At the Democratic Policy Committee's latest hearing Monday on the Halliburton overcharges (and misconduct) in Iraq, witnesses testified to the overcharging, and lots more outrageous conduct, by Halliburton and KBR, its subsidiary, while they are being paid huge sums by the American taxpayers! More below.
Mr. Rory Mayberry, Food Production Manager at Camp Anaconda in Iraq from February to April 2004, testified (via video feed) that KBR regularly and consistently fed expired food (food past its freshness date by up to a year!) to our troops in Iraq. Refrigerated food and frozen food in the refrigeration trucks would be left to spoil when the trucks were turned off. He also said that the KBR management would throw parties for themselves three to four times a week and served perfectly good food at the parties! Added to this, they would feed the troops 10,000 meals and charge the government for 20,000 meals.
Sen. Byron Dorgan chaired the hearing. His website summarizes information from the hearing:
Mayberry said he witnessed not only KBR's practice of overcharging for dining hall services, but also efforts by KBR managers to avoid the scrutiny of government auditors. As a result of suspicions he had raised with the auditors, Mayberry said KBR managers sent him to a more dangerous camp in Fallujah during the auditors' visit to Camp Anaconda. He left KBR shortly after, but has since returned to Iraq with another private contractor.
The two gentlemen below are from a British firm hired by the Iraqi government to secure delivery of fuels to Iraq for the use of Iraqis. Because they are not hired by the US government, they ran into problems with KBR and Halliburton.
Alan Waller and Gary Butters, both executives with Lloyd-Owen International (LOI), a security and management firm with contracts to monitor and secure the delivery of Kuwaiti fuels into Iraq, Waller and Butters stated that Halliburton's overcharges for fuel transportation are even greater than previously believed. The pair also said KBR has not completed key fuel distribution infrastructure work despite its claim to have done so. In addition, Waller and Butters described the means by which Halliburton has abused its relationship with the Army to close the Iraq-Kuwait border, and an incident in which KBR security managers ordered their staff not to assist LOI personnel who had been attacked en route to a base managed by KBR.
He said three of their men died in that attack.
At one point, Sen. Frank Lautenberg mentioned that he served in WWII, and that such profiteering at that time would have been considered treason.
I recommend watching the hearing on C-Span if you can bear it. I get so outraged I feel sick.
