), outlining the chain of decision making in their partnership:
"Since we care about our relation with GW (Grunley Walsh) whether it is sold out to Mr. Robert Farah or otherwise we need to set some policies and procedures in place as to avoid further complications and to continue a good and long working relationship" al Absi wrote in reference to embassy work supervised by the State Department’s Overseas Building Operations division, known as OBO.More below the fold....
Among al-Absi’s demands, he notes:
The following is related to FKTC’s scope i.e. areas which do not require security clearance.
1. Both parties are fully aware and reconfirm that the arrangement of Prime/Subcontractor is solely for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of OBO. Each Party will be fully responsible for its own scope of work as per the initial agreement.
2. Prior to any written communications with OBO, GW shall obtain FKTC’s approval in writing. Any verbal communications shall not be binding and no decision may be formalized other than in writing.
3. GW will forward any communication received from OBO immediately to FKTC. Further FKTC shall be informed instantly of any conversations in relation to their scope of works.
4. GW shall not enter into any contracts or agreements without prior written approval of FKTC. FKTC will undertake all negotiations and finalize any agreement. GW will bear any consequences to any agreements entered without prior written approval of FKTC.
5. GW will be responsible in regard to all requirements related to their scope of works including but not limited to design requirements and personnel.
6. FKTC is responsible for providing the bonding/LC’s for any of the awarded jobs and the charges thereof shall be shared by both parties pro-rata to their scope of works.
7. GW will forward to OBO or others any communications submitted by FKTC without questioning, provided that such communications would not negatively affect GW’s image and reputation. It is FKTC sole decision whether such communications are to be discussed with GW or not prior to submittal to OBO.
8. Each party will have full control over its scope of work including but not limited to execution, procurement, recruitment and subcontracting.
9. FKTC will keep GW informed about the progress of works as it goes and of any problem are being encountered.
10. GW will finalize and submit to the bank the letter of assignment of rights to FKTC in regard to their portion of the works.11. GW and FKTC will agree on a liaison to communicate among GW, FKTC and OBO.
II. BIDDING FOR 2006 – 2007 - 20081. FKTC will decide which projects will be bid and as initially agreed each party will be responsible for the costs they incur in their own right.
2. In case GW are unable to participate within any of the bids then FKTC will arrange another cleared American firm as to participate within any such bids under GW supervision and GW fee will be agreed on.
Posted by davidphinney at 04:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 06, 2007
US Embassy Contractor Missing Laptop?
A laptop belonging to a high-level executive supervising construction of the new US embassy in Baghdad went missing in May 2006 at the Kuwait office of the contractor hired to build the new US embassy in Baghdad.
Multiple sources formerly working with the contractor have detailed the theft of the computer, but my questions to the State Department and the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, have been met with silence.
A missing laptop from May 2006 may be of concern if it contained information about any US government projects in Iraq -- or elsewhere. The company has collected nearly $2 billion in US-funded contracts since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It may be of even greater concern since the laptop is said to have belonged First Kuwaiti's construction director, Samir Ida.(Remember the furor or the internet posting of architectural renderings of the embassy by the American subcontractor Berger Devine Yaeger Inc.? They are now all over the web.)
This interview from more than a year ago discusses the missing laptop with one former First Kuwaiti employee:
Q: Sounds like you have a professional job?
A: This company does not have proper procedures to be professional.
Q: What do you think happened to the laptop?
A: Well, there is a big chance that someone stole it just to get some data out of it.
Q: Hmmmmm
A: They left a wallet with money and a mobile phone lying next to it. Those things weren't stolen.
Q: Could be evidence for a fraud case?
A: I think this is what freaked out the general manager so much. Whoever did it must have known a lot about this company.
Q: Do you remember when it happened?
A: It was May 27 (2006)
Following the laptop theft, word is that First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al-Absi then ordered a virtual lockdown of his Kuwait office where more than 100 employees work. He is said to have wanted the building as "secure as the Pentagon." Al -Absi immediately installed video security cameras throughout the building, curtailed all internet access, forbid most employees from using floppy disk drives and thumb drives and ordered that all telephone calls be monitored and recorded, according to sources who worked for the company at the time.
This July 23, 2007, email is one of many I sent to State Department officials and First Kuwaiti. They have all been ignored.
Ms. French,I am a journalist writing for Iraqslogger.
I have it on good sources that a laptop was stolen from a high level embassy contractor building the US embassy, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting. The computer disappeared at the end of May 2006 from the offices of FKTC and possibly belonged to Samir Ida, a top executive with the company.
I am also told that you have personal knowledge that this laptop was missing.
How important was this theft to the security of the embassy?
Was a formal report ever filed?
Was the missing computer ever located?
What corrective measures were taken after the theft of the computer?
Thanks, I am on deadline and a response at your earliest opportunity would be appreciated.
-------
Deadline? What a joke.
Posted by davidphinney at 04:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Rumors of First Kuwaiti Airplanes for People Moving
From spring 2006: The general manager for the US Embassy contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting has two airplanes the company can't register and is piloted by a German pilot named Wolfgang .... The general manager also has another plane piloted by Brits flying in and out of Kuwait and a fourth that may be registered.
Another source related around the same time: "Some people have rumoured that First Kuwait use Chapman Freeborn flights every Thursday on their 737 and also Phoenix on their 737 with other people carried by Air Cargo Integrators ACI out of Kuwait. We, of course, could not possibly comment on how accurate these rumours are. I am sure you can get to the bottom of things. Hope this helps."
Posted by davidphinney at 04:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 24, 2007
The Contractor's Fight at Home
War for Hire: Dan Rather explores the "invisible army" in Iraq and the combat contractors face. In an extended online report for HD.net scheduled for June 4, Rather portrays the 100,000 or more civilian contract workers as being caught in the "crosshairs," whose uncounted casualties and injuries go overlooked in daily Pentagon briefings and the news media.
Interviews Include: Injured contractors who have returned to the United States only to battle for disability and medical coverage with their former employers to heal their wounds and rebuild their lives. Video from Iraq constantly suggests to viewers that the civilian truck drivers remain a largely-unarmed and untrained "soft" targets.
One contractor now missing a leg and struggling with serious loss of sight, recalls that before he took a job with KBR, President Bush announced "mission accomplished" and "major combat is over."
See It Now: Americancontractorsiniraq.com links to the entire program. The Website's founder, Knoxville, Tenn., resident Jana Crowder weighs in heavily on behalf of the challenges contractors face.
Congress Speaks: Several lawmakers in US Congress also share their thoughts about the lack of attention contractors receive. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., notes that the uncounted presence of contractors supporting the U.S. mission in Iraq "is completely unknown to the American people."
That may not be the case in the coming weeks. Major broadcast and newspapers are preparing similar reports, which echo a 2005 story originally reported by CorpWatch: 'Adding Insult to Injury.'
One Shortcoming in Rather's Report: The lack of attention to how many casualties and injuries have occurred among third country nationals and Iraqi nationals who are laboring under the U.S. flag.
Reuters Does Notice: in a Wednesday story:
The war in Iraq is killing nine civilian contractors a week on average, roughly three times the rate of last year, and U.S. government statistics show that non-Americans do most of the dying.... The contractors -- mostly Iraqis and nationals from more than 30 developing nations -- perform jobs from guarding senior U.S. officials to translating, cooking meals, driving trucks, cleaning toilets and servicing weapons systems and computers.
How many of those TCNs and Iraqi nationals are collecting their benefits as guaranteed by the Defense Base Act remains unexplored territory.
Posted by davidphinney at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 23, 2007
Book Review: Licensed to Kill
In his book, Licensed to Kill, Robert Young Pelton hits the bull's eye with a sweeping, crash course in the explosive growth of private security contractors.
Thrust from the sweltering groins of Africa, Papua New Guinea and other trouble spots around the globe where hidden treasures of oil and minerals tempt buccaneering entrepreneurs, the private security industry is now bursting in full multi-billion-dollar glory on the bloody streets of Iraq.
Pelton chronicles it all with gritty first-hand experience and a keen, knowing vision: the past is prologue and the present boom in Iraq screams a cautionary tale for tomorrow. We may be witnessing the birth of a roving, freelance warrior class in constant search for new wars. (On second thought, the world may already have one. It's called the global war on terror.)
Licensed to Kill, proves once again that Pelton gets the interviews and access that few writers even dream about. He gallops into the secret mud brick camps of Afghanistan; lifts glasses with big wheels while toasting back-room money deals; sweats through a Triple Canopy training camp in Arkansas; barrels down the dangerous highways of Iraq; explores the twisted life of a self-aggrandizing bounty hunter searching for bin Laden; and lives the daily tensions of retired cops and veterans struggling to make a living for their families back home as hired guns.
Although these blue-collar workers may earn $600 a day, they work 24/7. It is grueling and deadly work. Just ask Miyagi, one of the many characters percolating through the book. Sent home by Blackwater to his wife and nine-year-old son in Santa Barbara, an IED drove a gash through his arm and left a fist-sized hole in his butt. Now, he's waiting for a new assignment. He says it's too tough to make ends meet for his family as a cop in California.
Others, like Erik Prince, a politically-connected former Navy SEAL, never faced those worries. As the founder of the North Carolina-based Blackwater, USA, Prince hit the jackpot a long time ago with a multimillion-dollar family fortune. Today, his company banks on government security contracts totaling $750 million or more won after the Sept.11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Blackwater's success may be only the beginning. Prince envisions taking part in contracts all over the world with Blackwater's own private air force. The company claims it can deploy a private regiment of 1,700 anywhere within a 24-hour notice.
"Prince likes to think of Blackwater's relationship to the traditional military as something akin to FedEx's relationship to the U.S. Post office," Pelton observes after meeting with Prince on several occasions.
Then there's Col. Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guardsman, who first plied his mercenary trade on the outskirts of the developed world by getting mixed up with coups, mineral rights and guns for cold hard cash. Today, Spicer has reinvented himself with the newly-formed Aegis Defence Services. His company holds the largest security contract in Iraq and is charged with coordinating the chaos among tens of thousands of gun-slinging contractors working for scores of companies.
But who will coordinate the chaos of private security companies after Iraq? The business is already on the prowl for new work. "The thing to watch," Pelton cautions, is if hired guns become a permanent fixture in foreign policy.
Even more troubling, is the prospect that the private warriors will begin to freelance in backing political coups -- sometimes unknowingly -- because their mission can be disguised by contracts to protect oil fields, gold mines and other corporate property.
Pelton recounts chilling incidents of this already happening before Iraq sucked up the talent from around the world and then went begging for new recruits. No one knows how many trained and battle-hardened private warriors are working in Iraq. Some estimate 30,000, others say 50,000 or more. Most of these fighters will have few crossover job skills once they leave, but they will have proven resumes showing they carry guns for hire and answer to no one but their company boss.
Licensed to Kill may be just the first chapter in what may lead us to ask: what monster is this that the world has created?
Posted by davidphinney at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 22, 2007
The Iraq Reconstruction Mess: What Else is News?
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general charged with investigating the billions of dollars wasted in the rebuilding of Iraq, makes the news again with the same old story:
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said the program faced enormous challenges, especially an unstable security environment.... "There have been notable accomplishments," but also significant shortfalls, he said. (Associated Press)
The Primary Culprits for the Shortfalls: Iraqi officials.
Little is said about how some U.S. officials and contractors work hand-in-glove with them. Like kittens at the milk bowl, news reporters lap up Bowen's reports. It's as though he has free rein to frame news stories crafted with never-ending, flattering headlines -- and set the stage for a reportedly possible Senate bid* in Virginia, home to many of the Beltway contractors he is charged with investigating.
Loose Lips Sink Ships: The inspector general's office at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is perhaps the most visible office there. Sources tell me that anyone who goes in to report waste, fraud and abuse gets noticed immediately within the tightly-knit community of contractors, U.S. government workers, news reporters and others inside the Green Zone. These people all socialize together, party together, and many look out for each other in the increasingly targeted area. Gossip spreads like wildfire about everyone else's business. Anonymity for snitches is nearly impossible....
"Say, did you see who just walked into the inspector's general office today?"
"Mission failure" is a constant concern and very few want to be the topic of conversation when it could be connected to multi-billion-dollar corruption and fraud. Step outside the Green Zone and a person can disappear and be chalked up as another unexplained casualty of war. Like sailors on a long voyage, it pays to get along with everyone in the crew. The alternative can be deadly. Someone might throw you overboard as the ship sails away in the dark of night and the cry for help fades in the distance.
See The Murder of a Whistle-Blowing Contractor.
Tuesday's Congressional Hearing:
"It is simply outrageous that we are mired in the same mud of incompetence that we got stuck in last year and the year before that. But knowing the administration's abysmal track record on Iraq reconstruction planning, this is no surprise," Tom Lantos, the committee's Democratic chairman, said. (Financial Times)
Here's Stuart Bowen's Bio: Bowen has served President George W. Bush as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Staff Secretary and Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel. He has been a partner at the law firm of Patton Boggs LLP, in its Washington, D.C. office. Before his White House tenure, Bowen served as Counsel to the Bush-Cheney transition team; and from 1994 to 2000, he held a variety of positions on Governor George Bush's staff in Texas, including Deputy General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel for Litigation, and Assistant General Counsel. (Wikipedia)
Could Bowen be a possible gatekeeper for damage control?
Of course not.... Just ask the news media. They maintain constant vigilance on such questions even if more than one former Bowen employee complains privately about having an investigation thwarted. After all, these cranks have axes to grind and government careers to protect. (phinneydavid(at)yahoo.com)
*In Virginia, Seator John Warner has announced that he will run for a sixth term in 2008, at which point he will be 82 years old. However, highly popular former Governor Mark Warner, who won 47% of the vote in a challenge to Warner in 1996 when he was but a little-known political neophyte, may run. Warner raised only $500 for re-election in the first quarter of 2007, which may indicate he will retire after all. Should that happen, possible Republican candidates include Congressman Tom Davis and Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling. (Wikipedia)
Posted by davidphinney at 06:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 05, 2007
Detainee: 'My Name Used to Be 200343'
A year ago: Donald Vance learned what its like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He was held without charge for more than three months in a high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family.
On Wednesday: The former private security contractor was honored for his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out against the incident. At a luncheon at the National Press Club, Vance received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award named in memory of Army helicopter gunner Ron Ridenhour who struggled to bring the horrific mass murders at My Lai to the attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.
Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a lifetime achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book, "Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone".
As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance, a two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the events of his imprisonment and the grief of his fiance and family. They did not know if he was alive or dead, he said. They were already making inquiries to the U.S. State Department on how to ship his body home.
He then drew a wider circle around his experience to include the countless others who have been held falsely without charge and denied normal legal constitutional protections under law. "My name used to be 200343," Vance said recalling his prisoner ID. "If they can do this to a former Navy man and an American, what is happening to people in facilities all over the world run by the American government?"
Vance's nightmare began last year on Apr. 15: When he and co-worker Nathan Ertel barricaded themselves in a Baghdad office after their employer, an Iraqi private security firm, took away their ID tags. They feared for their lives because they suspected the company was involved in selling unauthorised guns on the black market and other nefarious activity. A U.S. military squad freed them from the red zone in Baghdad after a friend at the U.S. embassy advised him to call for help.
Once they reached the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, government officials took them inside the embassy, listened to their individual accounts and then sent them to a trailer outside for sleep. Two or three hours later, before the crack of dawn, U.S. military personnel woke them. This time, however, Vance and Ertel, Shield Security's contract manager, were under arrest. Soldiers bound their wrists with zip ties and covered their eyes with goggles blacked out with duct tape.
The two were then escorted to a humvee and driven first to possibly Camp Prosperity and then to Camp Cropper, a high-security prison near the Baghdad airport where Saddam Hussein was once kept. Vance says he was denied the usual body armour and helmet while traveling through the perilous Baghdad streets outside the safety of the Green Zone or a U.S. military installation.
It was not the way the tall 29-year-old with an easy charm and keen mind had expected to be treated. Vance claims that during the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered, Vance said.
"He called it the bullets for beer program," Vance claimed while relating the incident during an interview this week at a cigar bar just walking distance from the White House.
Interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed: Instead, his jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been detained and imprisoned because the two worked for Shield Group Security where large caches of weapons have been found -- weapons that may have been intended for possible distribution to insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.
In a lawsuit now pending against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the United States and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse their U.S. government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.
They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture," says the lawsuit filed in northern Illinois U.S. District Court. "Their interrogators utilised the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Rumsfeld is singled out: as the key defendant because he played a critical role in establishing a policy of "unlawful detention and torment" that Vance, Ertel and countless others in the "war on terror" have endured, the lawsuit asserts, noting that the former defense secretary and other high-level military commanders acting at his direction developed and authorised a policy that allows government officials unilateral discretion to designate possible enemies of the United States.
Because the incident and allegations are now in litigation, the Pentagon has no comment, spokesman Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros said. He referred all inquires to the U.S. Justice Department, which also had no comment for similar reasons.
Darker allegations: are included in the complaint over false imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends, U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the two not because they worked for a security company suspected of selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law enforcement agents outside the control of U.S. officials in Baghdad.
"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents had implemented for 'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs and interrogate them toward that end."
It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal process grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising new questions about his detention. He still wonders why his jailers didn't just call the FBI and have him cleared. They had access to his computer and cell phone to determine if his claims were true.
"When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to stop answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said. "I think they were butting heads with the State Department. I just snitched on the wrong people. I took the bull by the horns and got the horn."
And why weren't managers with the Shield Group held and interrogated?
Interrogators were certainly interested in these other individuals, according to the lawsuit. They wanted to know about the company's structure, its political contacts, and its owners -- most of whom are related to a long-established Iraqi family who fled Iraq during the years the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein, Vance said.
More startling even now is that the company has reformed: At the time they left, Shield Security held U.S.-funded contracts with the Iraqi government, Iraqi companies, NGOs and U.S. contractors. As far as Vance knows, the company still does -- but under a different name: National Shield Security.
'I built their original web site. All they did was change the name," he said. "And they are still being awarded millions of dollars in contracts."
Motion for expedited discovery.
Posted by davidphinney at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2007
Building on Palace Grounds and Filling Sand Bags:
DynCorp's Iraq Police Training Program
Iraqslogger.com significantly advances the story on DynCorp's tier-one subcontractor, Corporate Bank, a.k.a., The Sandi Group, in a new series Profits of War....
The Washington-based company headed by a Kurdish Immigrant Rubar Sandi was poised to make $8 million on the construction of a police camp at Adnan Palace in Baghdad's Green Zone by first getting the contract from DynCorp and then flipping it to another firm, Cogim of Italy, to do the work for a lot less money.
But there's so much more to the story.
As the middleman, Sandi spent several years flipping US-funded reconstruction contracts on almost 30 police camps around Iraq -- sometimes with margins as high as 50 percent, according to contracts I write about exclusively in Iraqslogger.com that never have been made public until now.
Here's the math on the Adnan Palace contracts....
Contracts intended for the Adnan Palace: (Word files)
DynCorp to Sandi's Corporate Bank for $55.1 million.
Corporate Bank to Cogim for $47.1 million to do all the work.
See any substantive difference in the contracts?
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said he couldn't see much difference either. He's been reviewing the contracts for more than a year. Youtube.com preserves his statement at a Congressional hearing in February for posterity.
The News: According to agreements represented by sources to me as the real ones, The Sandi Group had even larger markups on smaller police camps all over Iraq built under DynCorp's $800-million police training contract in Iraq.
The nut graph:
According to the draft agreements, when DynCorp hired Sandi's Corporate Bank in October 2004 to build a regional camp with 24 living trailers at Ad Diwaniyah, Corporate Bank billed $1,194,197. One month later, Corporate Bank then hired the Hozan General Construction Company of Baghdad for $605,000 to do the work. Similarly, DynCorp agreed to pay $833,680 for a 16-trailer camp at Al Kut. Corporate Bank then hired Hozan for $388,000. In Karbala, DynCorp agreed to pay $809,520. Corporate Bank turned to Hozan for $388,000. In effect, one dollar of reconstruction money became $50 cents....
The contracts between DynCorp and Corporate Bank and Corporate Bank and the "sub-sub-contractors" read almost exactly the same. An administrative assistant sitting at a computer could have easily employed a copy-and-paste approach and just replaced a few words where it says "subcontractor's name here."
A Sandi spokesman explained that the cash discrepancy was necessary to pay its own security squads to protect the subcontractors it hired; for contingencies if Sandi's subcontractors fell short of delivering the product and for support staff.
Here's something simple: A sandbagging effort to harden a police camp in Najaf.
DynCorp agreed to pay $67,397 to Sandi's Corporate Bank for 24,990 sandbags.
Corporate Bank then hired the subcontractor, Al-Kahirat, at $23,000 to do the work.
The Iraqslogger stories: Marking Up The Reconstruction: Part 1 and Marking Up The Reconstruction: Part 2.
(Don't know how many millions Sandi collected on Adnan Palace because the US State Department put on the brakes after paying out $43.8 million for the uncompleted camp that included 1,048 living trailers and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But that's a whole different can of worms. You'll have to pay me a 50 percent premium to get into it.)
Posted by davidphinney at 03:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 05, 2007
So, Are you Saying Nancy Will Be Flying Commercial?
Emails from damage-controlling Democratic fact-checkers generously point out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi DID NOT request personal military flights to jet her and other California lawmakers between DC and the Golden State on a regular basis.
Apparently, it was the House Sergeant at Arms who offered to make the inquiry.
His name, I kid you not, is Livingood.
So Livingood offered to inquire, Pelosi accepted the offer and the wing nuts are in a big fuss about the luxury of it all.
This is how it happened, according to thinkprogress.org:
1) The House Sergeant at Arms, not Pelosi, initiated inquiries into the use of military aircraft. House Sergeant at Arms Wilson Livingood, who has served in his position since 1995, released a statement today clarifying the facts. He writes, "In December 2006, I advised Speaker Pelosi that the US Air Force had made an airplane available to Speaker Hastert for security and communications purposes following September 11, 2001." Additionally, Livingood writes, "I offered to call the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense to seek clarification of the guidelines [which governed Speaker Hastert's use of a plane]."
Stay tuned:.
#1. Will Nancy fly economy or business class on the taxpayer dime?
#2. Will she go military with all the cool technology, catered meals and full bar on an even bigger taxpayer dime?
#3. Does the Speaker really need Air Force Three?
#4. How about just tossing her an iPhone for cutting edge telecom needs instead of keys to a C-40?....
#5. Ultimately, some thoughtful reflection may be called for among all of us: This situation may lift the notion of "limosine liberal" to a whole new level.
We live in interesting times.... The possibilities for exploiting this are ripe with promise for everyone's amusement.
And thanks guys. I am sincerely grateful for the input. It's an amusing story and it must be a slow news night for you.
Posted by davidphinney at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 31, 2007
Marching Back to the Future: The Department of Peace
Max Boot parades his bright ideas about the use of civilians in wartime environments in The Los Angeles Times:
How Bush can ensure no more Iraqs
The U.S. is only a few bright ideas away from being the nation builder it needs to be.
In the opening graph, Boot claims that one of the "most intriguing elements" of President Bush's State of the Union speech last week was the proposal to create a "Civilian Reserve Corps" that would ease the burden on the military by hiring civilians to serve on missions abroad.
Boot's imagination reels at the possibilities. He dreams of a new federal agency called the Department of Peace along with a federal police force that would be dispatched to "enforce the law in lawless lands."
Call it the Department of Peace Enforcement.
Cute. And once upon a time, the Department of Defense was called the Department of War.
The military is the military by any other name.
There are now 100,000 civilian contractors working for the US military in Iraq. Most of them do work that the military once did. In addition to the 25,000 or so gun-slinging private security contractors, these civilians drive trucks, build and service military camps, do logistical engineering, join midnight missions to bang down doors of Iraqi homes in search of insurgents, take part in prison interrogations, train troops and police, etc., etc., etc.....
The whole idea of using civilian contractors was to save money and let soldiers be soldiers. Civilians can be hired when needed and then fired. That's allegedly why civilians make so much more money than soldiers do. Once contractors do their job, they're gone. There are no expensive training costs, no pension payments or explosive funding needs by the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Except now, with recent rewriting of Pentagon contracting code, these civilian contractors are getting to be as close to being soldiers as they can without joining the Army. They eat at military dining halls and many already carry weapons legally or otherwise. The rest can carry weapons when the closest commanding military officer deems it fitting. Contractors on the battlefield are now also subject to military justice on the battlefield thanks to recent legislation approved in Congress just months ago.
The president's "Civilian Reserve Corps" would absorb a big number of these civilians. Follow that line of thinking and in a couple of years, someone is going to have another bright idea. Let's put the "Civilian Reserve Corps" under the control of the military. Hell, let's give them basic training, uniforms, guns, medical benefits and pensions!
That would really bring down costs the old fashioned way -- with an appeal to national service and a promise that the country will stand by those who are willing to make the commitment. In other words, put the contractors back in the military.
Or then again, just reorganize the entire government according to Boot, call it a bright idea, and get the same thing.
Posted by davidphinney at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 03, 2007
Energy Independence in 10 Years
Imagine President Bush announcing a national plan to achieve US energy independence by 2011 the day after the 9-11 attack in 2001. We may have already been half way there in reaching the goal.
Bush could have muscled all of his political capital and the collective national will to support the development of energy efficient products and alternative fuels. Much of the money that has been spent in Iraq -- $350 billion and counting -- could have been spent on developing better automobiles, light bulbs, refrigerators, computers, and a sweeping catalog of other consumer products that would supply a whole new generation of high-tech exports for the United States economy.
Need the oil companies and other corporate interests to buy into the program? Well, corporations have done very well financially with the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Presumably, they would buy into a program at home -- especially if you paid them anything close to the money they are billing in Iraq.
Cynical? Perhaps. But a program for national energy independence also would create more jobs in the US as well. That in turn, would nurture further broad-based support for a national energy program.
Think of it as being similar to the US space program after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the world's first artificial satellite. It was the size of a basketball, weighed 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path.
The modest little orb spurred Congress to fast-track the National Aeronautics and Space Act and create NASA on October 1, 1958. So began the multi-billion-dollar, decade-long U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.
The Communist achievement was a competitive humiliation that President John F. Kennedy and his administration would not tolerate. Kennedy's new 1961 commitment to landing "a man on the moon," not only gave us the powdered orange drink, Tang, and the laptop computer, but it also reinvigorated public education and sparked other lasting political, military, technological, and scientific developments.*
An energy independence program would do the same things. According to one group, the Apollo Alliance, a 10-year national investment of $313 billion would spark $1.43 trillion in economic activity, $953.87 billion in personal income and over 3.3 million new good-paying jobs.
Landing a man on the moon in may have been more possible than making the United States energy independent in 10 years, but even if the United States were 50 percent successful, the progress would have enormous impact. Oil producing nations would come begging for business while cutting prices on their barrels.
*Sputnik also inspired San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen to coin the term "beatnik" in an article about the Beat Generation on April 2, 1958.
Posted by davidphinney at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 22, 2006
Babylon Rising in the Jet Age
Things began looking more sketchier than ever to John Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Iraq in March 2005 following some R&R in Kuwait city.
Working as a general construction foreman for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, the lead builder for the new $592-million US embassy in Baghdad, Owen remembers being surrounded by about 50 company laborers freshly hired from the Philippines and India. Everyone was holding boarding passes to Dubai -- not to Baghdad.
"I thought there was some sort of mix up and I was getting on the wrong plane," says the 48-year-old Floridian who once worked as a fisherman with his father before moving into the construction business.
He buttonholed a First Kuwaiti manager standing near by and asked what was going on. The manager waved his hand, looked around the terminal and whispered to keep quiet.
"'If anyone hears we are going to Baghdad, they won't let us on the plane,'" Owens recalls the manager saying.
The secrecy struck him as a little odd, but he grabbed his luggage and moved on. Everyone filed out to the private jet and flew directly to Baghdad. "I figured that they had visas for Kuwait and not Iraq," Owens offers.
The deception had all the appearances of smuggling workers into Iraq, but Owens didn't know at the time that the Philippines, India, and other countries had banned or restricted their citizens from working in Iraq because of safety concerns and growing opposition to the war. After 2004, many passports were stamped "Not valid for Iraq."
Nor did Owens know that both the US State Department and the Pentagon were quietly investigating contractors such as First Kuwaiti for labor trafficking and worker abuse. In fact, the international news media had accused First Kuwaiti repeatedly of coercing workers to take jobs in battle-torn Iraq once they had been lured to Kuwait with safer offers.
A FORTRESS RISES IN BAGHDAD
The Kuwait-headquartered, Lebanese-run company has billed several billion dollars on US contracts since the war began in March 2003. Much of its work is performed by cheap labor largely hired from South Asia and the company has an estimated 7,500 foreign laborers in the theater of war. Now, with a highly secretive contract awarded by the US State Department, First Kuwait is in the midst of building the most expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size.
But Owens says that working on the project proved to be one of the worst jobs he has ever had in his 27 years of construction work.
Not one of the five different US embassy sites Owens had worked on around the world previously compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies were always fair and professional, he says. First Kuwaiti is the exception. Brutal and inhumane, he says "I've never seen a project more fucked up. Every US labor law was broken."
Seven months after signing on with First Kuwaiti in November 2005, he quit.
In the resignation letter last June, Owens told First Kuwaiti and US State Department officials that his managers physically assaulted and beat the construction workers, demonstrated little regard for worker safety, and routinely breached security.
And it was all happening smack in the middle of the US-controlled Green Zone -- right under the nose of the State Department that had quietly awarded the controversial embassy contract in July 2005.
He also complained of poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice in the labor camps where several thousand low-paid migrant workers lived. Those workers, recruited on the global labor market from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and other poor south Asian countries, earned as little as $10 to $30 a day. As with many US-funded contractors, First Kuwaiti prefers importing labor because it views Iraqi workers as a security headache not worth the trouble.
Despite numerous emails and phone calls about such allegations, neither First Kuwaiti general manager Wadih Al Absi nor his lawyer Angela Styles, the former top White House contract policy advisor, have responded. After a year of requests, State Department officials involved with the project also have ignored or rejected opportunities for comment.
YOUR PASSPORTS PLEASE
That same March Owens returned to work in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry would witness similar events after he flew to Kuwait from his home in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.
The gravely voiced, easy-going Army veteran had previously worked in Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company, Danubia. Missing the action and the big paychecks US contractors draw Iraq, he snagged a $10,000 a month job with MSDS consulting Company.
MSDS is a two-person minority-owned consulting company that assists US State Department managers in Washington with procurement programming. Never before had the firm offered medical services or worked in Iraq, but First Kuwaiti hired MSDS on the recommendation of Jim Golden, the State Department contract official overseeing the embassy project. Within days, an agreement worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical care was signed.
The 45-year-old Mayberry, a former emergency medical technician in the Army who worked as a funeral director in Oregon, responded to a help wanted ad placed by MSDS. The plan was that he would work as a medic attending to the construction crews on the work site in Baghdad.
Mayberry sensed things weren't right when he boarded a First Kuwaiti flight on March 15 to Baghdad -- a different flight from Owen's.
At the airport in Kuwait City, Mayberry said, he saw a person behind a counter hand First Kuwaiti managers a passenger manifest, an envelope of money and a stack of boarding passes to Dubai. The managers then handed out the boarding passes to Mayberry and 50 or so new First Kuwaiti laborers, mostly Filipinos.
"Everyone was told to tell customs and security that they were flying to Dubai," Mayberry explains. Once the group passed the guards, they went upstairs and waited by the McDonald's for First Kuwaiti staff to unlock a door -- Gate 26 -- that led to an unmarked, white 52-seat jet. It was "an antique piece of shit" Mayberry offers in a casual, blunt manner.
"All the workers had their passports taken away by First Kuwaiti," Mayberry claims, and while he knew the plane was bound for Baghdad, he's not so sure the others were aware of their destination. The Asian laborers began asking questions about why they were flying north and the jet wasn't flying east over the ocean, he says. "I think they thought they were going to work in Dubai."
One former First Kuwaiti supervisor acknowledges that the company holds passports of many workers in Iraq -- a violation of US contracting.
"All of the passports are kept in the offices," said one company insider who requested anonymity in fear of financial and personal retribution. As for distributing Dubai boarding passes for Baghdad flights, "It's because of the travel bans," he explained.
Mayberry believes that migrant workers from the Philippines, India and Nepal are especially vulnerable to employers like First Kuwaiti because their countries have little or no diplomatic presence in Iraq.
"If you don't have your passport or an embassy to go to, what you do to get out of a bad situation?" he asks. "How can they go to the US State Department for help if First Kuwaiti is building their embassy?"
DEADLY 'CANDY STORE' MEDICINE
Owens had already been working at the embassy site since late November when Mayberry arrived. The two never crossed paths, but both share similar complaints about management of the project and brutal treatment of the laborers that, at times, numbered as many as 2,500. Most are from the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Others are from Egypt and Turkey.
The number of workers with injuries and ailments stunned Mayberry. He went to work immediately after and stayed busy around the clock for days.
Four days later, First Kuwaiti pulled him off the job after he requested an investigation of two patients who had died before he arrived from what he suspected was medical malpractice. Mayberry also recommended that the health clinics be shut down because of unsanitary conditions and mismanagement.
"There hadn't been any follow up on medical care. People were walking around intoxicated on pain relievers with unwrapped wounds and there were a lot of infections," he recalls. "The idea that there was any hygiene seemed ridiculous. I'm not sure they were even bathing."
In reports made available to the US State Department, the US Army and First Kuwaiti, Mayberry listed dozens of concerns about the clinics, which he found lacking in hot water, disinfectant, hand washing stations, properly supplied ambulances, and communication equipment. Mayberry also complained that workers' medical records were in total disarray or nonexistent, the beds were dirty, and the support staff hired by First Kuwaiti was poorly trained.
The handling of prescription drugs especially bothered him. Many of the drugs that originated from Iraq and Kuwait were unsecured, disorganized and unintelligibly labeled, he said in one memo. He found that the medical staff frequently misdiagnosed patients. Prescription pain killers were being handed out "like a candy store ... and then people were sent back to work."
Mayberry warned that the practice could cause addiction and safety hazards. "Some were on the construction site climbing scaffolding 30 feet off the ground. I told First Kuwaiti that you don't give painkillers to people who are running machinery and working on heavy construction and they said 'that's how we do it.'"
The sloppy handling of drugs may have led to the two deaths, Mayberry speculates. One worker, age 25, died in his room. The second, in his mid-30s, died at the clinic because of heart failure. Both deaths may be "medical homicide," Mayberry says -- because the patients may have been negligently prescribed improper drug treatment.
If the State Department investigated, Mayberry knows nothing of the outcome. Two State Department officials with project oversight responsibilities did not return phone calls or emails inquiring about Mayberry's allegations. The reports may have been ignored, not because of his complaints, but because Mayberry is a terrible speller, a problem compounded by an Arabic translation program loaded on his computer, he says.
ACCIDENTS HAPPEN
Owens' account of his seven months on the job paints a similar picture to Mayberry's. Health and safety measures were essentially non-existent, he says. Not once did he witness a safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again. "The accident might not have happened if there was a safety program and he had known how to use a safety harness."
Owens also says that managers regularly beat workers and that laborers were issued only one work uniform, making it difficult to go to the laundry. "You could never have it washed. Clothing got really bad -- full of sweat and dirt."
And while he often smuggled water to the work crews, medical care was a different issue. When he urged laborers to get medical treatment for rashes and sores, First Kuwaiti managers accused him of spoiling the laborers and allowing them simply to avoid work, he says.
State Department officials supervising the project are aware of many such events, but apparently do nothing, he said. Once when 17 workers climbed the wall of the construction site to escape, a State Department official helped round them up and put them in "virtual lockdown," Owens said.
Just before he resigned, hundreds of Pakistani workers went on strike in June and beat up a Lebanese manager who they accused of harassing them. Owens estimates that 375 laborers were then sent home.
'TREATED LIKE ANIMALS'
Recent First Kuwaiti employees agree that the accounts shared by Owens and Mayberry are accurate. One longtime supervisor claims that 50 to 60 percent of the laborers regularly protest that First Kuwaiti "treats them like animals," and routinely reduces their promised pay with confusing and unexplained deductions.
Another former First Kuwaiti manager, who declines to be named because of possible adverse consequences, says that Owens' and Mayberry's complaints only begin "to scratch the surface."
But scratching the surface is the only view yet available of what may be the most lasting monument to the US liberation and occupation of Iraq. As of now only a handful of authorized State Department managers and contractors, along with First Kuwaiti workers and contractors, are officially allowed inside the project's walls. No journalist has ever been allowed access to the sprawling 104-acre site with towering construction cranes raising their necks along the skyline.
Even this tight security is a charade, says on former high-level First Kuwaiti manager. First Kuwaiti managers living at the construction site regularly smuggle prostitutes in from the streets of Baghdad outside the Green Zone, he says.
Prostitutes, he explains are viewed as possible spies. "They are a big security risk."
But the exposure that the US occupation forces and First Kuwaiti may fear most could begin with the contractor itself and the conditions workers are forced to endure at this most obvious symbol of the American democracy project in Iraq.
David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com.
Posted by davidphinney at 04:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 24, 2006
All that Jazz about "Viva la Nueva Orleans"
New Orleans will end up looking like Los Angeles soon, thanks to the flood of illegal workers flooding in from south of the border to do the rebuilding along the Gulf Coast. That's the prediction of a Los Angeles Times commentary.
Why will this be? The Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspended sanctions against employers hiring workers who fail to document their citizenship.
The idea is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane with the rebuilding, but the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants.
Given the snail's pace of rebuilding, the Bush administration's "idea" strikes pretty hollow. It's all about cheap labor.
Which is why the White House suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in Louisiana and devastated parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The pesky law inconveniently requires government contractors to pay prevailing wages when being paid with congressionally appropriated funds.
Writer Gregory Rodriguez, a contributing editor to The LA Times and Irvine Senior fellow at the New America Foundation, makes note of some fascinating historical data, stretching back to Irish immigrants building the Erie Canal, Italians building the New York Subway (great tile work, by the way), and Chinese building the transcontinental railroad.
Also, a more recent precedent:
The effects of Hurricane Andrew may better foretell New Orleans' future. The 1992 storm displaced 250,000 residents in southeastern Florida. The construction boom that followed attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who rebuilt towns such as Homestead, whose Latino population has increased by 50% since then.
Unfortunately, the fascinating train of thought trails off with passing mention of the "black-white divide" and leads to nowhere but praise for the Bush administration's proposed guest worker program:
Last week, the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to become legal guest workers. Good. Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.
What doe that mean? Let's ignore high unemployment among African Americans and working-class whites (many displaced across the country by Katrina's savage fury) in the favor of a new guest worker program for lower wages? Just because a guest worker program will probably happen, doesn't mean it is sensible or fair. It will just allow developers to profit off lower wages paid for by US taxpayers and perhaps trigger a "black-latino divide."
After all, African Americans helped build the US economy for more than 200 years free-of-charge until the bloodbath of the Civil War. That "pre-Katrina effect" had no guests. It was called "slavery" and enforced with whips, chains, gunpoint, and the tearing apart of families on the auction block. Those slaves that complained were greeted with threats of being sold "down river." No doubt, many of their descendents found their way to New Orleans.
I think I will leave my thoughts to trail off now.
Here's the full LA Times commentary.
Posted by davidphinney at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)