Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says
By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD

Dec. 10, 2007—

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave. Jones described the container as sparely furnished with a bed, table and lamp.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated.

"There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted."

Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.

In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones.

"Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States."

In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.

"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it "is improperly named" in the suit.

In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations."

"The safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority," it said in a statement. "Our commitment in this regard is unwavering."

Since the attacks, Jones has started a nonprofit foundation called the Jamie Leigh Foundation, which is dedicated to helping victims who were raped or sexually assaulted overseas while working for government contractors or other corporations.

"I want other women to know that it's not their fault," said Jones. "They can go against corporations that have treated them this way." Jones said that any proceeds from the civil suit will go to her foundation.

"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."

This article has been updated.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Another KBR Rape Case
By Karen Houppert

April 3, 2008

It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Dawn Leamon, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. "Right then my whole life was turned upside down," she says.

What follows is the story she told me on Monday in a lengthy, painful on-the-record interview, conducted in a lawyer's office in Houston, Texas, while she was back from Iraq on a brief leave this week.

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Leamon would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Leamon says.

As a brand-new arrival at Camp Harper, she had not yet forged many connections and was working in a red zone under regular rocket fire alongside the very men who had participated in the attack. (At one point, as the sole medical provider, she was even forced to treat one of her alleged assailants for a minor injury.) She waited two and a half weeks, until she returned to a much larger facility, to report the incident. "It's very easy for bad things to happen down there and not have it be even slightly suspicious."

Over the next month and a half, she says, she faced a series of hurdles. She would be discouraged from reporting the incident by several KBR employees, she says. She would be confused by the lack of any written medical protocol for sexual assault (as the only medical person on site, she treated herself with doxycycline). She would wander through a tangled maze of interviews with KBR and Army investigators about the incident without any clear explanation of her rights. She would be asked to sign several documents agreeing not to publicly discuss the incident, she says. She describes having her computer--which she saw as her lifeline, her main access to the outside world--confiscated by KBR staff as "evidence" within hours of receiving her first e-mail from a stateside lawyer she had reached out to for help.

And eventually she would find herself temporarily assigned to sleeping quarters between two Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officials, who, she says, assured her that it was for her own safety, since her alleged assailants were at the same camp for questioning; they roamed freely. When she wanted to move about the camp to get meals etc., she was escorted.

Leamon felt very alone. But she was not.

In fact, a growing number of women employees working for US defense contractors in the Middle East are coming forward with complaints of violence directed at them. As the Iraq War drags on, and as stories of US security contractors who seem to operate with impunity continue to emerge (like Blackwater and its deadly attack against Iraqi civilians on September 16, 2007), a rash of new sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints are being lodged against overseas contractors--by their own employees. Todd Kelly, a lawyer in Houston, says his firm alone has fifteen clients with sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation complaints (for reporting assault and/or harassment) against Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC (KBR), as well as Cayman Island-based Service Employees International Inc., a KBR shell company. (While Leamon is technically an SEII employee, she is supervised by KBR staff as a KBR employee.)

Jamie Leigh Jones, whose story made the news in December--when she alleged that her 2005 gang rape by Halliburton/KBR co-workers in Iraq was being covered up by the company and the US government--also initially believed hers was an isolated incident. But today, Jones reports that she has formed a nonprofit to support the many other women with similar stories. Currently, she has forty US contractor employees in her database who have contacted her alleging a variety of sexual assault or sexual harassment incidents--and claim that Halliburton, KBR and SEII have either failed to help them or outright obstructed them.

Most of these complaints never see the light of day, thanks to the fine print in employee contracts that compels employees into binding arbitration instead of allowing their complaints to be tried in a public courtroom. Criminal prosecutions are practically nonexistent, as the US Justice Department has turned a blind eye to these cases.

Jones's case was the subject of a House Judiciary hearing in December. Right now, Jones's lawyers are awaiting a decision on whether she will get her day in court or be forced to submit to binding arbitration, which KBR is insisting on. Likewise, the company is pressuring Dawn Leamon into pursuing her claims against the company through its Dispute Resolution Program based on the contract she signed before she went to Iraq. Critics argue that the company's arbitration system allows it to minimize bad publicity and lets assailants off the hook.

Leamon, who retained a lawyer only two weeks ago, is weighing her options.

KBR attorney Celia Ballí, responding to a letter from Leamon's lawyer, wrote in a letter dated March 17, "The Company takes Ms. Leamon's allegations very seriously and has and will continue to cooperate with the proper law enforcement authorities in the investigation of her allegations to the extent possible." Ballí noted that the matter has been turned over to the CID and said that Leamon has been "afforded with counseling and referral services through the Company's Employee Assistance Program." Ballí wrote in the letter that there are "inaccuracies" in the description Leamon has put forward regarding her treatment after the alleged sexual assault. "Therefore, the Company requests that you fully investigate all the facts alleged by Ms. Leamon as the Company intends to pursue all available remedies should false statements be publicized."

Such "investigation" may prove difficult for her attorney. In the next sentence, the company says it is "not in a position to release any personnel or investigative records regarding Ms. Leamon's allegations at this time." In response to a request for comment on this story, a company spokesperson wrote in an e-mail that Leamon's "allegations are currently under investigation by the appropriate law enforcement authorities. Therefore, KBR cannot comment on the specifics of the allegations or investigation." The spokesperson added, "Any allegation of sexual harassment or assault is taken seriously and investigated thoroughly." The trouble, however, is that "appropriate law enforcement authorities" have not proved willing to address this type of crime committed by contractors in Iraq.

For her part, Leamon can't quite call herself a victim yet. In the course of several conversations over several days, she never once says the word "victim" out loud. Let alone "rape." Let alone "gang rape."

She simply describes what happened, moving through the course of events as if this had happened to someone else, as if the recitation of details were an act of contrition she was compelled to perform.

Like many rape survivors, she feels guilty. In this case, Leamon confesses that she broke company policy the evening of the incident by having a drink (alcohol is expressly forbidden). She had landed at Camp Harper only a week earlier, when she returned from a stateside R&R with her family. Since arriving in Iraq six months earlier, she had been at a larger facility, Camp Cedar. But her new posting at Camp Harper put her in a smaller outpost of sixty people: part US military, part KBR employees, part SEII workers. When some KBR colleagues invited her to join them for a drink after work, she did.

Leamon says she had only one drink--and she asked someone to hold it after a few sips while she went outside for a smoke. Leamon's attorney, Daniel Ross, speculates that someone slipped the date-rape drug Rohypnol in her drink.

Leamon's memory of the evening is fuzzy, and the only thing she remembers clearly about the events surrounding her assault is the aforementioned moment of oral and anal penetration. She also remembers screaming.

The morning after the incident, Leamon says, she was called into the office of her supervisor, who was Camp Harper's KBR manager; he appeared to know--at least in part--what had happened. She would later learn from an Army investigator that her supervisor had been in the room where the drinking and alleged rape had taken place at least twice that evening. Leamon, who appears to have blacked out, has no direct knowledge of his participation--or indeed of who else among the crowd initially gathered in the room may have been involved. "He was one of the people involved in saying, 'Don't say anything,'" Leamon says of her conversation with the KBR camp manager the morning following the incident. "Then he said, 'This will never happen again.'"

Leamon offered to pack up and go home. But he sent her back to work. First, though, he responded to Leamon's plea to get the soldier she still had not been able to rouse out of her bed by contacting the military's Special Forces liaison at Camp Harper. The liaison, whom Leamon knew only by his nickname, DJ, was direct. "He told me not to speak of this to anyone and that he would take care of it," Leamon says.

Leamon sat tight for a few days but then contacted a friend at Camp Cedar, where her permanent assignment was, and asked if the Employee Assistance person for KBR was back from her R&R yet. She was not. Leamon was worried about even discussing the incident, since she knew that none of her conversations were confidential. "Camp Harper has only three phones," she says. "One is in the camp manager's office. One is in the Operations Office. And one is in a hallway." She wavered. A few days later, when she knew that the Employee Assistance person for KBR would be back, Leamon called her on the phone. The Employee Assistance woman was a friend of hers and, without getting too specific about the details of the incident, Leamon sought her advice. "We had worked other situations together in the past, and I talked to her and she was like, 'I don't know if I'd report that. You know what happens when you report things.' And I did. I'd seen it."

Despite Leamon's silence, rumors were circulating at the camp. Two and a half weeks after the incident, she was questioned by someone from the KBR Employee Relations office, who appeared to be investigating a series of improprieties at the camp, Leamon says. Fearful, she denied knowledge of any wrongdoing at the camp.

When Leamon returned to her original posting at Camp Cedar, a larger facility with a human resources person and more friends she could approach for advice, she recontacted the man from Employee Relations who had been investigating "improprieties" and told him her story.

This set the wheels in motion for a series of interviews, most of which concluded with Leamon being asked to sign a nondisclosure statement by representatives of the company, she says.

Eventually, shortly before she was slated to return to the United States for R&R, one of the investigators for KBR suggested that Leamon get tested for STDs, hepatitis, HIV, etc. and took her to the nearby military Combat Support Hospital. "The doctor took me into her office, and we talked a long time before she did an exam," Leamon says. "We talked about the assault and the details and she was actually very, very kind and encouraged me to report it to the military. She tried convincing me that it wasn't my fault [for having a drink]. She was just a really kind lady--and that was the first time I had given any of the whole details of all that had happened."

In fact, military protocol compelled the doctor to report the incident; Leamon was immediately contacted by the Army Criminal Investigation Division and questioned. The CID had not responded to requests for comment by the time this article went to press.

A few days later, shortly after contacting an attorney in the United States to advise her on her rights, the attorney sent her a draft letter he was sending to KBR on her behalf, notifying the company that he was representing her and briefly summarizing her accusations. KBR came to her office within hours, she alleges, and confiscated her computer as "evidence," effectively limiting her access to the outside world.

Many victims of sexual assault find themselves without meaningful recourse when they work for US defense contractors that are powerful companies on foreign soil. "It's one big battle over where to fight the battle," said Leamon's attorney Ross, who is considering if and how and against whom to file charges on behalf of his client.

Take Jamie Leigh Jones's case, for example.

Since Jones alleged she was gang raped in 2005, while KBR was still a Halliburton subsidiary, her case is covered by an extralegal Halliburton dispute-resolution program implemented under then-CEO Dick Cheney in 1997. The program has all the hallmarks of the Cheney White House's penchant for secrecy. While Halliburton declared the program's aim was to reduce costly and lengthy litigation (and limit possible damage awards in the process), in practice it meant that employees like Jones signed away their constitutional right to a jury trial--and agreed to have any disputes heard in a private arbitration hearing without hope of appeal. (While two lower courts declared the tactic illegal, in 2001, the Texas Supreme Court overturned those rulings.)

Accordingly, Jones faces two major roadblocks in the fight for justice. The first is the battle to have the perpetrators prosecuted in criminal court--which, because of Order 17, may be nearly impossible. According to the order, imposed by Paul Bremer, US defense contractors in Iraq cannot be prosecuted in the Iraqi criminal justice system. While they can technically be tried in US federal court, the Justice Department has shown no interest in prosecuting her case. In fact, for more than two years now, the DOJ has brought no criminal charges in the matter. Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who has taken up Jones's cause, reports that federal agencies refuse to discuss the status of the investigation; meanwhile, in December, the DOJ refused to send a representative to the related Congressional hearing on the matter.

Even more appalling, the Justice Department, which can and should prosecute most of these cases, has declined to do so. "There is no rational explanation for this," says Scott Horton, a lecturer at Columbia Law School who specializes in the law of armed conflict. Prosecutorial jurisdiction for crimes like the alleged rape of Jones is easily established under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and the Patriot Act's special maritime and territorial jurisdiction provisions. But somebody has to want to prosecute the cases.

Horton wonders what the 200 Justice Department employees and contractors stationed in Iraq do all day, noting that there has not been a single completed criminal conviction against a US contractor implicated in a violent crime anywhere in Iraq since the invasion.

"We have a complete process in place for solving military criminal violations when soldiers commit crimes, but for the 180,000 employees of private contractors over there, there is nothing," says Horton. "It's like Texas west of the Pecos in 1890 over there!" It's just common sense that you're going to have some violent crimes when you throw this many people together, he says. "Think about it. You have 180,000 people over there, you're going to have a few crimes. I don't know how anybody could fairly view this as a partisan issue. Crimes happen when you bring people together anywhere, and in a war setting, without adult supervision, crimes are going to increase. That is just a fact. And if you eliminate law enforcement, the crimes are going to get worse because people will quickly learn they can get away with it."

Things don't look a whole lot rosier when it comes to seeking relief in the civil courts.

For example, KBR is fighting tooth and nail to make sure Jones's case stays in private arbitration, as per her contract. And given that in February, a federal district court ruled that Tracy Barker--another KBR employee who says she was sexually assaulted--couldn't present her case in open court, prospects for the civil suit Jones brought last May look dim.

And that's particularly troubling, according to Jones's attorney Todd Kelly, because the clandestine nature of arbitration allows corporate malfeasance to go unchecked. Trials serve a purpose above and beyond pronouncing verdicts. "It's like the Enron trial here in Houston," he says. "Where every day in the Houston Chronicle there was a story exposing what egregious things go unchecked in the corporate culture. The United States got to peek into the corporate underwear drawer and saw it was not as pretty as it looked from the outside." Kelly argues that Halliburton and KBR ought to be similarly exposed to public scrutiny via jury trials. These civil remedies arranged in a secretive manner have repercussions beyond the dollar figures. "It allows for future rapes to occur," he says, arguing that these defense contractors have been able to quietly settle and compel victims to remain silent: the public remains oblivious to the crimes, no one is punished and a hostile and violent workplace continues unchecked.

In the future, the sole recourse for victims like Jones may be through Congress. Last October the House overwhelmingly passed legislation that requires the FBI to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and permits all US contractors to be tried under American jurisdiction. The Senate has yet to vote on the legislation.

For her part, Jones intends to persevere. "Part of the reason I'm going forward with this case is to change the system," she says. "Who knows how many of us rape victims are out there?"

Leamon, who is now back in the United States on two weeks R&R, is uncertain what the future holds for her. "I don't think I've been able to make any decisions or plans or goals yet," she says. First of all, there is the fact that she arrived home from Iraq to learn that her husband had been rushed to the hospital earlier that day after a partial stroke. She needs her job with SEII because she is the one who gets health insurance--vital not only for the two teenage daughters still living at home but for her husband, with his health problems. She worries, "Human Resources made me sign statements saying that I'm supposed to be back in Dubai on April 7 at 10 p.m., and if I'm not there I will not be reimbursed my $1,600 airfare or for my two weeks' vacation."

And indeed, the March 17 letter her attorney received from KBR attorney Celia Ballí says that Leamon can be placed on medical leave "pending resolution of the investigations related to this matter" but warns, "However, per Company policy, [her] leave will be unpaid." She is welcome to apply for workers' comp, the lawyer states.

Can she return to her old job as a paramedic in Lena, Illinois?

"Yes, my license is in good standing, and I've never had a problem," she says. "But it means a difference of about $6,000 a month in salary and no health insurance. My biggest reason for working for KBR in the first place was so I could get insurance for my husband and girls..." Leamon's sentence trails off. She begins a new one. Stops midway. She tries again to organize her thoughts. "I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to go back to work. How am I going to make myself do this?" she says, manifesting the confused indecisiveness and sense of a "foreshortened future" that are hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Has she seen a rape crisis counselor?

Not yet, Leamon says. "Someone from KBR Employee Assistance gave me a flier to call someone in Houston," she says, but it turned out to be for general financial or emotional problems during deployment. They referred her to a website. "I'm 9,000 miles away in Iraq and the website says, 'Please put in your zip code and we'll refer you to a rape crisis counselor in your zip code area.'"

Leamon, who says she cannot sleep, appears exhausted. She tells her story without affect, little inflection and tamped emotion. She only tears up twice, most visibly when speaking about one of her sons, a 22-year-old US soldier who served in the Middle East recently. While she was in the process of debating whether--and how--to go about reporting her assault, she contacted him to see what his feelings were on the matter. "I didn't want him upset with his mom," she says, explaining that she was very loyal to the mission in Iraq and that he was similarly loyal to his service. "I was assaulted by somebody who was wearing the same uniform as him, and I just didn't want him to think bad of me. My children are pretty much my world." Leamon's eyes fill with tears, and she pauses to collect herself. "I didn't want him to be upset because I was calling out somebody who was wearing his same uniform. They're supposed to be proud of what they do. And I'm proud of my sons. And in my mind, I live that war every day. I can make all sorts of excuses under the sun for bad behavior."

Her son advised her to make the formal complaint.

"He was like, 'Of course you're going to talk to CID, Mom. Of course you are.'" Leamon smiles. "He doesn't think people should be allowed to wear his uniform and act like that. He's been in the war too and says it's no excuse. They're better trained than that. That's what my son thought. And he's not angry at his mom."

KBR's Rape Problem
By Karen Houppert

April 17, 2008

As news broke of the rape of yet another US military contractor employee in Iraq [see "Another KBR Rape Case" at thenation.com], the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing April 9 to demand that the Justice Department explain why it has failed to prosecute a single sexual assault case in the theater since the Iraq War began.

"American women working in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be sexually assaulted while their assailants go free," said Senator Bill Nelson, who called the hearing. Because squabbles about who has jurisdiction in these cases have proliferated, Nelson arranged to have representatives from the Defense, State and Justice departments sit down together in front of him. They were forced to listen while the latest victims testified.

Dawn Leamon, who worked for a subsidiary of KBR and had told her story to The Nation a week before, described--with her back to the packed room and her voice (mostly) steady--being sodomized and forced to have oral sex with a KBR colleague and a Special Forces soldier two months earlier. When she reported the incident to KBR supervisors, she met a series of obstacles, she said. "They would tell me to stay quiet about it or try to make it seem as if I brought it on myself or lied about it."

Another woman, Mary Beth Kineston, who worked as a commercial trucker for KBR in Iraq, testified that she had been raped in the cab of her truck by a KBR subcontractor employee at night while waiting in line to fill her water tanker truck. She immediately reported the incident to her supervisors; no one did a rape kit test, referred her for medical treatment or even offered to escort her back through the dark to her quarters that night.

Also at the hearing was Jamie Leigh Jones, whose story made the news in December, when she alleged that her 2005 gang rape by Halliburton/KBR co-workers in Iraq was being covered up by the company and the government. Jones, who has formed a nonprofit to support the many other women with similar experiences, says forty employees of US contractors have contacted her with stories of sexual assault or sexual harassment--and accounts of how Halliburton, KBR and the Cayman Island-based Service Employees International Inc. (SEII), a KBR shell company, either failed to help them or outright obstructed them.

As the number of women coming forward rises, Congress has begun to question why these crimes are not being prosecuted. In fact, there are several laws on the books that would allow these cases to proceed: the problem is not a lack of legal tools but a lack of will. "There is no rational explanation for this," says Scott Horton, a lecturer at Columbia Law School who specializes in the law of armed conflict. Prosecutorial jurisdiction for crimes like the alleged rapes of Jones and Leamon is easily established under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and the Patriot Act's special maritime and territorial jurisdiction provisions. But somebody has to want to prosecute the cases.

Senator Nelson noted that the Defense Department, which has reported 742 sexual assaults against soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, has claimed that it was unable to prosecute cases involving civilians--like defense contractor employees--until recently. (Even among those cases where it clearly had jurisdiction, a close look at the DoD's own stats reveals a far from stellar record: among the 684 sexual assault complaints lodged by US soldiers in the Middle East, only eighty-three cases have led to courts-martial. Meanwhile, last year alone, 2,688 sexual assaults were reported globally against women serving in the US Armed Forces; disposition of these cases is pending.)

Worse, those figures represent only the official count. Given that so many women are now coming forward complaining that they have been hushed by their private-military-contractor supervisors, it's clear that the real tally is likely far higher. Even in cases where the victims do report the incidents, most complaints never see the light of day, thanks to the fine print in employee contracts, which compels employees into private arbitration instead of allowing their charges to be heard in a public courtroom. Todd Kelly, a lawyer in Houston who is trying to fight the legality of private arbitration, says his firm alone has fifteen clients with sexual assault, sexual harassment or retaliation complaints (for reporting assault and/or harassment) against Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR, as well as SEII.

Obviously, US military contractors have an interest in avoiding the bad publicity that would follow if these complaints were not kept secret. With huge sums hanging in the balance--KBR has an estimated $16 billion in contracts--the stakes are high.

But such a financial incentive cannot explain why the Justice Department has failed to act. Although it has the authority to pursue criminal cases involving US military contractor employees, it has hemmed and hawed over even the tiny fraction of cases that have made their way through the maze of obstacles to land in the Justice Department's offices. Grilling Justice about these twenty-four civilian sexual assault cases, Senator Nelson demanded to know exactly how many cases Justice was pursuing--and whether there had been a single conviction. "I don't know of any convictions for sexual assault," admitted Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. But, she stammered, "we do have active investigations...somewhere about...somewhere upwards of...somewhere between four and six, I believe is the number." (Leamon's attorney just learned that the department is initiating an investigation into her case.)

At the hearing, Nelson dryly observed that there was a very quick way to make sure US contractors did not force employees into private arbitration, and an easy way to force contractors to follow established protocols for sexual assault and harassment: "This might be something you want to require and include in your contracts--before you award them," he said. To which, in quick succession, the Defense, State and Justice department representatives responded that, well, they couldn't respond because this was, er, beyond their area of expertise.

LaVena Johnson: Murdered By Her Colleagues, Ignored By The Army



This is Private First Class LaVena Johnson of Missouri. An honors student who nonetheless didn't quite know what she wanted to do with her life, she enlisted in the Army right out of high school in 2003 and was sent to Iraq, where she died. When the Army returned her mutilated body to her grieving parents as a suicide, her dad, Dr. John Johnson, said to himself and the Army coroner, "Somebody murdered my daughter and you picked the wrong person to fuck with." Fucking right.

When LaVena's father finally brought himself to look at his daughter's corpse in 2005, sent home from Iraq with a report that she'd committed suicide by shooting herself in the left side of her head with an M-16 — which, by the way, is not a handgun but a relatively long rifle, he thought there was something wrong.

Private LaVena Johnson's nose was broken, teeth were loose, one eye was concave and there were abrasions over her body. The supposed M-16 hole to the head was far too small for the revolver-sized exit wound, and was on the wrong side of her skull for a right-handed woman to have pulled the trigger. Her genital area showed evidence of acid, perhaps used to destroy DNA evidence. She had white military gloves glued to her burned hands.

Since then, the Army has continued to insist that the LaVena committed suicide by pointing her rifle with her non-dominant hand at the side of her head and set herself on fire, all after she beat herself up and poured acid on her genitals (since their was no apparent investigation into whatever happened there). Oh, and there was a trail of blood leading away from the tent where her body was found.

Her father has been trying for nearly 3 years to get someone — including Congress — to investigate the death of his daughter, which he feels was a cover-up or conspiracy in the manner of Pat Tillman. Of course, he's trying to get people to pay attention to his African-American daughter's "suicide" and not the friendly-fire death of a white male NFL player, which is probably part of the problem. Lara Battles, spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee, told KMOV, "At this time the House Armed Services Committee is looking into Private Johnson's case, but no decisions have been made for a formal investigation."

Wondering who to contact to get that formal investigation started? The website dedicated to getting LaVena's case investigated has some ideas.

The tragic story of LaVena Johnson

Salon has published quite a bit about how American women in the military sometimes face more danger from their fellow soldiers than from their enemies, but the stories never seem to stop. And all too often, they go largely ignored by the media, as with the case of Pfc. LaVena Johnson.

In July 2005, 19-year-old Johnson became the first female soldier from Missouri to die in Iraq. She was found with a broken nose, black eye and loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, presumably to eliminate DNA evidence of rape, a trail of blood leading away from her tent and a bullet hole in her head. Unbelievably, that's not the most horrifying part of the story. Here's what is: Army investigators ruled her death a suicide.

Beyond the obvious evidence of abuse, there was no sign of depression or suicidal ideation in Johnson's psychological profile. The bullet wound was in the wrong place for her to have shot herself with her dominant hand, and the exit wound was the wrong size to have come from her own M-16, as the Army suggested it did. The blatant lie the military has tried to sell Johnson's family is on a par with the cover-up surrounding football star Pat Tillman's 2004 death in a friendly fire incident. Unlike Tillman's widely reported story, however, outside the blogosphere -- where writers like Philip Barron have worked tirelessly to keep Johnson's name in the spotlight -- the LaVena Johnson case has rarely been noted. And sadly, it is far from unique. In a story in the New Zealand Herald on Wednesday, Tracey Barnett writes, "[LaVena's father] John Johnson has discovered far more stories that have matched his daughter's than he ever wanted to know. Ten other families of 'suicide' female soldiers have contacted him. The common thread among them -- rape."

Regarding the runaround her family got from the military, Pat Tillman's mother said to the New York Times in 2006, ""This is how they treat a family of a high-profile individual. How are they treating others?" LaVena Johnson's story is just one tragic answer to that question.

Are Contractors Above the Law?
Former Halliburton Subsidiary KBR Insists It Is Not Liable for GI's Death

By Daphne Eviatar 08/04/2008

In January of 2008, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, was electrocuted while showering in his Baghdad barracks. His death prompted last week’s congressional report concluding that defense contractor KBR, (until a year ago a subsidiary of the oil services giant Halliburton) was well aware that the electrical system in Maseth's complex was faulty. An accident like this, the report found, was bound to happen. But this report also now raises a larger and thornier question about military defense contractors: can they be held legally liable for their actions – or inactions? Will anyone be held responsible for Maseth's death?

This is an increasingly important question as the U.S. government hires ever more military contractors to do work that used to be done by U.S. soldiers. The war in Iraq has already involved more outsourcing of military functions than any previous war in American history.

An estimated 180,000 civilian contractors now work in Iraq and Afghanistan to support the U.S. government there. They do everything from guard U.S. officials and dignitaries to truck fuel, food and other supplies to military bases — all jobs that used to be done by soldiers.

Private contractors operating in Iraq are not subject to U.S. military authority, or to U.S. or Iraqi law. Their employees are not subject to the rigors of Army basic training; and their superiors are not held to the strict rules and ethics that apply to the U.S. military. As a result, notes Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in his book, "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry," "When the means of security are privatized, certain mechanisms of moral hazard and adverse selection might lead firms astray. Just as in the rest of commerce, war is business where nice firms do not always finish first."

Indeed, whistle-blowers at these companies run the risk of being fired. In 2007, shortly after one KBR electrician reported to a defense contracting agency official that logs were being created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems at the base were working properly, he lost his job, according to The New York Times. Another employee “said his KBR bosses mocked him for raising safety issues.”

Yet, the Pentagon inspector general’s interim report provided to the House Oversight Committee on July 28 said it “has not found any credible evidence that representatives from KBR were aware of imminent, life-threatening hazards” in Maseth’s complex prior to his death. This is despite that fact that the Army itself had issued an urgent bulletin (pdf) in 2004 warning soldiers of the threat.

Of course, the Pentagon may have an interest in protecting its contractors. The Defense Dept. indicated, in a 2006 review, that it intends to increase its reliance on private military companies and other outsourced support services. Its handling of the death of Maseth certainly suggests that the Pentagon is defensive on the subject: the soldier's mother, Cheryl Maseth, was originally told that her son had carried an electrical appliance into the shower.

As of January, more than 1,000 private civilian contractors -- including 110 KBR employees -- had been killed in Iraq, and another 13,000 wounded. Deaths of American soldiers in battle, meanwhile, have climbed to more than 4,100.

So what happens when the military contracting companies themselves are to blame for the deaths?

For years now, KBR and other military contractors have argued that as a matter of law, regardless of the circumstances, they are not responsible. As government contractors, they say, just like the military, they’re immune from legal suits. That’s been KBR’s defense in a series of cases over the past few years when the company has been accused of knowingly sending unarmed civilian employees into active combat zones – sometimes to their deaths.

In a case I wrote about in January for The American Lawyer, KBR denied responsibility for sending an unarmed convoy of trucks down a dangerous road under active insurgent attack. In what’s come to be known as the Good Friday Massacre, in April 2004, six KBR drivers were killed and 14 were wounded. One driver is still officially missing, and presumed dead.

Now KBR could be facing many such claims. According to the Defense Dept.’s own inspector general, as of July 10, there have been 16 deaths due to faulty electrical wiring on U.S. military bases that KBR was supposed to be maintaining.

Companies like KBR rely on a range of legal defenses when accused of wrongdoing, but the gist is always the same: working for the U.S. military means they’re beyond the authority of the U.S. courts -- therefore immune from U.S. law.

That’s exactly the tack KBR appears to be taking in the case of Maseth, whose mother has sued KBR, claiming that the company knew of the danger and was responsible for fixing it, but didn’t. In other words, KBR, she asserts, could have prevented her son’s death.

KBR, which has received $20 billion in Iraq war contracts since 2003, vehemently denies this. KBR's actions "were not the cause of any of these terrible accidents," company executive Thomas Bruni told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. An interim DOD inspector general report, obtained by The Associated Press last Tuesday, reached the same conclusion.

But at least some evidence suggests otherwise. Under KBR’s multi-billion-dollar contract with the Army, the company was responsible for maintaining U.S. military bases and facilities in Iraq. According to documents produced to the Oversight Committee, KBR had inspected and found problems with the building's electrical infrastructure at least four times in the months prior to Maseth's death.

Documents show, for example, that another soldier in the complex had experienced electrical shocks while showering and submitted a work order (pdf) to KBR on July 8, 2007, stating: "Pipes have voltage, get shocked in the shower." A KBR electrician that day found a faulty pressure switch and noted: "Plumber needs to repair." On July 9, 2007, after KBR workers replaced the pressure switch and the water pump, the work order was stamped "finished".

Still, on Jan, 2, 2008, when Maseth turned on the shower, an ungrounded water pump short-circuited and electrified the water pipes. The current traveled through the pipes, the shower head and the water itself, electrocuting Maseth. He was dead within seconds. The congressional report concludes, based on the evidence, that KBR had installed the water pump that malfunctioned and caused the death.

Whether a court will hold the company liable, however, may depend less on the facts than whether a judge accepts KBR's claim of immunity. According to KBR’s legal papers, even if the company knew of the problem and failed to fix it, KBR will claim that it’s not legally liable because it was working for the U.S. government.

In its motion to remove the case from state to federal court, KBR’s lawyers wrote that they plan to invoke the “government contractor defense” – meaning the government approved the work so it is not responsible; the “official immunity doctrine” – that, as a government contractor, it’s entitled to the same immunity as the U.S. military itself, and the “political question” doctrine -- a KBR favorite on which it’s won several cases before. Under this, KBR argues that the court should dismiss the case because it would require the court to judge the actions of the U.S. military -- province of the president and Congress, not the federal courts.

KBR has relied on this same “political question” defense to win at least two previous cases involving the death of U.S. soldiers or of its own employees. But the courts are now starting to question the legitimacy of those defenses.

In the case of the Good Friday Massacre, the traditionally conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last May reversed a Texas district court’s order that had dismissed the case under the political question doctrine. The three-judge panel noted that, contrary to KBR’s argument, it may well be possible to resolve the cases without engaging in a "constitutionally impermissible review of wartime decision-making." Though the court cannot judge the military decisions of the Defense Dept., the court acknowledged, that doesn’t shield every action taken by a military contractor. Judge Leslie Southwick wrote, "these tort-based claims of civilian employees against their civilian employers can be separated from the political questions that loom so large in the background."

The same reasoning likely applies to the electrocutions. Whether the political question doctrine applies “is partly determined by how closely intertwined the contractor is with the government officials,” said Laura Dickinson, an expert on military contractor law at the University of Connecticut Law School. “One of the interesting things that I think we’re seeing is that courts are not willing to throw these cases out when the contractor has a fair degree of discretion.”

In this case, either KBR was responsible for repairing the electrical problems at the military base, or it wasn’t. That is a factual dispute that would emerge as the lawyers gather evidence. It is not a legal matter that warrants dismissal of the case.

Unless carefully applied, contractor immunity defenses preclude a real investigation into what happened and who is responsible. If, as has happened over and over in this war, nobody is held responsible for the failures of military contractors, then there can be no incentive to do better next time.

The result is that, as long as something is done in a war zone, even the shoddiest work gets a pass -- regardless of the consequences.

This weekend, defense contracting giant KBR announced it would ban the use of personal cell phones by its employees in Iraq, citing no specific reason. Though KBR has not indicated the ban is related to the numerous allegations of rape by female KBR employees by their male coworkers, the ban could endanger future victims. Jamie Leigh Jones, the first victim to come forward publicly, explained that after she was gang-raped by coworkers and held in a shipping container for days, “she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.”