U.S. Military Contractor 'Used Armored Cars To Transport Prostitutes'
Over at Muckraked, we get news that "a panel of whistleblowers" testifying before a Senate committee yesterday dropped a dime on their employer, military contractor DynCorp (among others). The most explosive part of the testimony involved a contract manager, a misappropriated armored car, and prostitutes:
A contractor died when a DynCorp manager used an employee's armored car to transport prostitutes, according to Barry Halley, a Worldwide Network Services employee working under a DynCorp subcontract.
"DynCorp's site manager was involved in bringing prostitutes into hotels operated by DynCorp. A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission. I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by the contractor's manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad."
Naturally, this will lead many to question whether its appropriate for DynCorp to be awarded with future military contracts, but the more fitting question is whether or not DynCorp should have been awarded a contract in Iraq in the first place. Because, you see, this is not the first time DynCorp employees have been implicated in running prostitution rings abroad. Let's flash back to August of 2002, and meet the DynCorp whistleblowers of yesteryear:
Two former employees of DynCorp, the government contracting powerhouse, have won legal victories after charging that the $2 billion-a-year firm fired them when they complained that co-workers were involved in a Bosnia sex-slave trade...
Because of a combination of international treaties, jurisdictional loopholes and bureaucratic confusion, employees of private military companies such as DynCorp can escape prosecution for crimes they commit overseas. Most common crimes committed outside the United States are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, and the burgeoning local law enforcement systems in war-torn regions such as Bosnia are often insufficient or unwilling to police U.S. contractors.
Salon covered that story and its aftermath extensively throughout 2002. Among the lowlights are the predilection among DynCorp contractors for women between the ages of 12 and 15 ("My girl's not a day over 12," one brags), the ties to the Serbian mafia, and...oh yeah! The whole misprision of felony thing.
First Posted: 04-29-08 12:00 PM | Updated: 05- 7-08 05:12 AM