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in recent years as we have been actively engagingin war, things the government used to do is now being done byprivate companies. food, laundry and housing were services providedwithin the military. now in iraq, you still need a lot of supportmechanisms and there’s just not enough military infrastructure to do this.private contractors come in and they fill the gap. i saw contractors in iraq, doing anywherefrom helping fix tanks, helicopter mechanics, pretty much any job that’s in the military, there’s a civilian contractor right there. there are over 100,000 private contractorsworking in iraq, kuwait, and the surrounding area. this war has been privatized to a greaterextent than any other war in history.

they’re part of a multi-billion dollar industry,fueled by your tax dollars, an industry very much in need by the u.s. military. 40 cents out of every dollar congress controlsnow goes to contractors. there’s more than 20,000 private militaryon the ground. the second largest armed force in iraq areprivate security, they out scale the brits or any other nation. blackwater is one of the largest and mostconspicuous security firms in iraq with about 300 employees there. blackwateris staffed largely by retired u.s. military, including former members of the special forces.

scotty was told that he would be doing securityfor paul bremer, the ambassador, that he would just go everywhere paul beemer wentand they would be uh, usually like three 8 hour shifts, and that was fine with scotty‘cause he didn’t go over there to hurt anyone, he was there to, to protect people. watch out now, i don’t want you to get underneathme when i’m climbing, you might get hurt. hey, kelsey! he just had an incredible way with sports,even as a small child he was the best swimmer onthe swim team, he was amazing. first time he ran away from home i think he was six monthsold and somehow he’d gotten the front

door open and he was in his walker. and i’mgetting ready for work and he’s hauling taildown this hill, heading for the playground. (laughs) and it just totally stunned me.and he, he was like that for the rest of his life, he was always running. scotty went intothe navy on his 17th birthday. he loved being a seal. woo, oh, what’s this falling down business?as far as scotty going to iraq, he chose blackwater because they had a two month contractand uh, scotty wasn’t gonna have to be away from his kids very long. he neededto make some money. my son called me and he told me that he wasgoing to kuwait with

paul beemer the um, ambassador in iraq. istill have little soldiers in a shoebox that heused to play with. those uh, were his favorite toys. there are the boys.what? this is jerry and this is tommy. that’smy favorite picture, por-, i took it, that’s uh, four or five--and jerry always carried it with him, always. wherever jerry wenthe had a pic-, that picture with him. that was my jerry. then came my tommy, thenmy niece anita, then my nephew (yura?), then lydia-- notice everything’s my tommy and my jerry.i love that.

well, he was um, yeah, he was the first bornuh, uh, everything i knew about kids i learned with him. you know,and for him. the news came out on the radio and uh, itsaid that there was an incident in fallujah. breaking news story tonight. the four americancivilians were ambushed and killed in fallujah, and they’re believedto be from a local company called blackwater security counseling. there are four families uh, in this worldtoday that are gonna get knocks on the doors, and you don’t wantto be on either side of that door when it

happens, either hearing the news or deliveringthe news. reality didn’t check in, i didn’t wantto believe it. i still don’t want to believe it, but the fact is, he’s notwalking the earth, i need to pray for his soul. i um, i,i miss him. i was so angry. i was so unbelievably angry,and i didn’t even know what had happened, but i was just angry that my son had died.the people that did this horrible thing, these iraqi insurgents or maybe they were just kidson the street, they were taught hatred for anyone that didn’t represent what they hadbeen taught to believe in. and i found it so hardto hate them, but when i found out what

blackwater did, that’s when i started reallyfeeling real -- i, i, i don’t know how to say it. the vehicles should’ve been armored andthey also should’ve had, h-, s-, saws, which, heavy, belt fed machine gunsin each vehicle, which they didn’t have. there were supposed to be three individualsin each car, they pulled off two guys to do, from what i was told, clerical work--paperwork-- so they sent them out, short two men.their contracts list that they were to know where they’re going, andthey were to know people that they’re working with--and uh, and had been there before--

and had been there before, so they-- because, if they had had an armored vehicle,if they had had the rear gunman, he was the onethat was gonna protect them. my son is not walking the earth because peoplethat he trusted and worked for did not care about him. it wasthe mighty dollar, that’s all that they cared about. they know, knowingly skimped on the mission. they cut corners left and right. shame for country, shame for blackwater, shamefor you, blackwater. what happened to them while they were withthis company, company,

not the american military, this company, hadresponsibilities that they didn’t live up to. and our family members died be-, because of that. the most dangerous city on earth, no reargunner, no armored vehicles, not even a map. that’s, to me, negligent homicide. they were just numbers for them. just people who they can bill for. this is a situation that was in the front page ofthe news that was leading various network broadcasts for severaldays. and how that company manages that challenge will really dictate the futureof that company. the first thing, the first

focus has to be for any company that findsitself in a, in the type of crisis that blackwater found itself in, is what do we need to doto preserve the financial business future of thiscompany. this is a company who’s success, economic success is completely contingentupon funding from the u.s. government. within the first 24 hours, blackwater had hireda dc lobbying firm called alexander strategies group. asg is one of those small handfull of firmsin 2004 uh, that was part of the republican conservative club. blackwateritself, in particular, ceo and founder eric prince, has long standing ties to the conservativemovement. particularly on the uh, christian coalition side, had been very generouswith his campaign contributions over

the years. he and his family contributed overtwo million dollars to republican candidates and the republican party. i really don’t want to talk to you, okay?thank you. i want to ask you some questions about yourmen in fallujah, what happened there, sir? fallujah happens the last day of march, within 24 or 48 hours afterthat, they’re literally on the hill, meeting with some of the most powerful members ofcongress, who really were gonna dictate what was gonna happen to this company interms of its funding. they went to john warner, who was the chairof the armed services

committee on the senate side.they went to duncan hunter, who was a congressman from sandiego, who was the chair of the armed services committee on the house side. they met with rick santorum, who is chairof the republican senate conference committee, which is a very, verypowerful post. contractors are among those who have beentaken hostage, they’ve also suffered terribly;injuries and loss of life, the most horrific of whichoccurred on april 13 of this year, madam president, when the bodies of four contractorswere burned, mutilated, and hung from a bridge in iraq. should we step up and try anddo something about that problem.

uh, we will have to have very vigorous oppositionto this amendment as it is presently drawn. the blackwater strategy worked very, verywell. they went to washington, they stopped any investigationfrom taking place. and at the end of the day, as a result of their action, they were ableto protect their business. they went out and they retained former high ranking uh, governmentofficials. cofer black, who was a high ranking official at the central intelligenceagency, joseph schmitz, who was the inspector general at the pentagon. and undoubtedly,when you go out and you retain high ranking officials like that, they certainlyare helpful in attracting new business,

pursuing new business uh, and getting newcontracts. within a year after the fallujah incident, they had received over 200 milliondollars in new government contracts. people in washington who leave governmentand go to work in lucrative jobs in the defense industry, theyhave connections, they have influence. business boomed, they just built a brand newheadquarters. that’s a big expansion. it’s a, it’s a rather big expansion, butit’s needed uh, uh, certainly we’ve left room for growth.right, 8,000 square feet in the original building, 64,000 square feet here.

the company says it can assemble hundredsof battle-ready men, a small private army at a moments notice. teams of blackwater independent contractorsare deployed around the world. instead of mourning my son’s death and theother three men, they go and they profiteer off of it. they were cutting every possiblecorner to make more money for them. in iraq, most of the men aren’t gettingthe protection. men over there working for blackwaterare still dying. the world really needs to know what’s going on over there.and we need to stop it. there has to be accountability. right now they are literallygetting away with murder.

companies should not be permitted to operatein a war zone and not be held accountable. i was reading the bible in greek and hebrewand studying those languages. and hebrew sort of led naturallyinto arabic. i was also interested in student loan repayment, i, i owed a you know,upwards of uh, $40,000 dollars in student loans, which the army promised to repay. theoption available to me was to get a secret clearance and become an interrogator. andi agreed, this was pre-9/11, i didn’t really expect i’d have to interrogate someone,or imagined if i did it would’ve been in a conventional war uh, where things would’ve been very different.

i found out um, in april of 2003 uh, by aphone call. they said, well the good news is, congratulations, you’vebeen selected for promotion to brigadier general. so i said, well that’s good news,what, what could possibly be the bad news. and he said, well the bad news is, you’reunit uh, you’ll be commanding is assisting the prisons experts with the restoration of prisons for all of iraq. um, and they’re alreadydeployed. and i said, well, can’t i go? and there was just a second of silence onthe other end of the telephone, and he said, youwant to go? i received a telephone call um, from a mr.saller. he said uh, can

you help me, he said, the americans took mymoney and they hurt me very bad um, and i just came from abu ghraib. he told me of oneincident where um, uh, you know, he was uh, stripped nude and um, they tied a ropeto his penis uh, with 7 or 8 other men. and then they would um, these were american personnelhe’s telling me. um, and they would push one man and all of them would falland then, and they’d be joking and laughing and mocking him. i would ask him, who is doing this to you,mr. saller? and he would say, well, they were, they were twotypes of people, one was dressed some type ofmilitary personnel wear in the army. and then

the other type would be in civilianclothing. i go, what do you mean, civilian clothing? he goes like, normal pants, likeuh, any normal pants and a normal shirt. so thats the first time when it struck me that there’s another element being involved herein abu ghraib. another type of person is there. on tuesday, the day i was arrested, i wentto my work in hasswa. i am an electrical engineer. i was transported to the abu ghraibprison on january 1st, 2004. there was a person wearing civilian clothes and giving orders.

i think he belonged to the private companies. they put me back in the cell,cuffed my hands again, and ripped my clothes off in a savage way. one of their strategies is to tie a rope around the penis, and cut off the circulation. what is the purpose of this? what is the purpose of the injection they gave me so that to this day i can’t have any more children? why is themilitary using private companies to interrogate detainees? these two companies for certain: titan and caci.

when i saw the photographs for the first time,and i said to the commander of the criminal investigation division,who was showing them to me. um, i said, why are the translators around the prisoners,why are, why are the translators in the cell block? and he said, ma’am, those aren’ttranslators, those are caci interrogators. caci was hired by the department of interiorout of a little town in arizona called sierra vista. and theywere hired to do database work. and that contract, which was sort of a blanket contract,that allowed them to do a whole bunch of different things, was used to do interrogationat abu ghraib. so what ostensibly was a contract to do clericalwork or it

work, turned out to be getting information,not from a computer, but from human beings in uh, a notorious prison in iraq. at the time of the scandals, in the springof 2004, roughly 50 percent of the interrogators were privatecontractors. this amendment uh, madame president, attemptsto address what i believe is a very legitimateand serious concern, that have come to light inrecent uh, days, with respect to the use of, or misuse of contractors and the treatmentof detainees in iraq. quite simply, madam presidentuh, this amendment would prohibit the

use of contractors in interrogations of prisonersand in offensive military operations. it just seems to me, abundantly clear thatwe can not hire private contractors to perform a function as gover-,inherently governmental, inherently sensitive, indeed, inherently explosive, andfor which there must be accountability, as is the interrogation of prisoners. corporations exist to make a profit. and in,when they are hired to do uh, jobs, whether it’s the provisionof water, or the you know, interrogation of prisoners, they’re job is to get as muchwork as possible and make as much profit as possible. now that doesn’t work in the fieldof intelligence, period.

you do not put personnel who do not have allegianceand 100 percent loyalty to uh, um, um, america um,you do not put them in sensitive um, key government um, activities, like military intelligencegathering. it creates a conflict too because we wereuncertain uh, you know, we knew what our chain of command was,that was very clear, and we were forced to memorize it and follow it. but what’sthe caci chain of command? because of these companies, these prisons have become training grounds for torture. i was surprised by my arrest. and the next day i was transported to abu ghraib.

they took the bag off my head and i found myself in front of military men, interrogators, a group of about 8 or 10. they urinated at me, and they put their weapons on my private parts, in addition to the beating. i could hear people screaming for help, from beating, torture, or the barking of dogs. there was a wink and a nod approach. we havethese rules, you’re gonna follow them, but we’re notgonna spend that much time making sure that you’re gonna follow them. and if i don’tknow about what’s going on, then i can um, you know, have plausible deniability. a contractor is safely in an office in theunited states somewhere.

so no direct supervision. and to just simplysay, well i, i guess they got out of control, i don’t know what, where they were taking their instructions from. it seems to excuseall of them. i have reproduced an excerpt from the jobposting, as it was reprinted in the washington post on may10th, on the poster here behind me. and let me read it for you, it says, under minimalsupervision will assist, and goes on. key words, under minimal supervision. in 2003, the pentagon essentially panickedand a very desperate secretary of defense did whatever he had todo very, very quickly to try to get more

intelligence. if that meant running out andhiring a bunch of contractors who didn’t knowwhat they were doing, and putting them wrongly into the chain of command of mit-,military intelligence, that’s what they did. they were desperate. the contracting business in iraq is very,very lucrative. there was so much money being given away overthere to contractors. i mean there were, there werejobs that didn’t even need to be there. uh,you know, we’d go into the tent to use our, our internet, and the woman who would putmy name down to assign me to a computer would

be a civilian contractor who wasmaking six figures to be over there. why is she there? why are we paying this womanto do this? they threw so much money at these people,they can’t refuse i mean, if you’re a mechanic, and you’remaking like 20 or 30 thousand, and someone offers you a 100,000 a year, tax free, togo to iraq, and that’s, that’s hard i think that’sreally hard to refuse. they would very often sit down with soldiers,particularly from reserve or national guard, and say, hey man,you know, what are you making, $3,000 dollars a month over here? you know, i makethat in a week.

you would talk about how you know, in, in8 more months i’m gonna be out of here and i’m gonna be making140 grand. it certainly affected retention because idon’t know, i don’t know why any, any military personwould reenlist to do the same job when they could get out of the military and make youknow, six times the money and uh, and do the same job. there was a uh, um, a little uh, phrase thatwe threw around um, food for freedom. that if, if you wanted toget paid more, you should start eating more so that you’d get booted out for being overweight.and um, it’s an honorable discharge and it w-, it would boost your, uh, your pay,or your net worth by about five times. um,

if you were to do such a thing. and um, andit worked. the american forces came at 11:30pm,and they took me and my son. my son started screaming, “that’s my mother!” an american dragged me by my hand like this, screaming at me, "go, go!" he said, “if you don’t confess about the terrorists you’reworking with, i’ll send you to a place where they'll rape you." i was getting really angry, i mean, especiallybecause i knew that a lot of these prisoners that isaw uh, with these injuries from, from abuse and torture, really hadn’t done anything, they

weren’t part of the insurgency, they werejust picked up for no reason at all. we were interrogating taxi drivers and youknow, like pizza delivery guys. um, it was just, you know,we called them “average achmed.” using methods such as torture and also usingpeople who are not qualified to do this job, has resultedin bad information and therefore uh, problems for national security and for the soldiers, because you’re, you’re getting information that’sno good. in a lot of areas where you start noticing

a lot of you know, a, alot of hostility against american soldiers, it’s not because the soldiers are doinga lot of wrong things, it’s because sometime maybethey’re communication that had been transmitted to them, has been transmittedto them wrongly, unprofessionally and serving someone’s else interest. these are titanlinguists, they were hired by titan. titan has long standing contracts, providingcritical information technology and support services for some ofour nations most valuable defense assets. under a contract with the u.s. army’s intelligenceand security command titan has over 4,000 linguists that provide invaluable missioncritical services.

titan is the company that provides the linguistsand continues to provide the linguists throughoutiraq. they’re the biggest provider in this business. they were so desperate to get people to fillthese positions as translators, that they were just hiring anybodythat uh, approached somebody and obviously had command of the english languagein addition to the arabic language or farsi, or whatever it may have been. there was people who maybe spoke the language,but it was broken, but could not read it or write it.and i’m talking about english. and they werehired, they were never given a test, no one

was given a test, i was never given a test.the test i was given was a phone conversationfor a minute. military trusted us, military trusted titan. titan came and said, here’sa linguist that we have hired, we have trained, tested, we put our trust in, he passed thesecurity clearance or he got some kind of a clearance. you should trust him, everything he does, everything he say. i did work closely with titan all year longwhile i was in iraq uh, and i can say that a lot of the,the translators weren’t trained at all. i don’t, idon’t know what kind of training they received,

but they were, they were terrible at it. there was no managers, there was no supervision,there was no training, there was no follow up. there waswhat so ever, a system of evaluation of what linguists are doing or h-, what they’redoing. even a system of if these linguists reallytranslating, or doing, or really, are they translating, or giving their opinions. titanmade the big bucks and hired the most incompetentpeople most of the time, did not follow up with them, did not really know what they weredoing. probably as a result a lot of people got hurt, a lot of people got killed, americanlife got lost because someone wants to make

money and wants to have a fat check in hispocket. here you have the m.p.’s, who engage andparticipated in, in horrific conduct, are being held accountable for their actions,why aren’t the u.s. contractors, the civilian corporate personnel, why aren’t they beingheld accountable for their actions? if you are a u.s. soldier and you hurt aniraqi civilian and that becomes known, you will be court marshaled.but if you are a u.s. contractor and you kill an iraqi civilian and that becomes known,you will be sent home. and then you can come back the following week and you can workfor a different contractor. so here we have the two ring leaders of abuserat abu ghraib,

very explicitly saying in s-, in many cases,what was happening, was they were being ordered to abuse these detainees by civiliancontractors. these guys are in prison for 18 years total uh, between the two of them, and there’s no contractors in prison. uh, my question is regar-, is in regards toprivate military contractors. the uniform code of militaryjustice does not apply to these contractors in iraq. i asked your secretary of defense a couple months ago, what law governs theiractions. um, it’s the wrong s-- i was gonna ask him, go ahead. (crowd laughs)well i was uh--

help, i was gonna, i pick up the phone andsay, mr. secretary, i got an interesting question. this is whatdelegation, i don’t mean to be dodging the question, although it’s kind of convenientin this case, but never (crowd laughs), i really will, uh, i’m gonna call the secretaryand say, you brought up a very valid question and what are we doing about it. is, that’show i work. i’m uh, um, thanks (crowd laughs). yes, ma’am. are any of these allegations being investigated? there uh, my recollection is, and i think it’s okay to say this isthat the investigations are ongoing and that

uh, time will tell.somehow these contractors have leveraged power in washington and the government feels like they want to protect these people and they,they want to protect these, the security of these contracts and they want to s-, protectum, them from prosecution. most of the managers and most of the, thepeople we dealt with working for titan were ex-military officers,high ranking officers. all major military contractors have a boardof directors and a senior management that is composed of senior retired military personnel,

and this allows them to go get contracts. washington is a phenomenally incestuous place. retired seniorofficers, capital hill staffers, and defense industry. you know, the usual suspects comeback again and again. top recipients of money from halliburton,titan, caci, and blackwater, are the two chairmen of the committeesin congress and the house of representatives that oversee military mattersin spending. the major corporations, these cartel and monopolycorporations, they’ve figured out how to legally buy influence.

i would echo the words of pope john paul thesecond, profit by itself is not a sufficient motivation forbusiness endeavors. you’re operating in the realm of greed, you’re not operating in the realm of morality. i went to iraq and i came back. what’s soheartbreaking was that i found that we weren’t, that we weren’talways the good guys, and it was very disillusioning for me. ‘cause i had grownup with this like dream of america, what america was. and when i saw that dream atabu ghraib and, and what it had become, i felt heartbroken, i felt like i didn’t knowwhat it was to be an american because i saw what i had thought america was destroyed anddisgraced.

when they went into iraq, a subsidiary ofhalliburton, which is kbr, kellogg, brown, and root, was on thescene immediately. they were logistics people, they were mechanics, and they werealso contracted to begin the process of setting up shower points, laundry facilities,mess halls, dining facilities, really searching for any opportunity to take on what wouldbe traditionally military roles. when you use these contractors, you gain alot of efficiencies, you gain a lot of expertise and, and, and specialization. it was devastating, ‘cause they took overmy job, i ended up doing nothing. we had to train these kbr contractorshow to fix these radios. we had to walk

them through all the basic steps. but wheni could be actively becoming a better uh, soldier and becoming more proficient in myjob, instead i’m gonna sit up on guard duty to b-, wait around while kbr contractors aredoing the job that i had to train them to do. across the board people lost their jobs. quartermaster companies, mechanic, anylogistics soldiers were involved with, their jobs were outsourced to kbr. if you don’t know kbr, you have never beento iraq, because kbr is everywhere in iraq. you have hundreds, if not thousands of thesetrucks driving

north and south on these roads every day,bringing supplies to other military bases. most of the people who were driving for kellogg, brown, and root, were foreign workers.they were from pakistan and uh, nepal, india. sometimes there would be americansdriving the trucks, u.s. civilians.42 i heard about the job though uh, another truckdriver friend in calexico, california. we were sitting there waitingfor a load, and he told me, this is his last load and he was going overseas. from there you know, i sent my resume in. i thought i was really gonna be doing a lot of reconstruction in iraq uh, as far as uh, well i could seeme

hauling fuel maybe to a, a, a place that hadloaders and dozers, you know. we never went to go be in a battle or fight a fight,uh, we went to take care of our families and make some money, to reconstruct iraq. tony and i met in ‘79 at a halloween party,it was kind of a blind meeting and uh, we were married less thana year later. his brother was in the navy andso he always wished that he had done something like that, but he’s just a good old boy. he thought it was such a great cause to goand help rebuild and got a job with halliburton and he was gonna go drive a truck in iraq. within a month, he was there.

i was uh, 15 when i met steve, first time.and a good friend of ours introduced us at a fair they had. anduh, we just hit it off. he got out of the fiberglass business in michigan and eventually ended up truck driving. steve decided to go over there to get us financially set for not only retirement but to you know, help three kids go through college. he would take on anything if he thought that it would benefithis family. he wasn’t military, he was non-combatant,he was a driver, he went over there to help rebuild iraq, and that’swhat he wanted to do. when i woke up early that morning, it wasabout, i’d say about

4:30am, we had to be out by our trucks at,by 7am. and we already knew what we were going on, on our mission, we were told thatat 7pm the night before, on the 8th of april. the first things we do, was very normal, wasjust routine behavior, is just going to a pre-check, going uh, preventativemaintenance and check your oil and check your tir-, air in your tires and yourfuel tank. the solder that was sketching a map with hisboot in the gravel next to his vehicle, well uh, some of us saw partof it, some of us didn’t. and they never, nobody ever told us why, nobodytold us what was going on and um, they said the roads are redand i wasn’t sure what red meant.

we left the post uh, nearing 11 o’clock,10:40, 11 o’clock in the morning, in there somewhere. and headed onour way to baghdad. we’re going down the road and, and we gotpretty close to the, i believe the abu ghraib prison. and all of a sudden,the traffic, there’s no traffic. and uh, rightabout then, i mean, bullets came from everywhere. it sounded like we were in a hail storm, itwas like when you were a, a kid and we used to make popcorn in a pressurecooker. the temperature comes up and the, begins to pop. they were coming in through my doors, theywere hitting my tanker,

they were, they were hitting my windshield,they were coming in through the, hitting the engine, uh, you could hear them come in throughone door, hit the other door where they lodged in, and i mean, they were just comingin everywhere. and then it just, it reached a crescendo andit just seemed like never stopped after that. and then i could hear the men uh, crying onthe radio, yelling out for help, i’m burning, i’m burning, help me,help me, please don’t let me die in iraq. truck behind me, the, his trailer caught fireand he overturned and was trapped inside the truck and burned up.

i heard one yelling and, and screaming and,uh, until he s-, he stopped. friends that i had promised before that youknow, if they broke down or something happened, i wouldn’t leavethem. i hear ‘em screaming, i’m hit, i’m hit, help me, help me please, i don’t wantto die here. i was completely saturated with blood youknow, and my pants were soaked with blood, my shirt was soaked fromblood. it was just absolutely just sheer terror.just absolutely, positively horrifying. and i still feel, i s-, stillhave that shaky sort of thing in me, that’s like settinghere right now, it’s like i’m, i’m still there.

the mutilated bodies of four people were foundwest of baghdad near an area where a u.s. fuel convoy was attackedon friday. after that attack, seven americans were reported missing, includinguh, contractors working for halliburton, a company that supplies uh, fuel uh, and othersupplies to u.s. troops. the families were notified today of the discovery. halliburtondid release a statement saying, quote, we at halliburton are saddened to learn of these deaths and are working with authorities so the families can begin the grieving and healingprocess. two u.s. soldiers are missing and also thomas hammel from macon, mississippi.

saturday, april 10th, the monday after i got the first phone callfrom halliburton and kbr. “steve, when you get back to base, please call me, i got acall yesterday, saying that you were missing after heavy fighting in mortex, you andnine others.” is that sharpened?uh-huh-- and what are these rocks called again? i forgot.dad told us, but i don’t remember. like shale?i’m not sure. i just turned 50 and it’s hard to have toyou know, reinvent yourself like you’re a teenager again. when all yourdreams go, things go out the tube.

so he was definitely the love of my life. he f-,he firmly believed that, that kbr and halliburton were gonna keep him safe. i mean,he, he truly did. he was very positive about that uh, right up to the end, he believedhe would be safe. he wasn’t much of a writer, that’s forsure. his journal’s empty (laughs). my dad had just told me he was going to workfor halliburton and how big they were and how they were thereto help rebuild. somebody knew that they sent these wonderfulmen out there.

how can they do that? these men went to do the right thing. so bottom line, they were totally taken advantage of. i trusted the company, i trusted them, uh,this is a fortune 500 company. i, i, i just don’t believe theywould send me down the road that was closed or was gonna have hostile activities for sure. i just, that di-, didn’t even cross my mind. and u.s. forces here are saying openly, they’rebraced for more terror attacks, more bombingwe had a significant anniversary, the fall of baghdad. we had achristian holiday, and they converged to create what was an obvious day of danger.halliburton and kbr had n-, news from multiple

sources, includingmultiple sources in the military, that the roads that day were under active combatoperations and were black, closed, and or red. no civilians.they were sitting ducks out there in a military, in military trucks onthat day. they told us we couldn’t wear camouflageor anything that made us look like military. the point was clear thatwe were not soldiers and we were not to behave like soldiers. he couldn’t even wear um, camouflage shirt(laughs) on base, let alone driving a military fuel truck outin you know, the desert where there was a

war around him. why would they send this convoy in camouflagetrucks down that road in the middle of battle? it’s about contracts, i believe, fulfillinga contract and replacing us if we died. there’s a lot of different contractsbeing offered out there and, and kellogg, brown, and root wants most of them, if theycould have them all, they could take them all. and um, they wanted to continue doingbusiness with the army, whatever the risks were. was nothing but the money. there’s no duty,honor, country, among anyone at halliburton, kbr.

halliburton, kbr, and some of these otherfirms over there are staying over there and continuing to makeprofits, big money um, and people are just uh,at the cost of human life. their contract with the army provided themliterally billions of dollars of revenue every year, that the contract profitand the contract profit that they made became more important than the lives of themen that they hired. i think we’re talking about what’s rightand the fact that you sacrificed our loved ones, our loved ones for your profit. kbr killed, bagged, and replaced people. theytried to do it with us

and uh, they killed my friends as far as,as far as i’m concerned, and uh, they tried to kill me. i know they know. this is a case about halliburton and kbr tryingto make a profit at time of war and using civilians in an improperfashion. halliburton is in charge of seeing that thesemen and their employees are safe, sent these men out on april 9th,and knew, they knew that there was more than a good chance that they would be killed. when people talk about, oh they, they gave their lives or this thing, and i, i can assure you that they did not.they were stolen from ‘em, they were

screaming and didn’t want to go. and therewasn’t anything great or glorious about the whole obscene ordeal. they didn’t die, they didn’t pass away, they were murdered. kbr got billions of dollars worth of contracts in iraq without a bidding. halliburton got the government contract withoutcompetitive bidding. the case of halliburton, most of the contractsthat they’ve received have been sole source contracts whichmeans they’re either given the contract, it’s just offered to them, or they’rethe only people that bid on it. a lot of federal officialswill defend this, saying that this is the

only company that can do the work. conservatives especially who favor a freemarket system should be outraged about the degenerate state of thelack of competition in defense industry. bunnatine greenhouse, a top contracting officerat the army corp of engineers, alleges favoritism and rule breaking. i walked into a process that was corrupt,that was geared toward preferential treatment to kbr.kbr was preselected, the duration of the contract was predetermined. most blatant abusethat i had experienced in my contracting career. the american way is competition and i cannotsufficiently stress that

in defense industry, when it comes to thebig programs, there is not competition, it’s monopoly and cartel behavior. it is corrupt,it is corrupting, it is corrosive to our national defense. when we showed up, there’s nothing there.our customer is a private coming off patrol who wants midnight chow.and we’re there for ‘em. we’re doing the stuff that you’ll neverread about in the paper. everyone had to make a big adjustment overthere. i help with that. we got 80,000 troops out of the sand in 3 months, it was awesome. i’m ian dolan. angela stevens.kirk hanson.

my name is jay patterson and i’m proudto work for halliburton. my name’s ben carter and within the firstweek of being in iraq, i knew that that wasn’t gonna be the company thati wanted to be with. halliburton was hired to provide clean safe cooking, cleaning, shower water for the military. one of halliburton’semployees saw something wiggling in the water in his toilet bowl. so i went and testedthe water in our s-, water storage tanks, there was no chlorine in them, none. the waterwe showered in every single day was extremely contaminated. and when i talk aboutcontaminated water, i’m saying malaria, typhus uh, giardia, cryptosporidium, i mean,the

list is really, really long. halliburton is accused by its own employees,of exposing troops to contaminated water in iraq. when i tried to notify the troops that theymay be exposed to a serious health risk, i was told that the militarywas none of my concern. they were only concerned with making theirprofit and didn’t care how it may affect the troops. of the 67 watertreatment plants that halliburton run, 63 of themweren’t providing safe water. and the marines are showing in it every singleday. s-, sorry.

(crying) i was there to help ‘em, there’sa lot of soldiers over there. they might come home without a bullet wound, but there’sa lot of them that are gonna home with pathogens in their blood because of halliburton.and they don’t even know to get tested for it uh, unless somebody tells ‘em.and i’m sure halliburton is not gonna be the company to tell them. when i joined halliburton, i knew i was gonnawork on some big things. we put out a few fires atwork, once ran into a small challenge of getting some supplies for our troops. butthe biggest thing, serving our troops good old american food, so they’d feel just a little closer to home.

how come you don’t go to the chow hall?how much time you spend on line? at least, at least-- an hour?an hour. an hour for food?hour, hour in the sandstorm for food. tell me about that line over there. what,what line am i looking at right now? that line is for the chow hall, where you eat. several times dining halls were attacked.all it takes is one iraqi that’s an insurgent. and because they knewwhat times we were gonna eat every day, they knew when to expect to hit. and thathappens because kbr won’t go to a 24 hour

feeding schedule where they just always havefood ready. they won’t do it because it saves them money, because they get paid byhow many soldiers they feed, not by how many soldiers they save.feeding the troops. the pentagon has found some serious problemswith halliburton’s work on that contract as well. pentagon auditors found that a halliburtoncontract to provide food and housing for american troops had a staggering1.8 billion dollars in unsupported costs. it was all a scam, halliburton was charging$45 dollars for a six pack, can of like, coke or pepsi, that theygive us in the military free in the mess hall. now these sodas were made right there in thedesert, it’s not as if

they were brought over from the united states,these sodas were made with arabic wraps, you know, coca-cola, pepsi-cola, whatever,right there in the desert. so it’s not as if they had an exorbitant transportationrate. they had the, the little mobile units thatwe had to put our clothes in, like a net duffle bag, halliburton chargedthe government $100 dollars for every bag of clothes they washed. whenever we got our laundry back, it feltworse than when we turned it in. everything was still grimy.i stopped taking my laundry into kbr and instead i was washing it in the sink. andi was told by my chain of command that i was

not allowed to wash my laundry on my own,i had to take it to kbr to have it washed. even though we all knew that they were doinga horrible job. because they get $99 dollars a bag, for a bag of laundry that icould do at home for $3 dollars. the legal way of stealing from the government,our taxpayer’s money. the pentagon audit released last night, theyfound the company is overcharging tax payers. halliburton company billed tax payers forits contract work in iraq. it is your money that’s being used. these contracts are managed under a systemcalled cost plus,

which is the opposite of trying to save money,it guarantees that everything that you buy will be paid back and reimbursed if it’sseen as justified, and you’ll be given a profit in addition. a cost plus arrangement, the critics say leaveslittle incentive to save. the more tax payer dollars halliburton spends,the more halliburton makes. cost plus encourages you to run up the costsof a program because you are gonna get a percentage of the, theend result and so there’s no incentive to stay at motel 6, stay at the ritz carlton uh, in qatar, folks. the place that they chose for orientations

in kuwait was a hugeresort set right on the ocean, had i think 3 swimming pools.so it was better than the wyndom in texas or the ritz. it wasfancied up. marble floors, mahogany woodwork, it was justbeautiful. they had seadoos, jet skies they could use. you could go and rent wave runners and goout and play in the water.we were renting wave runners and we got paid by the hour to do it. iwas told this, don’t question it, enjoy it. several government agencies are currentlyinvestigating if

halliburton overcharged for work already completedin iraq. they had five star meals catered in everyday. it was so lavish. rows of vegetable platters,beef platters, fish platters. it’s a cost plus contract. kbr looked atit, the more money we spend, that’s more money we get in ourpockets. we had it made over there compared to themilitary. i mean those guys were living in tents and we had air conditionand private hooches. the tents that we were staying in were completelymoldy and everybody was getting sick with respiratoryinfections, they’re getting paid millions

of dollars, why can’t they even give us a tent that doesn’t make us sick to live in it. the soldiers are sleeping on these littlecots out in the middle of the desert, while these kbr executives aredriving these $40,000 dollar vehicles. they and their secretaries are driving atleast a $30 to $40,000 dollar vehicle. this secretary lives in thiscomplex, eats her meals in this complex, has her laundry delivered to her, has no reasonto go anywhere at any time, but has a brand new, top of the line ford or chevy pick-upwith everything imaginable on it that you could put on it. chrome rims and leather interior and cd playersand all these

extra amenities that you know, you don’treally need in the war time. why do they need an h2 hummer? why do theyhave cadillac escalades in iraq for halliburton managers?what is the purpose? one invoice that i saw was for about $7,000dollars for one month, for a suv on a lease. it was a three yearcontract, comes up to uh, roughly $250,000. a vehicle that you and i could purchaseat the local dealership for probably top of the line $45,000 dollars. and to the taxpayer,he goes, yeah, $250,000 dollars, and never did own the vehicle. they got the wrong equipment, ordered thewrong stuff, computers

still in boxes, new vehicles, ‘cause they’dpush them out in what they call burn pits. and they just set it on fire, claim it as a loss, get more money for the right equipment or the right stuff they needed. why would you need to order somebody else’swrong equipment just because somebody pays you to do it, and youburn it and destroy it? you got brand new trucks over there, and there,y-, there’s not even oil filters. so when the motor blows, what doyou do? buy a new truck and bill the government. $75,000 dollar truck, they wouldn’t have

a spare tire to fit it and wehad to blow it up. and they didn’t care, halliburton didn’t, because the government’spaying for it. we knew that everyday that a vehicle brokedown, we would have to destroy it. and these are maybe $80,000dollar vehicles, maybe $100,000 dollars, you know, they’re expensive trucks.we’re burning fuel in front of iraqi people, we’re not really doing anything to helpand we just have to follow the orders. as a truck driver in the mail department,they’d send me to these camps with one bag of mail. now that’s riskingmy life just to deliver one bag of mail. to escort entire convoys where every flatbedtruck was empty.

the allegations come from 12 truckers complainingthat the company was wasting government money by running emptytrucks on the convoys and billing the government for them. it seems senseless to travel up and down theroad and taking the chance of losing your life when there wasn’tno purpose in it. when you went up empty and you come back empty. i went to make a better life for my family,always have a roof over their head and not have to worry about wheretheir next meal’s coming from. it wasn’t that fun with him gone. we missedhim and all that stuff. i couldn’t do stuff with him.

didn’t have nobody to throw a baseball with, did you? i was gonnatake you fishing, ‘cause mama scared you’d fall in and get drowned, wasn’t she?yeah. i went over there and i got my health messedup and got shot, braked, knocked down, everything else. i feltlike not only i can make a decent living for my family and better myself, but i’d bedoing something for my country, you know what i’m saying? i’m supplying to militaryand these guys where they can eat and help fight when they have to. but then you know, you’re looking and you’re going up and downthe road empty. halliburton’s charging the

government for every camp they go by andyour buddy’s getting killed for un-, for no cause at all, not even as much as a band-aidon the truck, that’s how halliburton was making a killing, making their money. it's a legal way of stealing from the american citizenand the military. halliburton is accused of hundreds of millionsof dollars in improper charges. pentagon auditors have found potential overchargesof $61 million dollars. now the numbers are apparently larger thanpreviously thought. halliburton’s unreasonable and unsupportedbills, exceed one billion dollars.

and if anybody’s over charging the governmentuh, we expect them to repay that money. it’s been proven so many times that halliburtonhas over billed them, and then the pentagon still pays them anyway.i don’t know who it is that is protecting halliburton. i don’t understand why themilitary would protect them. if you look at their board of directors, they’vegot contacts in the state department, contacts in the military. peoplewho work for halliburton once worked for the military. when you hire top pentagon officials and whenthe vice president is your former ceo, you’re going to get theaccess that other people don’t.

it is reportedly not a coincidence that vicepresident dick cheney’s old company got a huge contract to help rebuildiraq. time magazine said it has gotten a hold of a pentagon e-mail saying chaney’soffice coordinated halliburton’s multi billion dollar deal.all the revelations came out about halliburton getting all thesefancy no bid contracts. there was not a single hearing in the congress, house, or senateabout the mysterious bidding processes around iraq and halliburton. um, that’sridiculous. the oversight responsibility belongs to theunited states congress. it belongs here and it’s not happeninghere.

the senate should spend a little less timeadvertising allegations of wrong doing and spend more time talkingabout what is going right. and if anybody believes that the contractshanded to halliburton for iraq weren’t you know, i-, in the moralequivalent of insider trading, man, i s-, you know,i, i’ve got an ocean in the middle of kansas i’d like to take you surfing on. i mean,it’s, it’s just phenomenal. i mean, of coursethere were insider deals, of course it was paybackfor, for old, old friends and political supporters and campaign contributors.

they’re very strategic uh, in how they allocatetheir political contributions. you’ll see most of theirmoney going to the committees that oversee military matters and funding for it. when you pay influence money in the form ofcampaign contributions, it means people look the otherway. the u.s. army announced today it signed anew contract with a unit of the huge contracting firm halliburton. yeah, the military fights for the guy nextto you or the guy in the next foxhole, who you’ve trained with, sleptwith, ate with, spent all your time living

with and working with. from the corporateside, it’s a question of, where’s the next contract coming from? halliburton’s stock has quadrupled in valuesince the war began and tax payers are being ripped off. the people in charge say we want to give tocontractors ‘cause they can do it cheaper. well, low and behold,the evidence is now coming in and it isn’t cheaper, and we’re not actually gettingwhat we’re paying for. we were uh, writing contracts with uh, halliburtonand others to do things that iraqi’s could’ve done betterand far, far cheaper. and by the way, we

would’ve gotten iraqi’s off the streetand given ‘em the jobs. let us stop the war profiteers, let us say no to them and let ussay, if you continue to, you’re gonna go to jail because that’s where you belong. my amendment would stop them. there hasn’t been a single major piece ofcontracting oversight legislation passed by the congress since thewar began. not even a significant amendment has been passed, despite all theenormous amounts of fraud and waste and abuse. there needs to be a special committee established,

a bipartisan committee to take a look at waste and fraud and abuse. the amendment is not agreed to. the amendment is not adopted. and the lahey amendment is not agreed to. if i had the heads of caci, of titan, of kbr,i’d say, what would thomas jefferson have to say if he sawthe level of profit that had been included in a war fighting, what would benjamin franklinsay? the government of the people, by the people,and for the people, is really of, by and for the companies thatare getting the contracts, and that is not

the american people. raytheon and parsons and dhp are not americai know, they’re greed goes against our grain. we have more and more money that are goingout to these companies and less and less people watching the federalpiggybank. we need greater oversight in this war evenmore than in past wars because this war has been privatized to agreat extent than any other war in history. i voted for some of these people, okay? let’ssee what happens, let’s see if anybody gets in trouble forthis, let’s see how many people go to prison,

let’s see who loses a contract over this. i know we have a battle ahead, from lockheedmartin, to dyna corp and bechtel. the profiteers are not goingto easily transform into patriots. the people who have the money, the peoplewho are making a profit, have a lot of power and a lot of money anda lot of influence. and so i think it will really take something big, a big movement here in the united states. you know, i love my country, uh, i’d standbehind it, i’m concerned now in a way probably that i’ve never beenconcerned before because i don’t like what i’m seeing. america’s become a, a powderkeg i think, and it’s just waiting for a match.

this iraqi movement, how are you gonna winthe hearts and minds of these people if they see you cheating your own people,if all this stuff is, it’s just for the money. before we can point the finger at anybodyelse, we need to get the cinder out of our own eye and we need to clean house a little bit. i think the world really needs to know what’sgoing on over there, there has to be accountability and we need to stop it. i am a patriot. i love our country and i wantour country to survive. and the survival of our country depends on us taking it back. hi, could i have tony frederickson’s office?

i was wondering if i could um, request aninterview with eric prince. uh, hi kathy man, it’s robert greenwaldand amanda spain calling from los angeles, we’re workingon the film iraq for sale. we want to get mr. frederickson’s perspective. we’re really very anxious to have halliburtonand mr. lazar in the film. uh, yes, robert greenwald and abby hurewitzhere. we’ve discovered frankly, quite a bit ofvery troubling material...

i thought letting people know that we foundsomething critical would be fairer than just kind oftrying to sucker punch them. --about halliburton, kbr’s role in the warand the war profiteering. we’ll put the whole transcript from theinterview up on our website. hi angela, how are you? this is abby hurewitz,i left a message with lindsey taylor last friday, requestingan interview with eric prince and i was wondering uh, tomorrow? we really want to give you an opportunityto be heard. i

know that it’s been quite a bit of timeand you have not responded-- i was wondering if there was anyone in yourorganization that would like to be interviewed to represent your company. can i get, can i get your email address? okay. can you please put me through to her? oh,i thought she was gonna be in all day. remember, early morning, late tonight? this is my third call to titan. this is robert greenwald and amanda spaincalling from los angeles, i think we talked to you yesterday.

permission to make a documentary. (beep) uh, yes, jodi brown, it’s robert greenwaldand amanda spain calling again, it’s wednesday, july26th uh, we then e-mailed 5 or 6 times and-- titan again.and that’s to get a, to get an interview with mr. frederickson? i put in a request to have an interview withum, eric prince. we’re just about at our deadline here-- the reason why i keep calling is because we’rekind of under some time constraints.

i guess kathy mann’s unavailable until thursdayand you’re gonna, someone’s gonna try to reach melissanorcross. eric prince is not available (beep).hello mr. prince, this is robert greenwald and abbyhurewitz i’ve e-mailed her like 5 or 6 times. the month of calling and e-mailing and talkinghas gotten us nothing.jodi brown, it’s robert greenwald and amanda spaincalling again. our film is going to wrap soon.

we could interview mr. lazar tomorrow, wednesday,thursday, possibly even friday. we still have time to interview mr. london,we could do it in the next couple of days. oh okay, i got you. is that just a way of saying you don’t wantto have anything to do with it? ‘cause saying you can’tat this time over a period of a month just leads usto believe either you don’t want to do it or there’s something you don’t want tosay, we don’t know what it is. um, would you do me a favor for my, for myboss, will you just write that for

me? will a day make a difference? will a week,a month, a year, five years? okay, so y’all, y’all are, y’all aresaying no. so you are definitely gonna turn it down. no. no, he said, no.that’s it.