Page 1 of 2 Contractors stirred by sexy tales
By David Isenberg
Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater) is once again in the news, thanks to
charges made by two former employees. Brad and Melan Davis, a married couple,
worked in various Blackwater locations, both overseas and in the United States.
They are suing Blackwater using the False Claims Act, a US federal law that
allows people with no government affiliation to file lawsuits against federal
contractors claiming fraud against the government. People filing under the act
stand to receive a portion (usually about 15-25%) of any recovered damages.
Typically, allegations have been filed by people with inside knowledge of
false claims involving health care, military or other government spending
programs. The government recovered nearly $22 billion under the act between
1987 and 2008.
Their suit makes many allegations but, predictably, the press thus far have
largely focused on the most sensational, namely that Blackwater officials kept
a Filipino prostitute on the company payroll for a US State Department contract
in Afghanistan, and billed the government for her time working for Blackwater
male employees in Kabul. The alleged prostitute's salary was categorized as
part of the company's "Morale Welfare Recreation" expenses. The Davis' charges
have not yet been proved or disproved.
It may be sad to say but, given the history of sexual activities and some
private contractors, the alleged use of a prostitute may actually be a step up.
At least they were not trafficking in child sex slaves, as some DynCorp
contractors did in Bosnia in the late 1990s.
The story of the now legendary Tori the Escort shows how prostitutes have been
shipped in to war zones. In 2007, the blog Wonkette broke the story that Tori
was going to be in Baghdad's Green Zone for an extended tour, "entertaining all
members of the PMC community registered with PSCAI [Private Security Company
Association of Iraq]".
As the use of a prostitute is between consenting parties it cannot be termed
"sexual harassment", which is prohibited under the terms of the Worldwide
Personal Protective Services (WPPS) contract under which Blackwater operates in
Afghanistan. However, there is a clause with respect to guard conduct that
states:
Personal activity on post: The guards will not engage in any
unofficial business on post; ie, soliciting, canvassing, peddling, sales
promotion of a commercial item, loan money for interest and etc. [pg 70]
A lawyer could probably argue that the woman was originally working at a hotel,
thus not on base, and as such is not covered by the clause. Where she worked
when she was put on the payroll remains an unanswered question.
It bears pointing out that Melan Davis, who reported the billing of the
prostitute's services to the government, was hired back in December 2005. In
the suit she notes:
After the Department of State meeting educated me
on dire permissibility of various practices, I discovered a substantial amount
of fraudulent billing. One of the first items I uncovered was Blackwater
billing for payments made to a prostitute. I came across the name of a female
Filipino on the expenses submitted for cost reimbursables in connection with
Task Force No 4. At that time, to my knowledge, the only third-country
nationals we had in country in Afghanistan were Columbians. I wanted to figure
out whether we had Filipino third-country nationals as well because I had not
seen any others beyond this name.
I contacted Susan Bergman, who was the logistics operations manager in Kabul,
Afghanistan. She informed me that the woman was not a third-country national
hired to serve as a static guard, but rather was a prostitute, who had been
ousted from the hotel where she was working for several Blackwater men. As a
result, they put her on the Blackwater payroll under the Morale Welfare
Recreation (MWR) category. To the best of my knowledge, Blackwater billed her
plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States under the Task Orders.
This takes corporate pimping to new heights. Also, given the timeline she
describes this means that Blackwater was still a member of the International
Peace Operations Association, a leading trade group for the private military
contracting industry.
Blackwater pulled out of IPOA after Blackwater employees were accused of
killing innocent Iraqi civilians in the Nisour Square shootings of September,
2007. In December, a US federal judge dismissed charges against the contractors
on the grounds that the government bungled the case by using testimony that was
given under a grant of immunity.
The IPOA has a code of conduct that its member companies are supposed to
follow, though what happens if a company violates the code has never been
clear. While nothing in the code says that contractors can't use prostitutes,
there is language that could reasonably be construed as suggesting it is a bad
idea.
The section on accountability says: "Signatories shall support effective legal
accountability to relevant authorities for their actions and the actions of
their personnel. Signatories shall proactively address minor infractions, and
to the extent possible and subject to contractual and legal limitations, fully
cooperate with official investigations into allegations of contractual
violations and breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws."
By billing the government for the prostitute's services Blackwater was
certainly in violation of "contractual limitations".
Moving on, there are a number of far more serious allegations in the Davis'
suit, which merit full investigation.
Consider Hurricane Katrina. Over the years Blackwater has taken lots of
criticism from people with axes to grind for supposedly providing jackbooted
mercenaries to patrol the streets in the hurricane's aftermath. Up to now this
has mostly been hot air with precious little substantiation.
But in the suit, Brad Davis, who worked in Louisiana for Blackwater, contends:
Blackwater
failed to provide the services required by the contract with FEMA [the Federal
Emergency Management Agency] and the State of Louisiana. Blackwater was arming
its employees with deadly weapons (shotguns, Glocks, and M-4s) in order to
provide security. As a result, Blackwater was required to monitor closely the
weaponry, and keep at all times a registry of the weapons in the hands of its
employees. Blackwater utterly failed to monitor these deadly weapons, and
instead lost track of countless weapons.
Blackwater repeatedly and routinely falsified records to hide this serious
issue from FEMA and other United States agencies.
Blackwater repeatedly and routinely falsified GSA 139 forms, which are the
forms that Blackwater was directed to use to record the hours worked by its
employees. Blackwater permitted employees to "clock in" for their fellow
employees.
Beginning in October 2005, and continuing until at least April 2006, Blackwater
submitted invoices to the United States and to the State of Louisiana that
contained falsified hours.
Reasonable discovery is likely to establish that the persistent fraud by
Blackwater on the Hurricane Katrina contracts that was observed firsthand by
Relators from October 2005 to April 2006 actually persisted well past then.
It bears to note that during this time, when Blackwater was a member, that
IPOA's code of conduct states that, "Signatories using weapons shall put the
highest emphasis on accounting for and controlling all weapons and ammunition
utilized during an operation and for ensuring their legal and proper accounting
and disposal at the end of a contract."
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