"senhor san" <dharma@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message news:...
> Fw: KERRY CAN'T WIN -- AND WOULDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING IM****TANT IF HE
DID
> (PICK SOMEBODY ELSE WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME) -- REALITY ROUNDUP
al Qa'eda is a Pentagon-Mossad black op? Guantanamo a terrorist factory
for
more war? ISREAL AND RUMSFLED NEO-CONS BEHIND "SUICIDE BOMBINGS" IN
IRAQ? Discovery of young Iraqis under drug influence and "brainwashed"
bent on bombing raises obvious questions
================================
ARE ISREAL AND RUMSFLED PENTAGON BEHIND "SUICIDE BOMBINGS? in iraq
(and elsewhere?) " Discovery of young Iraqis under drug influence and
"brainwashed" who are bent on suicide bombing raises this question -- are
many suicide bombings mini 9-11 frame-ups???? (Remember as you read --
the only proven terrorists actually linked to bin Laden himself are the
Bush family and Cheney -- unfortunately they are too high in the US
government for the authorities to apprehend.
In raids on remote border villages before the Karbala attacks, Colonel
Sultan's officers arrested a dozen men, some of them drugged and
brainwashed, and impounded narcotics valued at $20 million (£11 million)
and
recordings of bin Laden preaching.
Police believe that the attacks on Karbala were carried out by nine
suicide
bombers. The terrorists had formerly used mainly foreign fanatics -
Yemenis,
Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians - for such attacks. But recent raids have
netted a number of young Iraqis, some of whom were drugged and ready to
act.
"It's a long process to brainwash them. They seduce them with money, then
start to use drugs on them until they are half conscious," Colonel Sultan
said. The main drug used on the would-be bombers is Artane, an
anti-psychotic prescription drug frequently abused by looters to give them
a
sense of invulnerability.
Iraqis drugged, brainwashed and sent to die for "bin Laden"
From James Hider in Karbala
March 22, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1046628,00.html
FBI Claims Bin Laden Inquiry was Frustrated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4293682,00.html
The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2001
M16 Halted Bid to Arrest bin Laden
http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,837319,00.html
The Observer, Nov. 10, 2002
Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security
staff, tells Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss
terrorism, his effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares
about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz
insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.
In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie
Mylroie,
a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate
conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated
that
five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," Clarke
recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." An anonymous
spokesman
for Wolfowitz describes Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz
always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," says this official.
=======================================
The United States says Iraq will be sovereign, no longer under military
occupation, on June 30. But most power will reside within the world's
largest U.S. Embassy, backed by 110,000 U.S. troops.
The fledgling Iraqi government will be capable of tackling little more
than
drawing up a budget and preparing for elections, top U.S. and Iraqi
officials say.
``We're still here. We'll be paying a lot of attention and we'll have a
lot
of influence,'' a top U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
``We're
going to have the world's largest diplomatic mission with a significant
amount of political weight.''
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=503462
THE TRUTH ABOUT GUANTANAMO
Night Sweats
The Pentagon Archipelago's purpose is to establish the principle of
arbitrary rule.
http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2004/03/19/120.html
By Chris Floyd
This is the story of three innocent men, held in brutal captivity for more
than two years; three innocent men, stripped, blinded, beaten, tortured,
caged and silenced, all in the name of freedom and civilization; three
innocent men, ground into the dust by an implacable power that defends its
"enduring moral values" with the boot in the groin, the gun to the head --
and the abetting of atrocity and murder.
It's the story of three Britons released last week from the U.S.
concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- 26 months after they began
their progress through the guts of the Pentagon Archipelago, the chain of
U.S. detention camps and "interrogation centers" that now encircle the
Earth. In the Observer -- a pro-war British paper -- Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal
Ahmed and Asif Iqbal from Tipton, England, told re****ter David Rose of
their
sojourn in the Bush Regime's legal purgatory.
The three men, lifelong friends in their early 20s, went to Pakistan in
September 2001 for Iqbal's wedding. The following month, as Afghanistan's
civil war flared under the shadow of the impending U.S. attack, the
friends
joined Muslim relief efforts in war-ravaged Afghan villages. As avowed
moderates, they were under constant threat from the Taliban -- the
virulent
extremists who'd been armed, funded and sustained in power by U.S. ally
Pakistan and the Bush Family's business partners in Saudi Arabia, as
Salon.com re****ts.
When American bombs started falling, the friends tried to flee the
country.
But they were trapped in Kunduz with thousands of refugees when the city
fell to U.S.-backed warlord Ra****d Dostum, a former Soviet collaborator
turned jihadnik. Known for his macabre punishments -- he liked to see his
victims torn apart by tanks -- Dostum fell upon the surrendered m*****
with
his wonted fury. Thousands died on a death march through the mountains to
Shebargan, where Dostum linked up with U.S. Special Forces. There, the
captives, including the Tipton men, were packed by the hundreds into metal
truck trailers, where they were left for days to suffocate and die. Fires
were lit under some of the trailers, roasting those trapped inside. Of the
35,000 who left Kunduz, only 4,500 remained alive.
The survivors were crammed into Shebargan's open-air prison, where they
continued to die in droves -- as U.S. forces watched coolly from the
perimeter. Finally, the three friends were sent to an American camp in
Kandahar, where, hooded and chained, they were "processed": stripped,
rectally probed, beaten, forced to kneel for hours, ****d, their necks
pressed to the floor by a guard's boot. Then came the first
"interrogation":
again kneeling, chained, with beatings and kicking followed by
questioning -- as an agent stood on the back of their legs, pressing a
pistol to their heads. This routine went on for weeks. The only relief
came
when British spies appeared for a session: "Don't worry, they won't beat
you
while we're here," the jolly James Bonds would say. At night, there were
head counts every hour to prevent the prisoners from sleeping.
One day, for reasons unexplained -- perhaps, as often happened, a false
confession was beaten out of someone who gave names of "accomplices" to
satisfy his interrogators -- the Tipton men were frog-marched onto a plane
bound for Cuba, triple-chained and beaten along the way, beaten and kicked
upon their arrival.
Then began the long, dazed limbo-life of Guantanamo. Endless
interrogations:
Each man was grilled at least 200 times, sometimes for 12 hours at a
stretch, always kneeling, chained to the floor. Constant punishments: for
"back talk," or seeking privacy for their bowel movements, or arranging
their utensils incorrectly. And always, over and over, the farcical
accusations that could have easily been disproved with five minutes of
investigation.
But their captors weren't interested in the truth; they wanted "results."
Finally, after two years of relentless physical and psychological
pressure -- including the ever-present threat of a military tribunal and
execution without appeal -- the friends cracked and signed false
confessions
to the most ludicrous charge of all: that they were top bin Laden
lieutenants, pictured with him in a video from August 2000, despite the
existence of do***entary evidence -- witnesses, pay stubs, school records
--
that proved they were in England at the time. But before their show trial
could begin, British intelligence belatedly examined the charge and
confirmed the alibis of all three men.
Now they're free, as the Regime flushes the most embarrassing cases out of
the system before the Supreme Court rules on the "legality" of the Bush
gulag this summer. The treatment of these three innocent men, chained and
beaten for two years, is not just a crime, but also -- like that other
crime, the invasion of Iraq -- an enormous waste of time and resources in
the "war on terrorism." We saw the grim fruit of this waste in Madrid last
week.
But of course, the Pentagon Archipelago wasn't designed to fight
terrorism;
it's designed to advance terrorism -- state terrorism. Its purpose is to
establish the principle of arbitrary rule -- in the name of "military
necessity" -- above the rule of law, in America and around the world. It's
part of an overarching system of terror -- aggressive war, assassination,
indefinite detention, torture -- employed to achieve the Regime's openly
stated ideological goal: "full-spectrum dominance" of global politics and
resources, particularly energy resources. Al-Qaida has the same goal, and
uses the same methods, albeit on a smaller, "asymmetrical" scale.
Now we are all at the mercy of these entwined terrorist factions -- both
led
by fundamentalist sons of two financially linked elitist clans. We will
see
more Guananamos, more Madrids, before this long, dark night is over.
Annotations
How We Survived Jail Hell
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1169178,00.html
The Observer, March 14, 2004
The Full Story of the Guantanamo Britons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1169147,00.html
The Observer, March 14, 2004
Did the Saudis Buy a President?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/12/unger_2/print.html
Salon.com, March 12, 2004
Even Death Row is Preferable to This
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1153493,00.html
The Observer, Feb. 22, 2004
My Hell in Camp X-Ray
http://tinyurl.com/2blgc
The Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004
This Creeping Sickness
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1168592,00.html
The Guardian, March 13, 2004
Five Are Free, But Bush Shows No Remorse
http://www.sundayherald.com/40573
Glasgow Sunday Herald, March 14, 2004
Pentagon Dismisses as 'Lies' Guantanamo Tales of Abuse
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040315182348.ahv7bcgh.html
Agence France Presse, March 15, 2004
The Empire Backfires
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0311-09.htm
The Nation, March 29, 2004 edition
The Getaway
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020128fa_FACT
The New Yorker, Jan. 21, 2001
For Some Defendants, An American Gulag
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/14/
St. Petersburg Times, March 14, 2004
For More Years of Camp Bush?
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/indexprint.mhtml?pid=1315
The Nation Institute, March 2004
The House of bin Laden
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?011112fa_FACT3
The New Yorker, Nov. 12, 2001
Who is Osama bin Laden?
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
Centre for Research on Globalization, Sept. 11, 2001
Bush's Death Squads
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/Jaccuse.html
Ratical.org, Jan. 31, 2002
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence/bushwidened.html
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030108-12935202
Wa****ngton Times, Jan. 8, 2003
The Enemy Within
http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html
The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002
CIA Worked in Tandem With Pakistan to Create Taliban
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm
The Times of India, March 7, 2001
The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence in the Sept. 11 Attacks
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html
Centre for Research on Globalisation, Nov. 2, 2001
Spy Chief's Exit Due to Links With Terrorist
http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/09/top13.htm
Dawn (Pakistan), Oct. 9, 2001
The Search for Osama
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030804fa_fact
New Yorker, July 28, 2003
Terror in the Saudi Kingdom
http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/01/baer/print.html
Salon.com, Aug. 1, 2003
General Ashcroft's Detention Camps
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0236/hentoff.php
Village Voice, Sept. 10, 2002
Blowback: Bin Laden Comes Home to Roost
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp
MSNBC.com, Aug. 24, 1998
FBI Claims Bin Laden Inquiry was Frustrated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4293682,00.html
The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2001
M16 Halted Bid to Arrest bin Laden
http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,837319,00.html
The Observer, Nov. 10, 2002
Knowing Much, Bush Did Little to Protect America
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0221/ridgeway3.php
Village Voice, March 16, 2002
Bin Laden Money Flow Leads to Midland, Texas
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml
In These Times, October 2001
Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
Glasgow Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002
Rebuilding America's Defenses
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Project for a New Century, September 2000
Statement of Principles
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997
National Security Strategy of the United States
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html
The White House, September 2002
Cheney Dirtied by Iraqi Oil
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/4005941.htm
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 5, 2002
Coward's War in Yemen
http://www.spiked-online.com/
Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002
Drones of Death
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,834290,00.html
The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002
==========================
A war chest of £3.8bn for military operations in Iraq is set to run out
within three months, official figures released last week indicate.
Defence
economists estimate that keeping British troops in the country is costing
taxpayers up to £125m a month.
Press Release Source: Newsweek
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040321/nysu007a_1.html
NEWSWEEK: In the Months Before 9/11, Justice Department Curtailed Highly
Classified Program to Monitor Al Qaeda Suspects in the U.S.
Sunday March 21, 10:51 am ET
'They Came in There With Their Agenda and [Al Qaeda] was not on it,' Says
Former Counterterrorism Chief Clarke of Bush Administration
# NEW YORK, March 21 /PRNewswire/ --
Newsweek has learned that in the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice
Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt"
to
monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge
severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap
terrorists. During the Bush administration's first few months in office,
Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority,
choosing
to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, re****t
Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor
Evan Thomas in the March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March
22).(Photo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040321/NYSU003
)
Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security
staff, tells Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss
terrorism, his effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares
about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz
insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.
In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie
Mylroie,
a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate
conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated
that
five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," Clarke
recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for
Wolfowitz describes Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always
regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," says this official.
Clarke tells Newsweek that the day after 9/11, President Bush wanted the
FBI
and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam
Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also
looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks,
Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama
bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We
should
do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged.
Six days after the president's request, Clarke says, he turned in a
classified memo concluding that there was no evidence of Iraqi complicity
in
9/11-nor any relation****p between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The memo, says
Clarke,
was buried by an administration that was determined to get Iraq, sooner or
later. In his new book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke ****trays the Bush
White House as indifferent to the Qaeda threat before 9/11, then obsessed
with puni****ng Iraq, regardless of the what the evidence showed about
Saddam's Qaeda ties, or lack of them.
The Bush administration is already pu****ng back. A White House official
tells Newsweek that Bush has "no specific recollection" of the post 9/11
conversation described by Clarke, and that records show the president was
not in the Situation Room at the time Clarke recalls. "His book might be
called 'If Only They Had Listened to Dick Clarke,'" says an administration
official.
As soon as Clarke's charges began appearing in print, Sen. John Kerry, the
Democrats' presumptive nominee, put them on his campaign Web site. But for
Kerry and the Democrats, the catch is that President Bill Clinton did no
better to tame the terrorist threat during his last years in office. As
Wa****ngton Post managing editor Steve Coll recently showed in his new book
"Ghost Wars," those in the national-security bureaucracy under Clinton
spent
more time wringing their hands and squabbling with each other than going
after Osama bin Laden.
Clarke was the White House counterterror chief during the late '90s and
through 9/11. A career civil servant, Clarke was known for pounding the
table to urge his counterparts at the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to do more
about
Al Qaeda. But he did not have much luck, in part because in both the
Clinton
and early Bush administrations, the top leader****p did not back up Clarke
and demand results.
In his new book, Clarke recounts how on Jan. 24, 2001, he recommended that
the new president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, convene
the
president's top advisers to discuss the Qaeda threat. One week later, Bush
did. But according to Clarke, the meeting had nothing to do with bin
Laden.
The topic was how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. "What does that tell you?"
Clarke remarked to Newsweek. "They thought there was something more
urgent.
It was Iraq. They came in there with their agenda, and [Al Qaeda] was not
on
it."
(Read Newsweek's news releases at www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com. Click
"Pressroom.")
----------------------------
Johnston drew the line when it came to buying young girls and women as
***
slaves.
DynCorp Disgrace
By Kelly Patricia O Meara
Middle-aged men having *** with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben
Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew
the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing
business in Bosnia.
According to the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (RICO)
lawsuit filed in Texas on behalf of the former DynCorp aircraft mechanic,
"in the latter part of 1999 Johnston learned that employees and
supervisors
from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior
[and]
were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged pass****ts and
[participating
in] other immoral acts. Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors
literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and
employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual
slaves they had purchased."
Rather than acknowledge and reward Johnston's effort to get this behavior
stopped, DynCorp fired him, forcing him into protective custody by the
U.S.
Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) until the investigators could
get
him safely out of Kosovo and returned to the United States. That departure
from the war-torn country was a far cry from what Johnston imagined a year
earlier when he arrived in Bosnia to begin a three-year U.S. Air Force
contract with DynCorp as an aircraft-maintenance technician for Apache and
Blackhawk helicopters.
For more than 50 years DynCorp, based in Reston, Va., has been a worldwide
force providing maintenance sup****t to the U.S. military through contract
field teams (CFTs). As one of the federal government's top 25 contractors,
DynCorp has received nearly $1 billion since 1995 for these services and
has
deployed 181 personnel to Bosnia during the last six years. Although
DynCorp
long has been respected for such work, according to Johnston and internal
DynCorp communications it appears that extracurricular ***capades on the
part of its employees were tolerated by some as part of its business in
Bosnia.
But DynCorp was nervous. For instance, an internal e-mail from DynCorp
employee Darrin Mills, who apparently was sent to Bosnia to look into
re****ted problems, said, "I met with Col. Braun [a base supervisor]
yesterday. He is very concerned about the CID investigation; however, he
views it mostly as a DynCorp problem. What he wanted to talk about most
was
how I am going to fix the maintenance problems here and how the
investigation is going to impact our ability to fix his airplanes." The
Mills e-mail continued: "The first thing he told me is that 'they are
tired
of having smoke blown up their ass.' They don't want anymore empty
promises."
An e-mail from Dyncorp's Bosnia site supervisor, John Hirtz (later fired
for
alleged ***ual indiscretions), explains DynCorp's position in Bosnia. "The
bottom line is that DynCorp has taken what used to be a real positive
program that has very high visibility with every Army unit in the world
and
turned it into a bag of worms. Poor quality was the major issue."
Johnston was on the ground and saw firsthand what the military was
complaining about. "My main problem," he explains, "was [***ual
misbehavior]
with the kids, but I wasn't too happy with them ripping off the
government,
either. DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule
they
can break they do.
There was this one guy who would hide parts so we would have to wait for
parts and, when the military would question why it was taking so long,
he'd
pull out the part and say 'Hey, you need to install this.' They'd have us
replace windows in helicopters that weren't bad just to get paid. They had
one kid, James Harlin, over there who was right out of high school and he
didn't even know the names and purposes of the basic tools. Soldiers that
are paid $18,000 a year know more than this kid, but this is the way they
[DynCorp] grease their pockets. What they say in Bosnia is that DynCorp
just
needs a warm body - that's the DynCorp slogan. Even if you don't do an
eight-hour day, they'll sign you in for it because that's how they bill
the
government. It's a total fraud."
Remember, Johnston was fired by this company. He laughs bitterly recalling
the work habits of a DynCorp employee in Bosnia who "weighed 400 pounds
and
would stick cheeseburgers in his pockets and eat them while he worked. The
problem was he would literally fall asleep every five minutes. One time he
fell asleep with a torch in his hand and burned a hole through the plastic
on an aircraft." This same man, according to Johnston, "owned a girl who
couldn't have been more than 14 years old. It's a sick sight anyway to see
any grown man [having ***] with a child, but to see some 45-year-old man
who
weighs 400 pounds with a little girl, it just makes you sick." It is
precisely these allegations that Johnston believes got him fired.
Johnston re****ts that he had been in Bosnia only a few days when he became
aware of misbehavior in which many of his DynCorp colleagues were
involved.
He tells INSIGHT, "I noticed there were problems as soon as I got there,
and
I tried to be covert because I knew it was a rougher crowd than I'd ever
dealt with. It's not like I don't drink or anything, but DynCorp employees
would come to work drunk. A DynCorp van would pick us up every morning and
you could smell the alcohol on them. There were big-time drinking issues.
I
always told these guys what I thought of what they were doing, and I guess
they just thought I was a self-righteous fool or something, but I didn't
care what they thought."
The mix of drunkenness and working on multimillion-dollar aircraft upon
which the lives of U.S. military personnel depended was a serious enough
issue, but Johnston drew the line when it came to buying young girls and
women as *** slaves. "I heard talk about the prostitution right away, but
it
took some time before I understood that they were buying these girls. I'd
tell them that it was wrong and that it was no different than slavery -
that
you can't buy women. But they'd buy the women's pass****ts and they [then]
owned them and would sell them
to each other."
"At first," explains Johnston, "I just told the guys it was wrong. Then I
went to my supervisors, including John Hirtz, although at the time I
didn't
realize how deep into it he was. Later I learned that he had videotaped
himself having *** with two girls and CID has that video as evidence.
Hirtz
is the guy who would take new employees to the brothels and set them up so
he got his women free. The Serbian mafia would give Hirtz the women free
and, when one of the guys was leaving the country, Hirtz would go to the
mafia and make sure that the guys didn't owe them any money."
"None of the girls," continues Johnston, "were from Bosnia. They were from
Russia, Romania and other places, and they were im****ted in by DynCorp and
the Serbian mafia. These guys would say 'I gotta go to Serbia this weekend
to pick
up three girls.' They talk about it and brag about how much they pay for
them - usually between $600 and $800. In fact, there was this one guy who
had to be 60 years old who had a girl who couldn't have been 14. DynCorp
leader****p was 100 percent in bed with the mafia over there. I didn't get
any results from talking to DynCorp officials, so I went to Army CID and I
drove around with them, pointing out everyone's houses who owned women and
weapons."
That's when Johnston's life took a dramatic turn.
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 sup****t
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."
Werner admitted to having purchased a woman to get her out of prostitution
and named other DynCorp employees who also had paid to own women. He
further
admitted to having purchased weapons (against the law in Bosnia) and it
was
Werner who turned over to CID the videotape made by Hirtz. Werner
apparently
intended to use the video as leverage in the event that Hirtz decided to
fire him. Werner tells CID, "I told him [Hirtz] I had a copy and that all
I
wanted was to be treated fairly. If I was going to be fired or laid off, I
wanted it to be because of my work performance and not because he was not
happy with me."
According to Hirtz's own sworn statement to CID, there appears to be
little
doubt that he did indeed rape one of the girls with whom he is shown
having
***ual intercourse in his homemade video.
CID: Did you have ***ual intercourse with the second woman on the tape?
Hirtz: Yes
CID: Did you have intercourse with the second woman after she said "no" to
you?
Hirtz: I don't recall her saying that. I don't think it was her saying
"no."
CID: Who do you think said "no"?
Hirtz: I don't know.
CID: According to what you witnessed on the videotape played for you in
which
you were having ***ual intercourse with the second woman, did you have
***ual
intercourse with the second woman after she said "no" to you?
Hirtz: Yes.
CID: Did you know you were being videotaped?
Hirtz: Yes. I set it up.
CID: Did you know it is wrong to force yourself upon someone without their
consent?
Hirtz: Yes.
The CID agents did not ask any of the men involved what the ages of the
"women" were who had been purchased or used for prostitution. According to
CID, which sought guidance from the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate in
Bosnia, "under the Dayton Peace Accord, the contractors were protected
from
Bosnian law which did not apply to them. They knew of no [U.S.] federal
laws
that would apply to these individuals at this time."
However, CID took another look and, according to the investigation re****t,
under Paragraph 5 of the NATO Agreement Between the Republic of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia regarding the status of NATO and its
personnel, contractors "were not immune from local prosecution if the acts
were committed outside the scope of their official duties."
Incredibly, the CID case was closed in June 2000 and turned over to the
Bosnian authorities. DynCorp says it conducted its own investigation, and
Hirtz and Werner were fired by DynCorp and returned to the United States
but
were not prosecuted. Experts in slave trafficking aren't buying the CID's
interpretation
of the law.
Widney Brown, an advocate for Human Rights Watch, tells INSIGHT "our
government has an obligation to tell these companies that this behavior is
wrong and they will be held accountable. They should be sending a clear
message that it won't be tolerated. One would hope that these people
wouldn't need to be told that they can't buy women, but you have to start
off by laying the ground rules. Rape is a crime in any jurisdiction and
there should not be impunity for anyone. Firing someone is not sufficient
punishment. This is a very distressing story - especially when you think
that these people and organizations are going into these countries to try
and make it better, to restore a rule of law and some civility."
Christine Dolan, founder of the International Humanitarian Campaign
Against
the Exploitation of Children, a Wa****ngton-based nonprofit organization,
tells Insight: "What is surprising to me is that Dyncorp has kept this
contract. The U.S. says it wants to eradicate trafficking of people, has
established an office in the State Department for this purpose, and yet
neither State nor the government-contracting authorities have stepped in
and
done an investigation of this matter."
Dolan says, "It's not just Americans who are participating in these
illegal
acts. But what makes this more egregious for the U.S. is that our purpose
in
those regions is to restore some sense of civility. Now you've got
employees
of U.S. contractors in bed with the local mafia and buying kids for ***!
That these guys have some kind of immunity from prosecution is morally
outrageous. How can men be allowed to get away with rape simply because of
location? Rape is a crime no matter where it occurs and it's im****tant to
remember that even prostitution is against the law in Bosnia. The message
we're sending to kids is that it's okay for America's representatives to
rape children. We talk about the future of the children, helping to build
economies, democracy, the rule of law, and at the same time we fail to
prosecute cases like this. That is immoral and hypocritical, and if
DynCorp
is involved in this in any way it should forfeit its contract and pay
restitution in the form of training about trafficking."
Charlene Wheeless, a spokeswoman for DynCorp, vehemently denies any
culpability on the part of the company, According to Wheeless, "The notion
that a company such as DynCorp would turn a blind eye to illegal behavior
by
our employees is incomprehensible. DynCorp adheres to a core set of values
that has served as the backbone of our cor****ation for the last 55 years,
helping us become one of the largest and most respected
professional-services and outsourcing companies in the world. We can't
stress strongly enough that, as an employee-owned cor****ation, we take
ethics very seriously. DynCorp stands by its decision to terminate
[whistle-blower] Ben Johnston, who was terminated for cause."
What was the "cause" for which Johnston was fired? He received his only
reprimand from DynCorp one day prior to the sting on the DynCorp hangar
when
Johnston was working with CID. A week later he received a letter of
discharge
for bringing "discredit to the company and the U.S. Army while working in
Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina." The discharge notice did not say how Johnston
"brought discredit to the company."
It soon developed conveniently, according to Johnston's attorneys, that he
was implicated by a DynCorp employee for illegal activity in Bosnia.
Harlin,
the young high-school graduate Johnston complained had no experience in
aircraft maintenance and didn't even know the purposes of the basic tools,
provided a sworn statement to CID about Johnston. Asked if anyone ever had
offered to sell him a weapon, Harlin fingered Johnston and DynCorp
employee
Tom Oliver, who also had disapproved of the behavior of DynCorp employees.
Harlin even alleged that Johnston was "hanging out with Kevin Werner."
Although Werner had no problem revealing the names and illegal activities
of
other DynCorp employees, Werner did not mention Johnston's name in his
sworn
statement.
Kevin Glasheen, Johnston's attorney, says flatly of this: "It's DynCorp's
effort to undermine Ben's credibility. But I think once the jury hears
this
case, that accusation is only going to make them more angry at DynCorp. In
order to make our claim, we have to show that DynCorp was retaliating
against Ben, and that fits under racketeering. There is a lot of evidence
that shows this was what they were doing and that it went all the way up
the
management chain."
According to Glasheen, "DynCorp says that whatever these guys were doing
isn't cor****ate activity and they're not responsible for it. But this
problem permeated their business and management and they made business
decisions to further the scheme and to cover it up. We have to show that
there was a causal connection between Ben's whistle blowing about the ***
trade and his being fired. We can do that. We're here to prove a
retaliation
case, not convict DynCorp of participating in the ***-slave trade.
"What you have here is a Lord of the Flies mentality. Basically you've got
a
bunch of strong men who are raping and manipulating young girls who have
been kidnapped from their homes. Who's the bad guy? Is it the guy who buys
the girl to give her freedom, the one who kidnaps her and sells her or the
one who liberates her and ends up having *** with her? And what does it
mean
when the U.S. steps up and says, 'We don't have any jurisdiction'? That's
absurd."
The outraged attorney pauses for breath. "This is more than one twisted
mind. There was a real cor****ate culture with a deep commitment to a
cover-up. And it's outrageous that DynCorp still is being paid by the
government on this contract. The worst thing I've seen is a DynCorp e-mail
after this first came up where they're saying how they have turned this
thing into a marketing success, that they have convinced the government
that
they could handle something like this."
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, has filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for
wrongful
termination. DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police
officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she re****ted such officers were
paying for prostitutes and participating in ***-trafficking. 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.
DynCorp has admitted it fired five employees for similar illegal
activities
prior to Johnston's charges.
But Johnston worries about what this company's culture does to the
reputation of the United States. "The Bosnians think we're all trash. It's
a
shame. When I was there as a soldier they loved us, but DynCorp employees
have changed how they think about us. I tried to tell them that this is
not
how all Americans act, but it's hard to convince them when you see what
they're seeing. The fact is, DynCorp is the worst diplomat you could
possibly have over there."
Johnston's attorney looks to the outcome. "How this all ends," says
Glasheen, "will say a lot about what we stand for and what we won't stand
for."
Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an investigative re****ter for Insight.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dyncorp_disgrace.html
---------------------------------
Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed at daybreak Monday
when Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying the
wheelchair-bound head of the radical Islamic group as he left a mosque
near
his house in Gaza City. Hamas leaders vowed Monday to "cut off" the head
of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, after their spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin was killed in a missile strike by Israeli helicopter gun****ps in
Gaza
City.
"Sharon has opened the gates of hell and nothing will stop us from cutting
off his head," leaders of the radical Islamic group vowed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/407399.html
---------------------
|
