KBR, Guilty In Iraq Negligence, Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill

KBR, Guilty In Iraq Negligence, Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill Posted: 01/09/2013 9:37 am EST | Updated: 01/09/2013 11:49 pm EST . . 4,605 597 269 4128 Get Politics Alerts: Sign Up .. React: Important Funny Typical Scary Outrageous Amazing Innovative Finally . Follow: Video, Justice, Kbr Guilty, Kbr Harmless, Kbr Indemnification, Kbr Indiana, Kbr Iraq, Kbr National Guard, Kbr Negligence, Kbr Negligence Iraq, Kbr Oregon, Kbr Soldiers, Kbr Toxic Chemical, Kbr Verdict, Politics News . WASHINGTON -- Sodium dichromate is an orange-yellowish substance containing hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion chemical. To Lt. Col. James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard, who was stationed at the Qarmat Ali water treatment center in Iraq just after the 2003 U.S. invasion, it was “just different-colored sand.” In their first few months at the base, soldiers were told by KBR contractors running the facility the substance was no worse than a mild irritant. Gentry was one of approximately 830 service members, including active-duty soldiers and members of the National Guard and reserve units from Indiana, South Carolina, West Virginia and Oregon, assigned to secure the water treatment plant, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sodium dichromate is not a mild irritant. It is an extreme carcinogen. In November 2009, at age 52, Gentry died of cancer. The VA affirmed two months later that his death was service-related. In November, a jury found KBR, the military's largest contractor, guilty of negligence in the poisoning of a dozen soldiers, and ordered the company to pay $85 million in damages. Jurors found KBR knew both of the presence and toxicity of the chemical. Other lawsuits against KBR are pending. KBR, however, says taxpayers should be on the hook for the verdict, as well as more than $15 million the company has spent in its failed legal defense, according to court documents and attorneys involved with the case. KBR's contract with the U.S. to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure after the 2003 invasion includes an indemnity agreement protecting the company from legal liability, KBR claims in court filings. That agreement, KBR insists, means the federal government must pay the company's legal expenses plus the verdict won by 12 members of the Oregon National Guard who were exposed to the toxin at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant. The military disagrees. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracting officer told KBR in November 2011 that litigation costs "are not covered by the indemnity agreement." The public doesn’t know what the indemnity agreement actually says because the military considers it classified. Until recently, the veterans exposed to the toxin couldn’t know either, nor could attorneys at the Department of Justice, who were left battling the contract in the dark, according to a source there. Michael Doyle, a Houston-based lawyer who helped the successful suit against KBR, told The Huffington Post the military declassified the indemnification agreement on Dec. 21 and gave it to him under a protective order that banned him from sharing the language to parties not involved in the case. John A. Elolf, a spokesman for KBR, confirmed the declassification of the agreement and said the contractor also was prevented from providing a copy. HuffPost has requested the document under the Freedom of Information Act from the Corps of Engineers. Doyle said the agreement may mean a taxpayer “bailout” for KBR. “It's basically saying that no matter if we're guilty of -- willful misconduct, poisoning soldiers -- taxpayers have to pay to cover us as well as whatever we decide to pay on lawyers at whatever rates and all these fees,” Doyle said. “That's a pretty good bailout." Elolf, the KBR spokesman, said the company sought the indemnification agreement because its work was “performed under dangerous conditions in Iraq.” He said the government is required to indemnify KBR for claims arising from its restoration work. “To date, the U.S. government has failed to comply with its indemnification obligations,” Elolf said in an email. “KBR is confident that it will prevail in enforcing the U.S. government’s legal obligations.” It's unclear how many defense contractors have secret indemnification agreements with the military. Under the law, most government agencies are banned from entering open-ended indemnification agreements, but the Pentagon and a handful of other agencies were exempted in an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon in 1971. KBR originally claimed it didn’t know about the deadly toxin until the spring of 2003. Documents produced in the lawsuit, however, revealed that KBR knew the chemical was being stockpiled and used in massive quantities at the water treatment facility as early as January of that year. Prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraqi workers would treat water at the plant with sodium dichromate before injecting it under pressure into the ground, driving oil to the surface. Sodium dichromate helped increase the life of pipelines and pumps by preventing corrosion. Soldiers assigned to guard the facility said the chemical dust came from bags stacked both inside and outside the plant, which some soldiers would sit on or use for protection from the wind. Wind spread the orange powder from the thousands of 100-pound bags. Gentry estimated the dust covered about half the plant's area. “There were soldiers that actually brought it up, asked what it was, and they were told it was a mild irritant at first,” Rocky Bixby, 45, a plaintiff in the Oregon National Guard suit that bears his name, told HuffPost. "They had this information and didn't share it," Gentry said in a deposition two days before his final Christmas, in 2008. "I'm dying now because of it." Another soldier, Larry Roberta, now 48, was exposed to the chemical after a gust of wind blew it into his eye and into a chicken patty he was eating. After washing his face and mouth, he tried washing the chicken, because it was the only food he had left for the day. "It tastes like a mouthful of nickels,” Roberta said. “I just kept washing my mouth and I couldn't get that taste out." Roberta said he now requires an oxygen tank because he has less than 60 percent of his lung function and gets migraines stemming from the eye that was exposed to the chemical. He had surgery to fix the muscle at the top of his stomach that prevented food from coming back up. “I can’t throw up, I can’t even burp,” Roberta said. “You know, when you can’t burp, the air has to come out the other end, which makes me the stinky dog that nobody wants to let in the house.” Roberta said he doesn’t think U.S. taxpayers should have to pay for KBR’s mistakes. "The United States Army Corps of Engineers is not in the business of restoring oilfields, therefore they hired KBR as their subject expert," Roberta said. "KBR was paid a good sum of money to do a job and unfortunately it didn't get done well. … The end results were okay, but they made some mistakes along the way." Gentry’s wife said the “bailout” fits a KBR pattern. “Whether it’s morally, ethically or even fiscally, there was no accountability then and there is no accountability now,” LouAnn Grube Gentry told The Huffington Post. “In fact, they continue their negligence and indifference. And just as an example of that is they continue to overbill the government for the legal fees. And to me that in itself proves that they are profit-mongering and their sole motivation is profit.” Gentry said her husband initially declined to get involved in the litigation because of his loyalty to the National Guard and the Army. Gentry even praised KBR’s work during his second tour in Iraq, calling company safety measures “top grade” during a deposition. He decided to join the litigation late in his life because he felt KBR was being dishonest about what it knew about the chemical. “Once KBR denied accountability, denied knowing, my husband became very angry,” Gentry said. A federal jury in Oregon found on Nov. 2 that KBR negligently exposed troops to the toxic dust and ordered the company to pay $85 million in noneconomic and punitive damages to the Oregon National Guard members. A separate suit against KBR on behalf of national guardsmen from both Indiana and West Virginia, as well as troops from the U.K., is pending in federal court in Houston. That case awaits a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals on whether the case can proceed with claims based on wartime activity. Bixby, who said he was at the water treatment plant for as many as five days, said it makes no sense for taxpayers to pick up the bill for KBR’s mistakes. "I think it's fraudulent and I think it's criminal on their part to do this,” Bixby told HuffPost. Secret indemnity agreements shouldn’t be a problem in the future, because of a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 pushed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The act requires the Pentagon to disclose indemnification clauses that hold military contractors harmless and to justify the agreements to Congress. “What KBR received -- and Oregon soldiers and the American taxpayers may be stuck paying for -- is a get out of jail free card that no one outside of the Pentagon had any say in giving them,” Wyden said in a statement last month. “Thanks to that plum deal, KBR could be let off the hook after negligently exposing Oregon servicemembers to toxic chemicals. Some indemnification agreements are justified, but many are not, and the Pentagon should have to justify these agreements to Congress.”

Texas woman loses Iraq rape case against KBR

By PAUL J. WEBER and MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press – 2 hrs 23 mins ago

HOUSTON – A former KBR Inc. employee who said she was drugged and raped while working in Iraq lost her lawsuit against the military contractor Friday.

The jury of eight men and three women rejected Jamie Leigh Jones' claims a day after starting deliberations in a Houston federal courthouse. Jones, 26, said she was raped in 2005 while working for KBR at Camp Hope, Baghdad.

Jones sued KBR, its former parent Halliburton Co., and a former KBR firefighter, Charles Bortz, whom she identified as one of her rapists. The Houston-based companies and Bortz denied her allegations.

The alleged sexual assault was investigated by authorities but no criminal charges were filed.

"I was going up against a monster," Jones, sobbing loudly, told The Associated Press. "I'm devastated. I believe I did the right thing coming forward."

KBR applauded the jury's verdict, which in addition to rejecting Jones' claims that she was raped also denied her fraud claim against the company.

"Since 2005, KBR has been subjected to a continuing series of lies perpetuated by the plaintiff in front of Congress, in the media, and to any audience wishing to lend an ear to this story," spokeswoman Sharon Bolen said in a statement.

When the jury decided that Jones hadn't been raped, a number of the questions before them were rendered moot, including accusations against Halliburton, said KBR attorney Daniel Hedges.

Jones said the civil trial wasn't a fair fight. She said she felt she lost because the jury wasn't allowed to hear details of her attacker's past but were allowed to hear hers. Bortz said the sex was consensual.

Jones said she believed her bruises and the description of the rape would have swayed jurors.

"I just thought that the physical evidence would help. I guess the fact that my entire life was on display and (his) wasn't" made a difference, Jones said.

Her attorney had asked jurors to award her as much as 5 percent of KBR's net worth in actual or punitive damages. That would be more than $114 million, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Attorney Ron Estefan, in his closing arguments, accused KBR of neglecting to enforce its policies against sexual harassment for years by its contract workers in Iraq. The neglect facilitated Jones' rape, he said.

Lawyers for Bortz and the companies argued that Jones concocted her story out of fear of gossip among co-workers at the camp.

Jones' mother, Breanna Morgan, said she worried that the outcome might discourage future rape victims from coming forward, saying her daughter, "had to go through so much and she did it to help others."

"I feel like, because she did that and then there was this verdict, others won't want to," Morgan said. "I feel it sends a clear message."

Bolen, the KBR spokeswoman, said the "outcome of this jury trial as judged by her peers is the same result that the State Department got in 2005; that the Justice Department found in 2008. We are deeply gratified that the justice system has worked."

Jones, who had been a clerical worker in Baghdad's Green Zone, testified that she was drugged and then raped by a group of KBR firefighters. She said Bortz was in her room the next morning. During four days on the stand, she told jurors she has no memory of what happened because she believed she was drugged with Rohypnol, known as the "date rape drug," just before she was sexually assaulted.

The Associated Press usually doesn't identify people alleging sexual assault, but Jones' face and name have been in media reports and she has promoted her case on her own website.

Bortz's attorney tried to show that after the alleged rape, Jones did not appear to act like she had been attacked but instead went to work as normal, joked around and talked about camp gossip. Bortz no longer works for KBR.

Joanne Vorpahl, one of KBR's attorneys, tried to portray Jones to jurors as someone with a history of being dishonest on resumes and job applications, including not disclosing in a medical questionnaire she filled out before leaving for Iraq that she had been treated in prior years for various things, including depression, dizziness and kidney and bladder problems. Jones said those were simply mistakes and she never intended to be dishonest.

Jones also accused KBR officials of locking her in a trailer after she told them about the rape and not letting her call her family. She testified she's been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, takes medications for anxiety and had to have reconstructive surgery for her breasts, which were disfigured in her attack.

KBR and Halliburton, which split in 2007, were unsuccessful in having Jones' case settled through arbitration as stipulated in her contract.

Due in part to Jones' case, federal lawmakers in 2009 approved a measure prohibiting contractors and subcontractors that receive $1 million in funds from the Department of Defense from requiring employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration.

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Weber reported from San Antonio. Associated Press writer Will Weissert in San Antonio contributed to this report.