KBR Accused Of Employee Inefficiency As Iraq Withdrawal Date Approaches

By Justine Rellosa-Talk Radio News Service

According to the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, Inc. are not using their employees in Iraq efficiently as the withdrawal date for U.S. troops approaches.

“The audit report basically says that if KBR staffing was to be reduced ... the government could save up to $193 million,” said Commission member Robert Henke, who noted that KBR is currently considered over-staffed. Concerns have also been raised that these excess workers are not performing enough work to justify the costs of maintaining their presence.

While the KBR has been criticized for not proactively reducing its Iraq workforce, a representative from KBR blamed government officials Monday for not providing an adequate direction through their oversight efforts.

“Why can’t the contractor be brought into this process sooner, so we can do a better job in preparing, in conjunction with the military, the plan?” asked KBR Principle Program Manager Guy A. J. Laboa during his testimony before the commission.

Commission Co-Chair Michael Thibault echoed a similar sentiment, and noted that the government should be more active in the oversight of contractors.

U.S. Soldiers Exposed To Toxic Substance In Iraq, Cite Health Concerns

By Courtney Ann Jackson-Talk Radio News Service

Exposure to a toxic substance at a water injection facility in Iraq has left U.S. soldiers in deteriorating health. The U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee conducted a hearing Monday to investigate what some Senators would describe as the Army’s lackluster response.

“The Army failed to provide proper oversight over KBR's [military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root] contract provisions that called for the contractor to identify, prevent and mitigate environmental hazards so as to protect the health and safety of workers and U.S. troops,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.).

Another hearing was held last year to address how KBR had exposed its own workers and hundreds of U.S. soldiers to a highly toxic chemical, sodium dichromate, at the Qarmat Ali water injection facility in the Spring and Summer of 2003.

Four National Guard soldiers testified at Monday's hearing and told the committee about their subsequent health problems.

Russell Powell, Former Staff Sergeant of the West Virginia Army National Guard said “I and many other soldiers and KBR workers had severe nosebleeds, coughed up blood, had difficulty breathing and nausea, and/or experienced a burning sensation in our lungs and throats. After a few weeks of being the facility, many of the soldiers around me began getting lesions on their hands, arms, faces, and in the nostril area.”

The sodium dichromate was described by all four men as a thick orange powder that often filled the air during windstorms. They said they were certainly aware of the substance but even after inquiring about its effects, were told it was only a mild irritant. Despite the dismissal of the substance’s harmful nature, the soldiers were consistently having health problems and finding it difficult to breathe in the facility and surrounding areas.

Herman Gibb, PhD, an expert on health risks associated with exposure to sodium chromate, testified that the chemical is considered to be a deadly carcinogen.

“Based on my experience working at the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] on risk assessments of hexavalent chromium and my study of chromate production workers, the symptoms reported by some of the soldiers who served at Qarmat Ali are consistent with significant exposure to sodium chromate,” Gibb said.

The soldiers stated that they continue to struggle with lingering respiratory, sinus, and other serious medical conditions.

Two of the four soldiers testifying were not notified until this year that they had been exposed to the carcinogen when they received a letter from their respective state’s National Guard under which they served.

Faulty Buildings Not Bullets Killing American Soldiers

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News

Senator Byron Dorgan

Ryan Masseth, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army, was killed not by an enemy bullet, but by faulty electrical wiring. He was electrocuted while showering on a United States military installation in Baghdad during January 2008.

Yet, the company who wired the building, Kellogg, Brand and Root, also known as KBR, was aware of this issue some 11 months before Staff Sgt. Masseth’s death. The U.S. government recently reclassified Staff Sgt. Masseth’s death as accidental to gross negligence on the part of KBR.

“KBR’s shoddy electrical work wasted tax payer money,” said Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing, who continued to say, “and even worse put our service members at risk, sometimes for their lives. 18 people died as a result of this negligence.”

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, was critical of the government for giving bonuses to KBR from 2004 to 2008 that totaled some $85 million, even though their work failed often to meet even the most basic standards.

The Army’s standard definition for awarding bonuses requires that the contractor's “performance is of the highest quality that could be achieved under the contract. There are no areas of deficiencies or problems encountered during the evaluation period.”

The 2008 edition of the Defense Contract Management Report found that there were 26,205 incidents of improper wiring, 4,571 incidents of outlet box hazards, and 3,201 hazardous switches and fuses. All of these safety deficiencies pose an unneeded threat to American service people, according to Dorgan.

KBR Master Electrician, Eric Peters, estimated that 50 percent of all buildings were not wired properly, and it often took several visits before KBR’s poorly trained electricians could fix the problem. Each one of these visits was charged to the U.S. government, and therefore to the American taxpayer.

Lautenberg attributed KBR’s ability to obtain these large bonuses to the no-bid contracts given to corporations for the reconstruction of Iraq.

“I knew I could no longer work for a company so completely focused on the bottom line they would disregard the safety of their employees and those we were serving: our soldiers,” said Peters, who left KBR two months after being hired.

Jim Childs, another Master Electrician who worked for KBR, had similar gripes with the company and their complete disregard for safety.

“KBR did not do this work to any electrical code,” said Childs.

KBR even attempted to switch to the more lenient British electrical code, but upon re-inspecting the wiring according to the newly implemented standards he still discovered multiple violations.

Childs cited examples of safe buildings that KBR retrofitted and became dangerous, when he said “what had been a safe, properly wired building became a danger to those inside because the re-wiring performed by KBR was not done properly.”

When Childs attempted to solve the wiring problems with quick and cheap solutions, KBR refused to listen and wanted to re-wire the entire building, at the expense of the tax payer.

Childs travelled to Afghanistan to inspect KBR’s work their, but to his dismay, “I found the exact same code violations.”

This wiring situation, according to Childs, is an epidemic that needlessly endangers the lives of American servicemen and women.

Much like its own employees, the Department of Defense is also losing confidence in KBR’s ability.

Captain David Graff, Commander of Defense Contract Management Agency, said that “Many within the Department of Defense have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR’s ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq.”

Electrocutions in Iraq: Inspector General and Congress play the blame game

An Inspector General interim report released on July 28 found that the Department of Defense investigation of the accidental electrocution of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth revealed that Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR) did not know about the electrical hazards prior to Maseth’s death. However, at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Cali.) disclosed documents obtained by the Committee which show that a soldier notified KBR of the electrical problems well before Maseth’s death.

Staff Sgt. Justin Hummer, who was the previous tenant of Maseth’s room at the Radwaniyah Palace Complex in Baghdad, filed a work order on July 8, 2007, that states, “Pipes have voltage, get shocked in shower,” according to a copy of the report provided by the Committee. Also, in a statement signed by Maseth on June 6, 2008, six months before his death in January, he claimed, “On at least one of these occasions [when he was shocked in the shower] I have to use a wooden handle to turn off the shower nozzle because the electrical current was so strong.”

Inspector General of the Department of Defense Gordon Heddell said the Department of Defense is investigating 15 deaths from electrocutions. The deaths fall into two categories: soldiers who died from contact with power lines and those who died from ungrounded and/or faulty equipment. The first death occurred back in 2003, according to Heddell. Chairman Waxman asked why it took four years for the Department of Defense to begin overseeing KBR.

According to Thomas Bruni, Theater Engineering and Construction Manager for KBR, KBR was not responsible for maintaining the facility where Maseth died because it was a “Level B” facility. There are two types of contracts in these facilities: “Level A”, which allows KBR to perform maintenance and repairs without orders from the Army, and “Level B”, which restricts KBR to only performing repairs with specific Army instruction.

When pressed numerous times by Rep Tom Davis (R-Va.) to pinpoint the organization responsible, Bruni hesitantly admitted the Army was responsible. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said KBR should have pulled the plug on the faulty equipment as soon as it found out. Lynch said KBR did not have to repair it, but should have ensured that no soldiers used it.

Soldiers killed in Iraq, but not by guns

Cheryl Harris and Larraine McGee lost their two sons in Iraq, but they were not killed in combat; they were electrocuted because of faulty electrical equipment built and maintained by Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) contractors. Before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the mothers told their tragic stories about the reckless and complacent behavior of KBR employees that lead to their sons’ deaths.

Harris’ son, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, was electrocuted while taking a shower in his barracks at the Radwaniyah Complex in Iraq in 2008. McGee’s son, Stagg Sgt. Christopher Everett, died while power-washing a Humvee in Al Taqqadum, Iraq in 2005. 13 soldiers have been electrocuted to death because of KBR contractor incompetence and lack of accountability.

At first, Army officials could not answer Harris when she asked how her son was killed, Harris said. The building’s main circuit panel, the secondary panel, and the water tank were not grounded, Harris said. Shockingly, KBR’s electrician had known about these hazards 11 months before her son was killed. According to Harris, in October 2004, another soldier in Iraq died in almost the exact same way. The Army report about Sgt. Christopher Everett’s death stated that the generator supplying electricity to the power washer was improperly grounded.

Debbie Crawford, former KBR electrician, noted that when she was working in Iraq, basic tools such as electrical tape and wire nuts were sometimes scarce. Many KBR employees supervising the electrical contractors did not have any electrical experience at all. At one point, Crawford noticed a ground wire, which is supposed to protect people from getting electrocuted, being used as a “hot” wire, mentioned it to her foreman, and he told her to “make it work and don’t worry about.” Nobody asked to see her license, checked her job references, or gave her a qualification test when she applied for the job.

Rachel McNeill, former heavy construction equipment operator in Iraq, said that when she first got to Iraq, soldiers in her house had been shocked in the shower. KBR was in charge of maintenance and repairs. In order to fix the water heater, McNeill was supposed to submit a work order, which would take days to go through. But an electrician from another platoon fixed it in half an hour.