30-05-2011, 08:45 PM
The Whistleblower
May 30th, 2011
The movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjoOAjsDm...ded#t=119s
Bolkovac, who worked as part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in the late 1990s, provides yet another perspective on why private military contracting has encroached on U.S. foreign policy, threatening our image, national security, and the lives of those we are supposed to be protecting. A police officer turned human rights investigator, she worked at uncovering international sex trafficking and cover-ups by her bosses at DynCorp International, which led to her firing, a mad rush across the border, and a subsequent wrongful termination lawsuit in which she was victorious and became the self-described poster girl for everything wrong about security-for-hire. Most galling is the sad truth that DynCorp answered to no law, nor to the military, the U.S., or the Bosnians. The criminality, including rape and murder, committed by corporate military contractors has proliferated in the past decade, and Bolkovac's cautionary tale ends on the sourest of notes. DynCorp won another federal contract on the heels of her lawsuit, and no one was prosecuted for crimes against the women whose lives she struggled to save.
Infuriating and heartbreaking.
Posted in Atrocities, Covert Operations, Elite, Outsourced, War
http://cryptogon.com/?p=22619
The book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...ogoncom-20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp
An excerpt: According to whistleblower Ben Johnston, a former aircraft mechanic who worked for the company in Bosnia, DynCorp employees and supervisors engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves.[18] Ben Johnston ended up fired, forcing him into protective custody. According to Johnston, none of the girls were from Bosnia itself, but were kidnapped by DynCorp employees from Russia, Romania and other places.
On June 2, 2000, members of the 48th Military Police Detachment conducted a sting on the DynCorp hangar at Comanche Base Camp, one of two U.S. bases in Bosnia, and all DynCorp personnel were detained for questioning. CID spent several weeks working the investigation and the results appear to support Johnston's allegations. For example, according to DynCorp employee Kevin Werner's sworn statement to CID, "during my last six months I have come to know a man we call 'Debeli,' which is Bosnian for fat boy. He is the operator of a nightclub by the name of Harley's that offers prostitution. Women are sold hourly, nightly or permanently."[19]
Johnston is not the only DynCorp employee to blow the whistle and sue the billion-dollar government contractor. Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor hired by the U.S. company on another U.N.-related contract, filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.[20] DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking.[21] Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. Bolkovac's story was made into a film, The Whistleblower, in 2010. She has also co-authored a 2011 book with Cari Lynn titled The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors And One Woman's Fight For Justice.
DynCorp has admitted it fired five employees for similar illegal activities prior to Johnston's charges.[22] In the summer of 2005, the United States Defense department drafted a proposal to prohibit defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor. Several defense contractors, among others DynCorp, stalled the establishment of a final proposal that would formally prohibit defense contractor involvement in these activities.[23]
[edit]Dancing boy incident
DynCorp workers who were employed to train Afghan policemen took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" (child prostitutes) to entertain them in Kunduz, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.[24][25][26] The cable stated that the Afghan interior minister at the time, Hanif Atmar asked the assistant US ambassador to try and "quash" both the story and release of video from the incident. The story was eventually published by The Washington Post in July 2009[27] and downplayed the incident, calling it a "questionable management oversight" when it was in fact being discussed at the highest levels of the Afghan government. According to The Guardian, the incident was influential in causing the Afghans to demand that private security companies were more strictly controlled by governments,[28] although the leaked diplomatic cable states that "placing military officers to oversee contractor operations at RTCs [i.e., DynCorp Regional Training Centers] is not legally possible under the current DynCorp contract."
At the time of the leaked cable's writing, an investigation was on-going and disciplinary actions had been taken against DynCorp leaders in Afghanistan. An investigation by Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior (MOI) resulted in the arrest of two Afghan police and nine other Afghans for the crime of "purchasing a service from a child." The United States' Assistant Ambassador to Afghanistan cautioned that an overreaction by the Afghan government would "only increase chances for the greater publicity the MOI is trying to forestall."[29]
According to employees who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution, four senior managers were sacked as a result of this and other incidents in Afghanistan.[30] The State Department was reportedly investigating whether DynCorp had ignored signs of drug abuse among employees in Afghanistan. According to the State Department Inspector General, a "substantially completed" review specifically pertaining to the dancing boy incident had uncovered no criminal activity. Following government investigations into its programs in Afghanistan and other conflict zones, DynCorp was reported to be strengthening its ethics practices, and had created a chief compliance officer position whose focus included ethics, business conduct, and regulatory compliance.[31]
May 30th, 2011
The movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjoOAjsDm...ded#t=119s
Bolkovac, who worked as part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in the late 1990s, provides yet another perspective on why private military contracting has encroached on U.S. foreign policy, threatening our image, national security, and the lives of those we are supposed to be protecting. A police officer turned human rights investigator, she worked at uncovering international sex trafficking and cover-ups by her bosses at DynCorp International, which led to her firing, a mad rush across the border, and a subsequent wrongful termination lawsuit in which she was victorious and became the self-described poster girl for everything wrong about security-for-hire. Most galling is the sad truth that DynCorp answered to no law, nor to the military, the U.S., or the Bosnians. The criminality, including rape and murder, committed by corporate military contractors has proliferated in the past decade, and Bolkovac's cautionary tale ends on the sourest of notes. DynCorp won another federal contract on the heels of her lawsuit, and no one was prosecuted for crimes against the women whose lives she struggled to save.
Infuriating and heartbreaking.
Posted in Atrocities, Covert Operations, Elite, Outsourced, War
http://cryptogon.com/?p=22619
The book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...ogoncom-20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp
An excerpt: According to whistleblower Ben Johnston, a former aircraft mechanic who worked for the company in Bosnia, DynCorp employees and supervisors engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves.[18] Ben Johnston ended up fired, forcing him into protective custody. According to Johnston, none of the girls were from Bosnia itself, but were kidnapped by DynCorp employees from Russia, Romania and other places.
On June 2, 2000, members of the 48th Military Police Detachment conducted a sting on the DynCorp hangar at Comanche Base Camp, one of two U.S. bases in Bosnia, and all DynCorp personnel were detained for questioning. CID spent several weeks working the investigation and the results appear to support Johnston's allegations. For example, according to DynCorp employee Kevin Werner's sworn statement to CID, "during my last six months I have come to know a man we call 'Debeli,' which is Bosnian for fat boy. He is the operator of a nightclub by the name of Harley's that offers prostitution. Women are sold hourly, nightly or permanently."[19]
Johnston is not the only DynCorp employee to blow the whistle and sue the billion-dollar government contractor. Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor hired by the U.S. company on another U.N.-related contract, filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.[20] DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking.[21] Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. Bolkovac's story was made into a film, The Whistleblower, in 2010. She has also co-authored a 2011 book with Cari Lynn titled The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors And One Woman's Fight For Justice.
DynCorp has admitted it fired five employees for similar illegal activities prior to Johnston's charges.[22] In the summer of 2005, the United States Defense department drafted a proposal to prohibit defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor. Several defense contractors, among others DynCorp, stalled the establishment of a final proposal that would formally prohibit defense contractor involvement in these activities.[23]
[edit]Dancing boy incident
DynCorp workers who were employed to train Afghan policemen took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" (child prostitutes) to entertain them in Kunduz, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.[24][25][26] The cable stated that the Afghan interior minister at the time, Hanif Atmar asked the assistant US ambassador to try and "quash" both the story and release of video from the incident. The story was eventually published by The Washington Post in July 2009[27] and downplayed the incident, calling it a "questionable management oversight" when it was in fact being discussed at the highest levels of the Afghan government. According to The Guardian, the incident was influential in causing the Afghans to demand that private security companies were more strictly controlled by governments,[28] although the leaked diplomatic cable states that "placing military officers to oversee contractor operations at RTCs [i.e., DynCorp Regional Training Centers] is not legally possible under the current DynCorp contract."
At the time of the leaked cable's writing, an investigation was on-going and disciplinary actions had been taken against DynCorp leaders in Afghanistan. An investigation by Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior (MOI) resulted in the arrest of two Afghan police and nine other Afghans for the crime of "purchasing a service from a child." The United States' Assistant Ambassador to Afghanistan cautioned that an overreaction by the Afghan government would "only increase chances for the greater publicity the MOI is trying to forestall."[29]
According to employees who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution, four senior managers were sacked as a result of this and other incidents in Afghanistan.[30] The State Department was reportedly investigating whether DynCorp had ignored signs of drug abuse among employees in Afghanistan. According to the State Department Inspector General, a "substantially completed" review specifically pertaining to the dancing boy incident had uncovered no criminal activity. Following government investigations into its programs in Afghanistan and other conflict zones, DynCorp was reported to be strengthening its ethics practices, and had created a chief compliance officer position whose focus included ethics, business conduct, and regulatory compliance.[31]
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"