ProPublica: Disposable Army

Iraq War Contractor Fined for Late Reports of 30 Casualties

Scott Klein — 2013-02-07T08:00:57-05:00

Feb. 8: This post has been corrected.

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined a private security contractor $75,000 for failing to file timely reports on the casualties of workers in Iraq as required by law. The Sandi Group, based in Washington D.C., delayed telling the Labor department that 30 of its employees had been killed while working for the company between 2003 and 2005, according to the department.

The Sandi Group, a privately held company known for employing large numbers of Iraqis as security guards, did not return requests for comment. Since 2005 the company has won U.S. government contracts worth at least $80.9 million, according to a federal contracting database.

The fine, believed to be the largest ever levied against a single company for failing to report war zone casualties in a timely manner, is part of an enforcement crackdown that began after a ProPublica series highlighted problems with a government program designed to provide health benefits to civilian contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Timely reporting of work-related injuries, illnesses and fatalities are vitally important to protect the interests of injured workers and their families," Gary A. Steinberg, acting director of the Department of Labor office which negotiated the settlement amount with the company, said in a prepared statement.

The Labor Department is responsible for administering an obscure government program called the Defense Base Act. The act requires that contractors working overseas for the U.S. government take out specialized insurance, similar to workers compensation, to provide medical treatment for injuries sustained on the job, or to pay death benefits in the event of work-related fatalities.

The ProPublica series found the system in shambles. Insurance companies routinely delayed payments and medical treatment to injured American workers, while charging taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars for the policies. The Labor Department failed to bring enforcement actions against companies that flouted the law, even when federal administrative judges urged the agency to act. Foreign workers, such as Iraqi and Afghan translators who helped U.S. troops, frequently at risk to their own lives, often received no benefits at all.

After the series ran, the department began publishing information on contractor deaths and injuries and posted report cards showing how quickly insurance companies reported casualties. They also vowed more aggressive enforcement.

Injured workers, however, say that problems remain. Marcie Hascall Clark has battled for years to receive medical treatment and lost wage payments for her husband, who was injured in Iraq. She says she hasn’t seen any improvement in a process she contends still moves too slowly. “The [Labor Department] is worse than ever,” said Clark, who runs a website for injured contractors.

As of December, 3,258 civilian contract workers had been killed or died in Iraq, and another 90,000 had reported injuries.

Correction: This post and headline has been corrected to show that 30 incidents which The Sandi Group delayed in reporting included both deaths and injuries of workers.

Bill Introduced to Reform Workers’ Comp for Military Contractors

Scott Klein — 2012-06-06T15:40:21-05:00

by Cora Currier

The ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform introduced legislation today that would shore up workers' compensation insurance for civilian military contractors, replacing a controversial private system with one backed by the federal government.

The proposal by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., would revise provisions in the Defense Base Act, which requires military contractors to provide workers' compensation for American and foreign employees.

Currently, contractors purchase coverage from insurance companies, but as ProPublica reported in 2009, contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan often have had to battle with private insurers to obtain medical treatments and disability payments. Many foreign contractors have been entirely left in the dark about the benefits they were owed.

The current system also imposes hefty costs on taxpayers, as the premiums for workers' comp policies are generally built into military contracts. An Army audit concluded that some premiums were "unreasonably high and excessive" and congressional investigations have found that insurers have earned hundreds of millions in profits from them.

In introducing his proposal — under which the government would pay benefits directly to injured contractors or their survivors — Cummings cited a 2009 Pentagon study which estimated that a federal workers' comp program could save taxpayers $250 million a year.

"There is absolutely no reason American taxpayers should be lining the pockets of private insurance companies," he said in a statement.

The Pentagon's report said insurance companies would probably oppose any attempt to alter the Defense Base Act's workers' comp requirements. As of now, AIG, the dominant warzone insurance provider, has not responded to our request for comment on Cummings' bill.

A spokesman for the Department of Labor, which oversees the Defense Base Act's implementation, said they were not yet ready to comment on the proposal.

ProPublica's investigation found that the agency had not expanded its operation to sufficiently cope with the influx of claims that came with unprecedented numbers of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. Insurance Firm Neglects Survivors of Iraqi Translators, May Face Criminal Charges

Scott Klein — 2011-05-23T09:19:15-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

A version of this story was co-published with The Los Angeles Times.

An administrative law judge has referred a U.S. insurance company for criminal investigation after the firm failed to pay benefits owed to survivors of Iraqi translators killed while working for the American government.

Under a federally funded program, Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp. provides insurance coverage to contractors killed or injured while working overseas for the United States. The slain translators were helping to train Iraqi police recruits.

Instead of paying out benefits, however, CNA withheld information from the federal government and avoided making payments to nine families who lost relatives in a 2006 attack, according to court files and interviews. One widow lost her home, unable to keep up payments after her son and other translators were ambushed by insurgents in the southern city of Basrah, one of her attorneys said.

In a ruling this week, administrative law Judge Daniel Solomon ordered CNA to begin making payments to the families. In an unusual move highlighting the government's concern over potential fraud, the judge also told the Labor Department, which oversees the program, to investigate whether the insurance carrier should face criminal charges. A Labor spokesman said the agency would "fully investigate" the allegations to determine whether to ask the Justice Department to prosecute the case.

CNA said it was also looking into the case.

"We are investigating the matter and will take all appropriate actions," said Katrina Parker, a company spokeswoman.

Attorneys for the families said they believe CNA withheld documents to avoid making payments.

"These were people who helped the U.S. in Iraq," said Agnieszka Fryszman, an attorney for the families. "Their families were kicked to the curb when they were most in need of help."

CNA's failure to pay out benefits underscores the continuing problems with the Defense Base Act, essentially the workers compensation system for overseas federal contractors.

The system was little-used until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sent hundreds of thousands of private contractors onto the battlefield. All told, the government has paid out nearly $1.5 billion in premiums since 2001.

Reporting in 2009 by ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and ABC's 20/20 revealed deep flaws in the program. Workers fought long battles for medical care, including such things as prosthetic devices and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Foreign workers, including Iraqi and Afghan translators, often did not receive payments or treatment. The Labor Department seldom took action to enforce the law. One official called the system a "fiasco."

Congress subsequently held hearings that showed that American insurers were reaping large profits from the program. Documents showed that CNA reported the highest profits margins, taking in nearly 50 percent more in premiums than it paid out in benefits.

The case decided this week began on Oct. 29, 2006, when insurgents boarded a bus and killed 17 Iraqi-born translators working in Basrah for Sallyport Global Services, a logistics and security contractor. The insurgents later scattered their bodies around the city.

Under the law, CNA was responsible for paying death benefits to the translators' dependents. CNA paid when translators had children and spouses, according to interviews and court records, but not to other survivors. Several translators had no children, but supported parents or other family members.

In such cases, the Labor Department demands proof that survivors relied on contractors' earnings. CNA hired investigators who interviewed nine families, confirmed their eligibility, and even set up bank accounts. But CNA withheld portions of the investigators' findings when it submitted the claims to the Labor Department, court records show.

One CNA file shows that the slain translator had supported his mother, a widow, since his father was killed in the Iraq-Iran war. The town council even issued a statement of support, confirming the translator was his mother's "sole provider." Another CNA file shows that another translator killed in the ambush was sole support for his family, which "could be described as very poor."

But those pages were missing from the information CNA submitted to the Labor Department. As a result, Labor officials accepted CNA's declaration that there were no dependents to pay in any of the nine cases.

The translators' attorneys at Cohen Milstein, a well-known Washington firm doing pro bono work on the case, estimated that CNA owed a total of about $500,000 to the nine families. Instead, CNA paid about $45,000 into a special federal fund set up to help support the workers compensation system.

The company subsequently recovered some of that money plus additional fees under an obscure law—the War Hazards Compensation Act—that allows insurance carriers to recoup costs for contractors killed in hostile acts, court documents show.

In one case, CNA paid $5,000 into the special fund and $518 to a translator's family for burial expenses, but was reimbursed $9,289 by the federal government for investigating and handling the claims.

A Sallyport official said the company believed that CNA had made payments to all of the translators' families except one, which declined to accept money because of security concerns.

In an emailed statement, the company declined further comment due to the litigation. It said it would "continue to monitor the situation and support the families within our remit."

This Year, Contractor Deaths Exceed Military Ones in Iraq and Afghanistan

Scott Klein — 2010-09-23T10:33:23-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

More private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, the first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses on America’s battlefields.

More than 250 civilians working under U.S. contracts died in the war zones between January and June 2010, according to a ProPublica analysis of the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Labor, which tracks contractor deaths. In the same period, 235 soldiers died, according to Pentagon figures.

This milestone in the privatization of modern U.S. warfare reflects both the drawdown in military forces in Iraq and the central role of contractors in providing logistics support to local armies and police forces, contracting and military experts said.

Steven Schooner, a professor of government contracting at George Washington University Law School, said that the contractor deaths show how the risks of war have increasingly been absorbed by the private sector. Private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan provide fuel, food and protective services to U.S. outposts — jobs once performed by soldiers.

“It’s extremely likely that a generation ago, each one of these contractors deaths would have been a military death,” Schooner said. “As troop deaths have fallen, contractor deaths have risen. It's not a pretty picture.”

Schooner, who conducted a recent study of contractor fatalities published in Service Contractor (PDF), an industry newsletter, said contractors now make up more than 25 percent of total deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan — a proportion that has grown steadily throughout the conflicts. Official figures show that 5,531 troops and 2,008 civilian contract workers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan between the beginning of hostilities in 2001 and June 2010.

Many working under U.S. contracts are local civilians, often working as translators for troops, or are hired from third world countries to do basic labor, such as cleaning kitchens and toilets.

Previous ProPublica stories have noted that companies employing such workers often fail to report their deaths and injuries to the Labor Department, as required by law. Government figures likely understate the total number civilian contractor deaths.

Click to see the number of U.S. government private contract worker deaths and injuries from Sept. 1, 2001 through June 30, 2010.

The rising fatalities have received little public attention, concealing the full human cost of the war, Schooner said. When President Obama spoke of troop deaths in Afghanistan earlier this month, he made no mention of fatalities among the private workforce that feeds and fuels U.S. forces.

“I'm not accusing either the Bush or the Obama administration of intentionally deceiving the public,” Schooner said. “But when a president applauds a reduction in military deaths but fails to acknowledge the contractor personnel now dying in their place, someone isn't telling the whole story.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most privatized in American military history. Today, there are 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of March 2010, there were more than 200,000 private contractors, though that number is believed to have declined with the drawdown of U.S. forces.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a plan last month to sharply reduce the number of contractors, saying the Pentagon has become overly dependent on private workers to carry out jobs once done by soldiers.

A recent Congressional Research Service report (PDF) found that the heavy use of contractors had exposed troops to supply shortfalls, wasted taxpayer money, and stirred anger among locals. In several high-profile incidents, heavily armed private security contractors have killed unarmed Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

“Some analysts believe that poor contract management has also played a role in abuses and crimes committed by certain contractors against local nationals, which may have undermined U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the report found.

Marcie Hascall Clark, an advocate for contract workers, said that contractor deaths and injuries reflected contractors’ importance in fighting the wars.

Labor Department figures show that more than 44,000 contractors have reported injuries since 2001, compared to about 40,000 U.S. troops. The figures are not entirely comparable, since contractor injuries include minor workplace injuries.

“I don’t think most contractors expect to be treated as nobly as our soldiers, but they don’t expect to be forgotten, either,” said Hascall Clark, who runs a group called American Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think there should definitely be some recognition of what they do.”

The Other Victims of Battlefield Stress; Defense Contractors’ Mental Health Neglected

Scott Klein — 2010-02-26T01:48:37-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

This story was also published in The Daily Beast.

REDDING, Calif. — Wade Dill does not figure into the toll of war dead. An exterminator, Dill took a job in Iraq for a company contracted to do pest control on military bases. There, he found himself killing disease-carrying flies and rabid dogs, dodging mortars and huddling in bomb shelters.

Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, was a different man when he came back for visits here, his family said: moody, isolated, morose. He screamed at his wife and daughter. His weight dropped. Dark circles haunted his dark brown eyes.

Three weeks after he returned home for good, Dill booked a room in an anonymous three-story motel alongside Interstate 5. There, on July 16, 2006, he shot himself in the head with a 9 mm handgun. He left a suicide note for his wife and a picture for his daughter, then 16. The caption read: "I did exist and I loved you.''

More than three years later, Dill's loved ones are still reeling, their pain compounded by a drawn-out battle with an insurance company over death benefits from the suicide. Barb Dill, 47, nearly lost the family’s home to foreclosure. "We’re circling the drain," she said.

While suicide among soldiers has been a focus of Congress and the public, relatively little attention has been paid to the mental health of tens of thousands of civilian contractors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. When they make the news at all, contractors are usually in the middle of scandal, depicted as cowboys, wastrels or worse.

No agency tracks how many civilian workers have killed themselves after returning from the war zones. A small study in 2007 found that 24 percent of contract employees from DynCorp, a defense contractor, showed signs of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after returning home. The figure is roughly equivalent to those found in studies of returning soldiers.

If the pattern holds true on a broad scale, thousands of such workers may be suffering from mental trauma, said Paul Brand, the CEO of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a firm that provides counseling to war zone civilians. More than 200,000 civilians work in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the most recent figures.

"There are many people falling through the cracks, and there are few mechanisms in place to support these individuals,'' said Brand, who conducted the study while working at DynCorp."There's a moral obligation that's being overlooked. Can the government really send people to a war zone and neglect their responsibility to attend to their emotional needs after the fact?"

The survivors of civilians who have committed suicide have found themselves confused, frustrated and alone in their grief.

"If I was in the military, I'd at least have someone to talk to," said Melissa Finkenbinder, 42, whose husband, Kert, a mechanic, killed himself after returning from Iraq. "Contractors don't have anything. Their families don't have anything."

Some families of civilian contractors who have committed suicide have tried to battle for help through an outdated government system designed to provide health insurance and death benefits to civilian contractors injured or killed on the job.

Under the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, defense firms must purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees in war zones. It is highly specialized and expensive insurance, dominated by the troubled giant AIG and a handful of other companies. The cost of it is paid by taxpayers as part of the contract price.

But the law, which is designed to provide coverage for accidental death and injury, blocks payment of death benefits in the case of almost all suicides. Cases linked to mental incapacity are the lone exception, judges have ruled.

A joint investigation last year by ProPublica, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that contract workers must frequently battle carriers for basic medical coverage. While Congress has promised reforms, there has been no discussion of changing the law when it comes to suicides involving civilian defense workers.

The military, by contrast, allows survivors to receive benefits in cases in which a soldier's suicide can be linked to depression caused by battlefield stress.

Hundreds of soldiers have committed suicide since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, according to studies by the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In response, the Defense Department has become more active in trying to prevent suicide than its hired contractors, military experts said.

The military is "aggressively trying to reach people and do intervention beforehand and set up suicide awareness programs," said Ian de Planque, a benefits expert at the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans group. "Awareness of it has increased. I don’t know that it’s transferred over to the civilian sector at this point."

Birgitt Eysselinck has spent years trying to prove that her husband's death in Iraq was related to stress from his job with a company specializing in the removal of land mines and explosive ordnance. So far, courts have sided with the insurance firm, Chicago-based CNA, in denying Eysselinck's claim. (CNA declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.)

Eysselinck, 44, said that neither federal judges nor insurance adjusters understand that civilian contractors face many of the same risks in Iraq and Afghanistan that soldiers do. Her husband, Tim Eysselinck, endured mortar attacks and frequently traveled across Iraq's dangerous highways, she said.

"There is a huge percentage of contractors who are silently suffering," Eysselinck said. "That obviously puts them and their families at risk. Communities are bearing the brunt of this, especially the families."

* * *

Wade Dill was working at a local pest control company when he decided to take a job with KBR in Iraq in late 2004. The money was good – almost $11,000 a month for handling extermination and hazardous material disposal, more than double his normal salary.

"He said this was our opportunity," Barb Dill said. "He could start a college fund for our daughter, pay off the mortgage and have a nice retirement. He told me at his age, 41, he didn't know if he had enough years left in him to give us what he wanted."

Wade started that December, working on bases in central and northern Iraq. Violence was ever present. A base near Mosul was shelled frequently. He told Barb that a mortar landed close enough to temporarily deafen him. Once, he called her sobbing.

"My husband never cried, ever," she said. "Marines don't cry. A young man, a soldier, had put a pistol to his head and blown his brains out. And Wade had to go in and clean up after they removed the body – he had to clean up brain matter and blood. It really upset him."

Barb Dill noticed a change in her husband when he returned home for a visit in December 2005. The couple had been high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. They had troubles, but had always worked them out. Now, he seemed moody and often angry, lashing out at her and their daughter, Sara.

"He would say hateful things to me and our daughter – things he had never said before." Dill said. "This was a man that loved his little girl and his wife. He always called us his girls."

When Wade returned for another visit in June 2006, he abruptly quit his job and began acting erratically, Dill said. He ripped the wiring out of appliances, smashed mirrors and poured lighter fluid on their furniture.

After a few weeks, Wade took a room at a local motel. On July 15, he asked Barb to come see him. Their conversation spiraled into a confrontation. Frightened and angry, Barb sped off in her car. The next day, the Shasta County coroner's office called to tell her that Wade's body had been found in the room.

"He told me that he was sick and needed help," Dill said. "I told him to get help and then we would talk. The last time I saw him was in my rearview mirror."

Dill soon found herself in financial difficulty. Her husband had always taken care of the bills. He had spent lavishly with his higher salary, buying two BMWs during trips home. Now, Dill discovered the couple was $300,000 in debt on their mortgage and car loans.

She plunged into depression, struggling to cope with her daughter’s grief and the sense that she had failed her husband in his time of need. She sold the cars and nearly lost her home after falling behind on mortgage payments.

She suffered mostly by herself. Except for a handful of Web sites, no support groups exist for widows of civilian contractors. The federal government offers no counseling for civilians returning from work in war zones.

Dill said that she felt abandoned by everyone: her husband's employer, the insurance company and especially the federal government, which oversees the Defense Base Act system through the Labor Department.

"Shouldn't our government be responsible for the companies they hire?" Dill said. "Shouldn't our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?"

* * *

Survivors of civilian contractors whose death is related to their work in Iraq have the right to apply for compensation benefits that pay up to $63,000 a year for life.

Dill applied, asserting that her husband’s PTSD made him an exception to the rule against payments in suicide cases. Her claim was denied by AIG, KBR's insurance provider.

She protested, sending her claim into a dispute resolution system run by the Labor Department. Her case is still grinding its way through the system, which can take years to produce a final result.

Experts hired by the family and the insurance company differed on what led to Wade Dill’s suicide.

A psychiatrist hired by her attorney found that job stress in Iraq was one of the factors that drove Wade to suicide: "The bottom line is that the combination of physical separation and work-related stress resulted in increasingly emotional distance, greater distortion of the relationship, increasing emotional intensity, and a pattern of increasing erratic behaviors that culminated in suicide," wrote Charles Seaman, an expert in PTSD.

A Labor Department examiner recommended that AIG pay the claim, but the company refused. AIG and KBR declined comment about the case. In court filings, AIG has argued that the Defense Base Act does not cover suicides.

AIG attorneys also have said that Wade Dill's actions were related to marital and family problems. A psychiatrist hired by AIG testified at a hearing in San Francisco in January that he had performed a "psychological autopsy" on Wade Dill based on interviews with his family and court documents.

The psychiatrist, Andrew D. Whyman, said his evaluation led him to conclude that Dill suffered from depression and that his suicide was unrelated to the violence he witnessed in Iraq.

"Take out the Iraq experience, (the suicide) would have happened," Whyman testified. "He had a choice. … He could have chosen not to do that."

Barb Dill insists her husband came back from Iraq a changed man.

"No matter how strained our relationship could get at times, we always pulled out of it with no problem," Dill said. "Iraq changed all that."

Now, she said, she is trying to hold her life together. A final decision in her case is not expected for months.

"We're just slowly sinking," she said. "It's hard to be strong."

Watch a preview of 'Disposable Army,' a documentary currently being produced by Mark Crupi, which contains interviews with Barb Dill and T. Christian Miller.

Disposable Army: Read our complete coverage of injured defense contractors and their struggles to receive promised medical care.

Our Articles on Wounded Iraq and Afghan Interpreters—Now in Arabic

Scott Klein — 2010-01-19T17:30:16-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

Al Hayat, a pan-Arabic newspaper based in London, has translated and published a ProPublica story about the health care struggles faced by Iraqi and Afghan citizens wounded while working as interpreters for U.S. soldiers. Part of a continuing series on injured civilian contractors, the original story detailed how injured local interpreters suffered shoddy treatment in a system funded by American taxpayers to provide medical care and disability benefits. Many of the interpreters fled to the U.S. after becoming targets for the insurgency. Once here, they found themselves isolated and in poverty, fighting with private insurance companies who often denied claims for medical treatment. More than 360 Iraqi and Afghan interpreters died while working as translators for defense firms contracted with the military—a larger death toll than any other nation's armed forces except for the United States.

To supplement Al Hayat's coverage, ProPublica is translating and posting two related stories. The first piece concerns a doctor who treated hundreds of Iraqi interpreters while working for troubled insurance giant AIG in Jordan. Patients later complained that the doctor did not provide the appropriate treatment—a claim denied by the doctor. The English version is here. A second story takes a look at Iraqi support workers, who have sometimes settled their medical claims for a fraction of the total due to them by insurance providers. Here's the original.

The Labor Department, which runs the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, has exercised little oversight over the treatment provided to foreign workers. Despite promises to better enforce labor laws and widespread agreement that the contractor health care system is costly and ineffective, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has largely avoided interviews and meetings with contractor groups seeking to reform the system.

Foreign Interpreters Hurt in Battle Find U.S. Insurance Benefits Wanting

Scott Klein — 2009-12-18T04:42:35-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

This story was co-published with the Los Angeles Times.

After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. military discovered that rebuilding the country and confronting an insurgency required a weapon not in its arsenal: Thousands of translators.

To fill the gap, the Pentagon turned to Titan Corp., a San Diego defense contractor, which eventually hired more than 8,000 interpreters, most of them Iraqis.

For $12,000 a year, these civilians served as the voice of America’s military, braving sniper fire and roadside bombs. Insurgents branded them collaborators and targeted them for torture and assassination. Many received military honors for their heroism.

At least 360 interpreters employed by Titan or its successor company were killed between March 2003 and March 2008, and more than 1,200 were injured. The death toll was greater than that suffered by the armed forces of any country in the American-led coalition, other than the U.S. Scores of translators assisting U.S. forces in Afghanistan have also been killed or wounded.

An insurance program funded by American taxpayers was supposed to provide a safety net for interpreters and their families in the event of injury or death. Yet for many, the benefits have fallen painfully short of what was promised, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica found.

Interviews, corporate documents and data on insurance claims show that:

Insurers have delayed or denied claims for disability payments and death benefits, citing a lack of police reports or other documentary evidence that interpreters’ injuries or deaths were related to their work for the military. Critics, including some U.S. Army officers, say it is absurd to expect Iraqis or Afghans to be able to document the cause of injuries suffered in a war zone.
Iraqi interpreters sent to neighboring Jordan for medical treatment say they were pressured to accept lump-sum settlements from insurers, rather than a stream of lifetime benefits potentially worth more, and were told that if they didn’t sign, they would be sent back to Iraq -- a likely death sentence.
Interpreters who have immigrated to America as refugees have ended up penniless, on food stamps or in menial jobs because their benefits under the U.S. insurance program are based on wages and living costs in their home countries, not in the United States. Payments intended to provide a decent standard of living in Iraq or Afghanistan leave the recipients below the poverty level in this country.

Malek Hadi was working with U.S. military police outside Baghdad when a homemade explosive detonated beneath his Humvee in September 2006. The blast tore off his right leg, mangled his left and sheared off several fingers.

Today, Hadi, 25, lives alone in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Arlington, Texas. He struggles to climb the stairs to his second-floor apartment on crutches. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but is not receiving treatment because his insurer has refused to pay for it.

He lives on $612 a month in disability payments –- the maximum available under the war-zone insurance system.

“When we were in Iraq, we were exactly like the soldiers,” Hadi said. “Why are we treated differently now?”

Retired Army Col. Joel Armstrong, who served in Iraq and was a leading proponent of the 2007 U.S. troop buildup, or “surge,” that helped reduce violence in the country, said Iraqi interpreters were crucial to the strategy’s success.

“Without them, you really can’t operate effectively as a force. It’s just impossible,” Armstrong said. It is deplorable, he added, that interpreters injured while assisting American troops have had to fight for benefits.

“Every American should feel terrible about it,” he said. “It’s a shame.”

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the principal provider of insurance coverage for interpreters in Iraq, declined to answer detailed questions on its policies or comment on specific cases.

Marie Ali, a spokeswoman for the AIG unit that sold the coverage, said the company “is committed to handling every claim professionally, ethically and fairly. In all cases, it is our policy to respect the privacy of our customers and claimants and not discuss the specifics of individual claims.”

Under a World War II-era law known as the Defense Base Act, companies working under contract for the U.S. military must provide workers’ compensation insurance for their employees, both Americans and foreign nationals. The cost of the coverage is built into Pentagon contracts and so is ultimately paid by taxpayers.

The insurance system, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, once handled a few hundred claims a year. It expanded dramatically after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq because of the Pentagon’s heavy reliance on civilian contract workers to drive fuel trucks, cook meals and provide other support services.

Today, there are more civilian workers than uniformed soldiers in the two battle zones, and more than 1,400 contract workers have died.

Interpreters in Iraq were covered by insurance purchased by their employer, first Titan Corp. and later L-3 Communications, a New York defense contractor that acquired Titan in 2005. L-3 paid AIG more than $20 million a year in premiums, according to corporate records.

Once a worker files an injury claim, the employer’s insurer must begin paying benefits within two weeks or file a “notice of dispute.”

Interpreters who suffered the worst injuries, such as loss of a limb or severe brain damage, typically received compensation relatively quickly. That is because they were treated at U.S. military facilities in Iraq, where staff members documented their injuries.

In other cases, AIG often had difficulty establishing to its satisfaction that interpreters’ injuries or deaths were work-related. The company routinely filed notices of dispute while it investigated the claims.

“Even determining the facts of an accident – the location and the circumstances – can be a challenge,” Charles Schader, AIG’s president of worldwide claims, told a Congressional panel in June. “Without sufficient information, examiners cannot make timely final determinations within 14 days.”

To pay death benefits, AIG required police reports or other supporting documents, according to former L-3 officials. Internal L-3 records from 2005 show that AIG examiners sent to Iraq were able to find documentation deemed necessary for benefits in only half the cases examined.

“If you’re missing one piece of documentation, you got denied,” said Colleen Driscoll, former chief claims manager for L-3. “These guys get murdered coming and going to work, and AIG turns them down because they don’t have a letter from the insurgents.”

Driscoll, a former U.N. refugee official, left L-3 in 2007. She said the cause was a dispute with company executives over treatment of injured interpreters.

She and another former L-3 official, Jennifer Armstrong, said their experience suggested that 10 percent to 20 percent of the company’s Iraqi workers who should have received benefits were denied.

Armstrong said that in one instance, a slain interpreter’s widow and children had to live for months in the company’s compound in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad while they waited for death benefits to be approved. It was too dangerous for them to remain in their home, and they could not afford to relocate, she said.

“The Iraqis were looked at as second-class citizens,” said Armstrong, who now works for another defense contractor. “It just became a business. When it became a business, you lost sight of the goal.”

L-3 did not respond to requests for comment.

AIG arranged for many of the most severely wounded Iraqis to be transferred to neighboring Jordan, where medical facilities were better and interpreters did not face the risk of assassination.

Emad Hatabah, a Syrian-trained physician who had been medical director of AIG’s Jordanian subsidiary, exercised broad authority over their care. A medical evacuation company that Hatabah owned transported interpreters from the war zone. He selected their doctors and arranged stays at hotels and rehabilitation clinics.

Once their treatment was concluded, Hatabah presented interpreters with settlement agreements providing for lump-sum payments, in return for which AIG would be released from further liability.

Several Iraqis said Hatabah pressed them to sign and told them that if they refused, they would be sent back to Iraq. In spring 2007, more than a dozen interpreters sent L-3 officials a petition complaining of “bad treatment” by Hatabah and asserting that he had threatened to have them deported.

One of the interpreters, Ali Kanaan, suffered vision damage and burns to more than a third of his body as a result of a 2006 suicide bombing.

Kanaan said Hatabah offered him a $61,000 settlement on AIG’s behalf. He said that when he resisted, Hatabah told him that if he didn’t accept the lump sum, he would have to return to Iraq to pursue a claim for disability benefits.

Kanaan decided to take the offer.

“If you obey Dr. Emad’s rules, you’ll be fine,” he said. “If you don’t, you got kicked out.”

Kanaan later immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee. Now 23, he works 12 hours a day in a cigarette store in Denver. At night, he cleans the stove hoods in restaurant kitchens. The caustic chemicals irritate his skin grafts, he said.

Hatabah, interviewed in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said the interpreters received exemplary care. He denied pressuring any of them to sign settlements or threatening to send them back to Iraq.

Hatabah said AIG’s office in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, sent him settlement agreements and his only role was to witness the signing of the documents. He said that because he is employed by AIG, he took care never to act as the treating physician for any interpreters, in order to eliminate even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“I believe we did more than a good job,” Hatabah said. “It was a perfect job.”

Interpreters and other injured workers can appeal insurers’ denials through a dispute-resolution system in the Department of Labor. Ultimately, an administrative law judge decides the matter. The department must approve all settlements, and officials are supposed to review offers with the affected workers to make sure compensation is “adequate.”

“The whole purpose is to recognize that a guy who’s never had a $100,000 check in his life before is a sucker for a bad deal,” said Joshua Gillelan, a former lawyer for the department who now represents civilian workers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But few Iraqis know they have rights in the system, and interpreters interviewed for this report said the Labor Department never contacted them about settlement offers.

“Nobody called me or told me or did anything for me,” said Nazar Taei, 40, whose legs were riddled with shrapnel during a mortar attack in 2006.

After he arrived in the U.S. as a refugee, AIG offered Taei an $18,500 settlement, he said. He was dissatisfied with the amount, but accepted it.

“I told AIG, ‘Is this enough for somebody to start his life, who lost his job, a part of his life?’” recalled Taei, a Denver resident who recently enlisted in the U.S. Army and hopes to become a translator. “They said, ‘Those are the rules. We can’t do anything for you.’”

In at least one case, an AIG representative discouraged Iraqis from reaching out to the Labor Department. In an e-mail exchange last year, the father of an L-3 interpreter killed in a car bomb wrote to AIG, seeking to speed payment of death benefits.

The father, who revealed details of the case on condition of anonymity, asked an AIG examiner in Dubai about contacting Labor officials.

“I wouldn’t advice you to do so,” the examiner replied by e-mail. “You would be taking the full responsibility of the outcomes.”

Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis declined requests for an interview. In a statement, the Labor Department said the increase in civilian contract workers in Iraq and Afghanistan has posed formidable challenges for the war-zone insurance system. The department has no employees posted in Iraq, Afghanistan or surrounding countries, nor any speakers of Arabic or Afghan dialects.

The statement said Labor depends on insurers and defense contractors to inform workers of their rights and to report injuries.

“There is no way to accurately monitor compliance as the many levels of subcontracting to workers from around the globe makes such oversight impossible,” the statement said. “We understand and are concerned about the fact that we are unable to place staff at the front lines to ensure that all workers understand their rights.”

After the homemade explosive blew off his leg in 2006, Malek Hadi was sent to Jordan for treatment. There, AIG offered him a $60,000 lump-sum settlement, he said.

Hadi rejected the offer and said he was deported to Iraq within a month.

He later returned to Jordan as a refugee. He had applied for disability benefits but was not receiving any, and he could not get an explanation from AIG, he said. He lived on handouts from family and friends while waiting for permission to immigrate to the U.S.

Internal AIG documents indicate that a claims examiner withheld Hadi’s benefits in an effort to force him to accept the lump sum. Hadi was “clearly entitled” to benefits, a different AIG examiner wrote in a memo dated August 2008. The company had not paid because the previous examiner “was trying to get the claimant to decide whether to settle his claim,” the memo said.

After arriving in the U.S., Hadi again contacted AIG, this time seeking medical treatment as well as disability payments. A psychologist working with a refugee agency in Texas had diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, Hadi’s prosthetic right leg was causing sharp pains and his damaged left leg ached constantly.

AIG formally contested the claim, saying that he needed further medical evaluation. This past summer, more than three years after Hadi’s leg was blown off, AIG began paying him disability benefits of $612 a month. The insurer still has not approved his request for medical treatment.

Hadi spends most of his days in his apartment in Arlington, Texas, watching Arabic television and texting friends back home. “I lost my leg. My life is broken,” he said. “For what?”

A favorite possession is a gold coin given to him by a member of the 89th Military Police Brigade after he was injured.

“Proven in Battle,” it says.

Lost in Limbo: Injured Afghan Translators Struggle to Survive

Scott Klein — 2009-12-17T22:11:18-05:00

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to ProPublica

PAGHMAN, Afghanistan -- Earlier this year, U.S. Army soldiers traveled to a remote valley in northeastern Afghanistan in hopes of improving relations with local villagers by repairing a collapsed bridge.

To implement this bit of counterinsurgency, the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment relied upon Farshad Yewazi, a 23-year-old Afghan who served as their translator. He took pride in his role, believing that he was helping his fellow Afghans in helping the Americans' humanitarian efforts.

Translators offer the villagers humanitarian aid "and help kick enemies out of the area," said Yewazi, whose family comes from the surrounding province of Kunar, one of the most war-torn regions of Afghanistan and a rumored hiding place of Osama Bin Laden.

But soon after the soldiers of Charlie Company dismounted their vehicles in the small village of Senzo on May 9, Yewazi sensed something was amiss. It was too late -- an unmistakable "pop-pop" rang out, followed by a volley of rocket-propelled grenades. They had walked into an ambush.

As the soldiers returned the fire, Yewazi hit the ground but was wounded. A rocket-propelled grenade tore most of the flesh off his right arm. "I cannot even tell you how much pain I was in," said the soft-spoken translator, wincing as he recalled the incident more than five months later. "I still cannot believe I could even tolerate it."

Yewazi had just become one of the hidden casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military uses defense contractors to hire local residents to serve as translators for the troops. These local translators often live, sleep and eat with soldiers. And yet when they are wounded, they are often ignored by the U.S. system designed to provide them medical care and disability benefits, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica.

In Afghanistan, the system's flaws are becoming increasingly apparent as President Obama has flooded tens of thousands of additional forces into the country, requiring hundreds of new translators. Afghanistan's difficult terrain, poor communications and rudimentary infrastructure have made the delivery of promised benefits uneven, with some injured translators going months without payments.

Even when the system works, however, troubles remain. Injured Afghans have often been forced to flee after becoming targets for Taliban insurgents. Those who seek refuge in the U.S. have found themselves having to scramble to make any kind of living in the recession-wracked American economy.

Bashir Ahmedzai was a surgeon from Kabul who landed a job working as an interpreter at a U.S. military hospital in 2004. After his foot was injured in a vehicle explosion in 2007, he fled to the U.S., where he eventually found work as ”housekeeper” at a military hospital in Texas.

"I speak six languages and I am a qualified general surgeon. But I couldn't make enough money to support myself. I had to ask my family to send me money from Afghanistan to survive," Ahmedzai said.

The system, which is regulated by the Labor Department under a law known as the Defense Base Act, requires defense contractors in war zones to purchase workers' compensation insurance for their employees. Paid for by taxpayers as part of the contract price, the policies are designed to pay for medical care and wages lost to injuries.

In Yewazi's case, however, his insurance company failed to provide him medical benefits to cover the cost of his health care. Instead, he was treated by U.S. military doctors at the scene and later at Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan.

Nor did the company, Zurich Financial Services of Switzerland, make disability payments to Yewazi. More than six months after the attack, Yewazi's right hand remains crippled; he cannot eat, write or pick up anything with it. While doctors say he may eventually regain use of the hand, for now, he is trying to adjust to doing these tasks with his left.

Yewazi's employer, Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel, or MEP, is the primary provider of translators in Afghanistan under a five-year, $414-million contract to supply nearly 1,700 translators to the military. The company pays local translators about $900 a month to accompany troops.

In response to questions on the case, MEP acknowledged that Zurich had failed to provide Yewazi with benefits. MEP said it was working to overhaul its claims processing system to make sure that Yewazi and other injured interpreters were paid their full benefits.

"MEP regards all its linguists, whether a foreign national or U.S. hire, as colleagues and heroes," Sean Rushton, an MEP spokesman, said in an e-mail response to ProPublica.

Zurich declined to comment on any individual case. The Swiss company has historically had a tiny share of the market for the specialized war zone insurance, which is dominated by troubled industry giant AIG. In recent years, however, Zurich has increased its market share, according to one recent industry study.

Such policies are extraordinarily lucrative. Some firms have reported profits as high as 50 percent -- compared to ordinary worker's compensation policies, which often provide only 1 percent to 2 percent profit. All told, taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion for war zone policies since 2002, according to Congressional investigators.

"Zurich works to ensure each customer claim is given the utmost attention, which includes gathering and understanding the necessary information," Steven McKay, a Zurich spokesman, said in a statement.

The Labor Department, charged with ensuring the delivery of benefits, said in a statement that it was unable to police the system. The agency has no personnel deployed to Afghanistan to make sure claims are paid. It also does not publish notices in any Afghan dialect informing workers of their rights.

"We realize that some overseas claims may not receive the same level of medical care and personal claim interactions as domestic U.S. workers receive, however, we believe that in general most workers are receiving appropriate care," the statement said.

However, interviews with a dozen former MEP interpreters and their families show that Yewazi's tale is not unusual. Injured translators and the families of those killed have waited months for payments, lost in a bureaucratic maze.

For example, Basir "Steve" Ahmed was returning from a bomb-clearing mission in Khogyani district in northeastern Afghanistan in October 2008 when a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-filled vehicle nearby. His right hand was torn apart by shrapnel.

Although the military doctors at Bagram were able to graft skin onto his burns, he is still unable to lift his hand to feed himself. Ahmed returned to work, but three months after the bombing, he was fired for coming late to work.

Ahmed continued to get a partial salary for about six months after his injury. Nine months after his injury he was given a $10,000 compensation payment. After his firing was reported in CorpWatch, a nonprofit focused on corporate accountability, MEP offered him his job back.

Other translators have reported faster compensation. Abdul Hameed, a translator from Jalalabad who has worked for MEP since May 2009, was injured by a home-made bomb on August 18, 2009, in Logar province, shattering his heel. The following day, MEP officials visited him in the hospital and by the end of the month he was receiving disability pay of $110.01 a week -- barely enough to pay for his medical expenses.

MEP executives said they had decided to conduct an internal audit of their insurance contract with Zurich. The company human resources chief traveled to Kabul recently to review claims from injured contractors and found scores of backlogged cases.

"When she arrived, there were over 170 outstanding claims; today there are about 80," Rushton said. "We're committed to getting the backlog to zero and keeping it down with process reforms."

Yewazi's case is an example of how easy it is for an injured local translator to slip through the cracks.

In late October, at his parent's simple home in the hills of Paghman, Yewazi showed this reporter his medical reports as well as an array of photographs, certificates and letters of recommendations from his three years with the U.S. military.

There are dozens of pictures of him in the snow-covered high mountains of eastern Afghanistan surrounded by gun-toting Special Forces. Other pictures show him sitting down with the troops to help them communicate with village elders.

His most prized possession is a letter from Charlie Company, dated May 9th, 2009, the day he was injured. Written by Captain James Stultz, it reads: "Farshad. We are hope you are doing well. We have been thinking about you and hope that the doctors are treating you well. If you need anything, let us know. You have risked your life to help us and almost paid the ultimate sacrifice. You are a brave man and we hope you heal quickly." Under Stultz's signature, another 20-odd soldiers and translators have co-signed and added get-well comments.

Yewazi said he had repeatedly attempted to contact MEP and Zurich representatives for help after his injury without success. After this reporter sent MEP a request for information on Yewazi's case, an MEP official called Yewazi within 24 hours and promised to expedite his claim with Zurich.

MEP's Rushton says that they hope that the new system of "reaching out to Zurich claims adjusters and investigators daily" will ensure that cases like Yewazi’s will not occur again. "We have requested a formal claims review from Zurich on all open claims to ensure all records match and claims are resolved," Rushton said.

Second Hurdle: Death Threats

When word gets around about their injuries, many former translators face a much tougher battle -- death threats from insurgent groups.

Ahmed Rashad Mushfiq, a 28-year-old former MEP translator from Kabul, sustained serious injuries in Kapisa province on April 29, 2008, when the Humvee he was in hit a roadside bomb.

The subsequent explosion killed the driver, Airman Jonathan Yelner, 24, of California. Mushfiq, who was sitting right behind Yelner, lost both his legs -- one of which had to be amputated just above the knee and the other right below.

Mushfiq was provided with prosthetic legs, although he still needs crutches to get around. His proudest moment in his long road to recovery was at a memorial run for Yelner in October 2008, when he was asked to lead more than 500 runners and walkers in a symbolic crossing of the finish line of the three-mile course at Bagram.

Initially MEP assigned another translator to help Mushfiq when he returned home to Kabul. But when the second translator was approached by four young men who offered to pay him to reveal the location of Mushfiq, the amputee asked his former military unit to get him safe haven at Bagram.

When Mushfiq's original unit rotated out of theater last year, however, U.S. officials told him he would have to leave Bagram. Mushfiq moved to MEP's headquarters at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, where he worked for a few weeks doing desk work and attending physical therapy classes.

Then, he fell and broke his arm. The military asked MEP to send Mushfiq home, fearing that the translator's mounting physical disabilities would impede his ability to seek shelter in case of attack. In July 2008, Zurich paid Mushfiq $125,000 in compensation. Immediately afterwards, MEP told him to leave the base.

Today Mushfiq lives in hiding. He is hoping to get a visa to come to the U.S., but immigration officials here have told him it will take at least another year until he is eligible.

Increasingly desperate, Mushfiq is now attempting to use Facebook as a tool to get out of Afghanistan. He has signed up as a fan of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Prayers for Our Troops!, President Barack Obama and even the American Conservative Republican Alliance.

On November 7, he posted an e-mail message to Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan: "Sir, I am living in Afghanistan with a lot of problems i applied for immigrant visa to USA but my case is still pending i beg for your help sir God bless sir."

Third Hurdle: Emigrating to the U.S.

In late November, Mushfiq sent an e-mail to Staff Sgt. Ronald Payne, a military nurse who runs an intensive care unit at the headquarters of the U.S. Army's Medical Command at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

In his spare time, Payne heads up a volunteer project called the Allied Freedom Project to help Afghan and Iraqi translators come to the U.S. Over the last couple of years Payne estimates he has helped some 500 former translators in the process of "immigration, reception and integration into American life" -- including picking them up at the airport, arranging accommodation and signing them up for food stamps and other benefits when they land in the country.

Payne said that Mushfiq and other injured translators are stuck in bureaucratic limbo land because the U.S. has failed to fully implement the Afghan Allies Protection Act. The act, signed into law in March 2009, authorizes an additional 1,500 special visas annually for the next five years to employees and contractors of the U.S. government in Afghanistan "who have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of that employment."

The new quota will add significantly to the 600 or so that have been authorized since the U.S. toppled the Taliban in 2001. (By contrast over 26,000 Iraqis have been authorized to settle in the U.S., a process that is well under way)

But even if Mushfiq is able to complete the immigration process, it will not be the last hurdle. Disability benefits are based on salary -– and since local Afghans made less than $12,000 a year, their disability benefits are in most cases beneath U.S. poverty levels.

Public benefits are also limited. Depending on the state, refugees can expect about six months of help in the form of food stamps and rent subsidies. After that, they have to fend for themselves.

"Welcome to America, you are on your own," said Payne, who emphasized that he was not speaking on behalf of the U.S. military. Without a job, he said, "They are screwed."

From Surgeon to Used Car Salesman

Ahmedzai, the surgeon who injured his foot, traveled to San Antonio under the sponsorship of the Allied Freedom Project in July 2008. After six months, Ahmedzai was able to get a job at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in housekeeping, making $11.23 an hour.

Three months later, Ahmedzai quit and set up a business buying used cars to ship to Afghanistan. In the last six weeks, he has been able to clear about $2,000, allowing him to finally send $200 to his wife and six children.

"They ask me even today; you sacrificed your life for the U.S. army. Why didn't they do anything for you? It is a shame for you!" says Ahmedzai, who says he is now looking for another part-time job so that he can save the money to bring the rest of his family to live with him in Texas.

This past Thanksgiving, he joined friends for the traditional evening meal in San Antonio. When it came to his time to give thanks, he was silent for a moment and then he finally said. "I am just thankful that I didn't lose my leg."

Pratap Chatterjee is a freelance investigative journalist and editor at CorpWatch. He has written two books on military contractors - Iraq, Inc. (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and Halliburton's Army (Nation Books, 2009). He can be contacted at pchatterjee@igc.org

T. Christian Miller contributed to this report.

For AIG’s Man in Jordan, War Becomes a Business Opportunity

Scott Klein — 2009-12-17T20:41:54-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

AMMAN, Jordan—For Emad Hatabah, the war in Iraq became a business opportunity.

As AIG's chief representative in Jordan, he was responsible for coordinating the care for hundreds of Iraqis who had been injured while working under contract for U.S. troops as linguists, truck drivers and other jobs.

He fulfilled his functions by sending business to himself, his friends and business associates, according to interviews and records. For instance, Hatabah created his own air ambulance service in July 2006, a company called Arab Assist, which AIG hired to transport injured patients from Iraq to Jordan, records show.

"They needed someone who has lots of connections. I'm a doctor with lots of connections," Hatabah said during an interview at a hotel on a street crowded with hospitals and medical offices in Amman.

But those connections have raised questions about whether Hatabah acted in the best interests of the injured Iraqis or of his ad-hoc medical network. Taxpayers may ultimately pay the bill for such care under a U.S. law which allows insurance firms such as AIG to seek full reimbursement for the cost of treating civilian contractors injured in combat.

Hatabah sent scores of interpreters and other Iraqi hires to a Jordanian hospital called Al Khalidi, where the chief of the intensive care unit was a business partner and college friend, Nael Abu Khaff. He called it the best hospital to treat them. While they were waiting for care, Hatabah had the interpreters stay at hotels owned by friends, he said.

In an interview at Al Khalidi hospital, Abu Khaff confirmed his business dealings with Hatabah, but said that his hospital was chosen to care for the patients because it was one of the best in Jordan.

"We were the provider of medical treatment to these patients. I'm not an insurance doctor," Abu Khaff said.

Hatabah also negotiated with Jordan’s immigration authorities to arrange for their visas, worked with local banks to set up accounts for the interpreters and obtained rehabilitation therapy and prosthetic devices.

Colleen Driscoll, a former official for defense contractor L-3, questioned Hatabah's choices. For instance, Al Khalidi hospital is a well-respected local institution, but it has not been accredited by the U.S.-based Joint Commission International--the gold standard certification held by other Jordanian hospitals.

Hatabah also placed interpreters with no legs in hotels that had no handicapped access, Driscoll said, and their prosthetics were heavy and fit poorly.

"Hatabah was a businessman. It was all about making money," Driscoll said.

Hatabah acknowledged that some patients were placed in a hotel that was not equipped to handle people with disabilities. However, he said he was forced to relocate the patients quickly by L-3, and that the facilities were upgraded as soon as possible. Hatabah also said the prosthetics that he purchased were top quality.

Jordanian doctors who reviewed medical records for some of the patients questioned some charges as high. The cost of most medical procedures in Jordan is set by a standardized fee schedule issued by the local medical association.

One record indicates that AIG paid $29,105 for two surgeries to remove stitches and other "medical expenses" for a patient whose care was being coordinated by Hatabah. Jordanian doctors who reviewed the bill said such charges would normally amount to around $3,500.

"They act like a team and they want to manage all this number of patients. This makes you suspicious," said one doctor, who did not want to be identified for fear of offending AIG.

All told, Hatabah estimated that he had overseen the care for more than 400 civilian workers from Iraq and a handful of other nearby countries such as Jordan. Hatabah said that he worked under a "mutual understanding" with AIG in which the company paid him a certain fee per patient per day. He declined to reveal specifics, but said he made at most about $100,000 a year working for AIG.

He also said that AIG paid his doctors rates far above normal for Jordan. He said that AIG officials told him that they wanted to pay top dollar to obtain the best care.

Hatabah acknowledged that neither AIG nor the federal government had accounting mechanisms to oversee the network that he created.

"Is there a guarantee that I didn’t take a percentage? No, there is no guarantee other than my word. It's my reputation. Is there a way for AIG to make sure that I didn't get a percentage if I referred to Al Khalidi? They can't."

While AIG paid for Hatabah's services, the company can seek reimbursement under a U.S. law known as the War Hazards Compensation Act.

The Act, passed in the 1940s, allows insurers to seek payment from the Labor Department for medical costs and disability payments associated with combat-injured civilian contractors. It also provides companies an additional 15% to pay for the cost of handling the claim.

As of May 2009, the department had paid AIG $5.7 million for 77 claims, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. It is not clear why AIG has submitted so few claims for reimbursement, given that hundreds of contractors have been injured or killed in combat.

AIG officials declined to answer specific questions. Hatabah said he had no knowledge of the War Hazards Compensation Act.

"I believe strongly that these people received the best we know, the best we can and without taking sides," Hatabah said. "I do believe that AIG tried their best to give these patients good and fair treatment."

However, Hatabah's former clients have complained that he did not fully inform them of their rights. Under the law, injured workers are allowed to choose their own physician. Few Iraqi workers were aware that they had this right, and said they relied on Hatabah for care.

Rafid Kully, 32, was injured in a road accident while traveling with the U.S. Marines as an interpreter. He said the orthopedist brought in by Hatabah botched an operation on his foot, leaving him with a permanent limp. When he attempted to get treatment from other doctors, AIG denied his requests, he said.

In the interview, Hatabah said he had advised Kully against the procedure. He acknowledged that Kully’s surgery did not achieve its intended results.

Now living in North Carolina as a refugee, Kully continues to battle AIG for medical treatment.

"We thought our companies would help. We thought if you proved that something was wrong, they would fix it. But it was all about money. Nobody cared about us," Kully said. "Everybody was happy with the situation. The doctors were making millions. AIG was making millions. The companies did not have to pay a lot. Everybody was happy. But us."

Blinded From a Sniper Bullet and Shortchanged by the System

Scott Klein — 2009-12-17T20:20:48-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

PHOENIX, Ariz. – While Iraqi interpreters served directly with U.S. troops, hundreds of other Iraqis have been injured or killed while working behind the scenes to help the U.S. war effort.

And just like the interpreters, these support workers have also found themselves shortchanged by the U.S. system designed to protect workers injured or killed on the job, according to a ProPublica review.

Hakee Aidan, 28, drove trucks for an Iraqi company that held a subcontract with PWC, a Kuwaiti firm now known as Agility which transported good for U.S. troops. Aidan would routinely drive unarmored tractor trailers on Iraq's most dangerous roads, carrying food, water and even ammunition for American and Iraqi forces.

In January 2006, Aidan was driving toward Ramadi in western Iraq when a sniper's bullet pierced his face from left to right, blowing out both of his eyes. He managed to pull his rig over by the side of the road, where American soldiers rushed him to a military hospital.

A few days later, AIG paid to have Aidan taken to Jordan for treatment. Under a U.S. law known as the Defense Base Act, defense contractors must pay private insurance companies for workers compensation policies to cover their employees. The Labor Department regulates the system, which is financed by taxpayers as part of contract costs.

A year later, after more than a dozen surgeries, a doctor who worked for AIG called Aidan to his office. Aidan, a high school graduate, said he thought that he was getting a payment for his injuries and a temporary discharge from the hospital.

Instead, Aidan placed his thumbprint at the bottom of a document in which AIG agreed to pay Aidan $93,356 to cover full disability payments for the remainder of his life. He also received another $96,644 to cover the costs of any future medical treatments.

The disability amount was based on a yearly salary of $7,500—far below the $50,000 which Aidan said he earned. At that pay scale, Aidan would normally have received well over $1 million to settle his claim, according to Labor Department formulas. Even at the lower salary, Aidan was still entitled to about $170,000 in disability pay alone.

AIG declined to comment on any specific case or address questions about how the payment to Aidan was calculated. In a statement, the company said it was committed to handling all cases "professionally, ethically and fairly."

Aidan said he did not understand the settlement, or that he had the right to protest AIG's calculations for his wages. In court fights here in the U.S., claimants' attorneys have consistently charged that AIG understates wages to avoid paying higher disability benefits. In a majority of cases reviewed by ProPublica, judges have sided with claimants attorneys' arguments.

The Labor Department ultimately approves all settlements. Labor officials would not comment on individual cases. It was unclear why the department would approve a settlement for Aidan at a level below the full amount to which he was entitled. Aidan, who does not speak English, said he had never spoken to the Labor Department. He said friends had sent letters to Congress on his behalf, but he never received a response.

Now living in Phoenix with his wife, three children and several family members in small, house with a bare dirt yard near an interstate, Aidan said he had exhausted his settlement funds. He now gets by on Social Security disability payments of about $600 a month. Medicaid covers his medical bills.

"When my check arrives, three minutes later I have no money," said Aidan, 28, a burly, broad chested man whose eye sockets are angry red holes in his face. "Is this the way they treat people who served in the U.S. military? If I were an American soldier, would I be treated like this?"

Injured Abroad, Neglected at Home: Labor Dept. Slow to Help War Zone Contractors

Scott Klein — 2009-12-17T14:30:06-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

This story was co-published with Salon.

WASHINGTON–In her first public address after taking office, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis promised to increase enforcement of laws designed to protect workers.

"You can rest assured that there is a new sheriff in town," she told union members at a gathering in Miami Beach shortly after her confirmation in February.

Ten months later, Solis’ Labor Department has failed to crack down on one of the agency’s fastest growing and most expensive programs–a system designed to ensure medical care for civilian workers injured in war zones.

The department is responsible for overseeing a workers compensation system in which insurance carriers provide coverage to civilians working on overseas federal contracts. Such policies are funded by taxpayers.

But the department has failed to pursue sanctions against corporations accused of ignoring federal requirements to purchase such insurance, according to a ProPublica review of court cases, federal records and interviews with worker advocates.

The department has also taken no action in cases where insurance carriers allegedly provided false or misleading information to the federal government to terminate medical benefits for injured civilians–another potential crime under the law, known as the Defense Base Act.

The lack of enforcement has allowed carriers and contract companies to abuse the system by avoiding or blocking payments, forcing contractors to spend months and sometimes years battling carriers in court for benefits, claimants and their attorneys said.

"No one has ever been prosecuted for anything," said Dennis Nalick, a veteran claimant’s attorney. "It’s like having a bank robber who gets caught, apologizes and then is let go."

The department’s internal regulations call the detection of fraud and abuse the "highest priority" for officials overseeing the insurance program. Labor Department "personnel are responsible for reporting actual or suspected fraud or abuse, through appropriate channels to the Department of Labor," the department’s procedural manual states.

But the ProPublica examination shows that the department has rarely deployed the tools available under the law to crack down on fraud and abuse–a record that extends back through Democratic and Republican administrations. Labor officials can recommend cases for prosecution to the Justice Department–but have only done so once in the past two decades, according to Labor officials.

They can directly levy civil penalties, but have done so sparingly. As of June, Labor officials have imposed fines in only about 50 of more than 36,000 cases processed by the two largest insurance carriers, according to an internal Congressional memo obtained by ProPublica.

In private conversations, Labor officials have told Congressional staff that they are not an enforcement agency, despite the agency’s internal regulations and federal laws.

One Labor official told Congressional investigators the agency was "at best a score keeper, not a referee," according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who conducted a hearing into the program earlier this year. (The hearing came after a joint investigation by ProPublica, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that civilian contractors had routinely been denied basic medical care.) Foreign-born civilian contractors often had received no benefits at all, despite law requiring the delivery of payments within 14 days of an injury, the investigation found.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Labor officials have the power to enforce the law, but have ignored their responsibilities.

"Under the last administration, there was virtually no oversight," said Sanders, who serves on the Senate’s Health, Education and Labor Committee. "Obviously, this whole thing has been a fiasco."

In a statement, the Labor Department said it had recently imposed a series of fines on corporations that failed to report worker injuries as required by law.

The department indicated that it had fined Blackwater, the private security company now known as Xe, $11,000 for failing to report a worker injury for more than two years. KBR, Armor Group and insurance carriers AIG and CNA have also been fined in recent months.

"We are taking a stronger approach with respect to penalizing the failure to meet the requirements of the law and regulations," said Shelby Hallmark, the senior Labor official overseeing the program. "We’re upping the ante."

Nobody’s in charge

Passed in 1941, the Defense Base Act requires every company with an overseas U.S. contract to obtain health insurance for its workers.

But no single U.S. agency is fully in charge of implementing the program, which has exploded since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 1,600 civilians have died and 37,000 have reported injuries.

In theory, the Labor Department is the lead agency. But Labor officials do not issue overseas contracts. That responsibility falls largely to the Pentagon and a handful of other federal agencies such as the State Department.

When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started, contracting officers with little experience in war zones began awarding bids to companies that lacked the required insurance.

The ProPublica review identified five companies that either did not purchase the required insurance, or which purchased the insurance, and then cancelled it. At least 33 employees have reported serious injuries while working for uninsured companies, according to Labor records.

One company, Strategic Security Solutions, Inc., failed to renew its insurance as recently as last year, according to court records. The company did not return calls for comment.

When companies fail to buy insurance, contractors’ medical care is put at risk.

Typical was the injury sustained by John Mancini, a contract specialist who found a job in Kuwait in 2004 with Procurement Services Associates, a small firm in Pleasanton, Calif., that did bookkeeping for larger contractors in Iraq.

Mancini was on his way home from work in Kuwait City in September 2004 when he was hit from behind by another SUV. Mancini smashed head-on into a concrete freeway barrier. The crash, at speeds of more than 75 miles per hour, totaled both cars. Mancini was left with severe back pain and difficulty walking.

Procurement Services had never purchased Defense Base Act insurance, court records show. Mancini was left to battle the company in Labor Department administrative courts to force them to pay his medical bills. Finally, after nearly two years of frustration and mounting pain, Mancini snapped.

On Oct. 6, 2006, Mancini barricaded himself inside his home outside of Phoenix and began calling 911, making threats and bizarre demands, records show. When local police arrived, Mancini unleashed a barrage of gunfire. After a lengthy stand-off caught live on television, police managed to lure Mancini out of his home.

Mancini pleaded guilty but insane in summer 2007 to charges of endangering police officers and passersby. He was sentenced to 10 years in the Arizona mental hospital. (In August 2006, Mancini filed an affidavit at the request of this reporter as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain records from the Labor Dept. on injured civilian contractors.) He now spends his days going to therapy and reading books, locked behind high walls.

"It was against everything that I stand for," Mancini said in a jailhouse interview shortly before being sent to the hospital. "It’s not like I’m a crazed maniac. I don’t shoot at police."

Mancini and his family believed the standoff would not have happened, had Mancini been able to get help earlier.

Mancini’s neck continues to bother him, and he is scheduled for surgery next year. Taxpayers will foot the bill, although the injury stems from his work accident, said his ex-wife, Susan Mancini. Mancini hopes to petition for an early release, but he has no home to return to. Earlier this year, his house burned down in a case of unsolved arson.

"You hear about veterans’ mental health all the time. These poor contractors end up with nothing," said his ex-wife, Susan Mancini. "To me, that’s a crime."

Scofflaws Run Free

In an interview at his company’s offices in Pleasanton, Dan Plute, the president of Procurement Services, acknowledged that his company had not purchased Defense Base Act insurance.

Plute said he was unfamiliar with the law since his firm had not worked overseas before Iraq. Procurement Services paid some of Mancini’s medical bills, but stopped after a doctor hired by the company found that Mancini was fit to return to work, Plute said.

Plute accused Mancini of exaggerating his injuries to get disability payments. He said the Defense Base Act program was biased against employers.

"I don’t think the judge realizes the misery that his decision put me, my family, my employees through," he said.

And yet under the law, Plute could have been charged with a federal misdemeanor or a fine. But Labor officials did not pursue such charges–despite admonitions from one of the department’s own judicial officials.

At a Labor Department hearing just before Mancini snapped, Administrative Law Judge Russell Pulver warned Plute that failure to provide coverage can result in "criminal liability."

Procurement Services "has consistently shirked its responsibility to [Mancini] to furnish adequate and prompt medical treatment, apparently hoping that someone else will shoulder its responsibilities in this regard," Pulver wrote. "I find this position untenable, if not outright reprehensible."

Under the law, Labor officials are required to ask Justice Department prosecutors to pursue charges against company officials who fail to purchase insurance, a misdemeanor that can result in a year in federal prison.

But Justice has historically shown little interest in pursuing such low-level crimes. In a statement, the Labor Department said that since 2001, it had proposed one case to the Justice Department involving a contract company which failed to purchase the required insurance, but the case resolved before any action was taken.

The law "does not provide for fines or penalties except through criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice," the Labor statement said. "That avenue is currently not available to us."

Yet even when Labor officials have the power to impose penalties on companies for administrative infractions, such as failing to file timely paperwork, they rarely act, the review found.

Companies are supposed to file a notice with the Labor Department within 10 days of an employee’s injury. But in nearly 7,000 cases, the companies filed those notices more than a year after they had knowledge of the injury, according to an analysis of Labor Dept. records.

Yet the department has only fined only five companies since 2001 for failing to report injuries. "The current system…provides little incentive for enforcement," the memo by Congressional investigators concluded.

In the U.S., at least the threat of punitive fines and possible criminal charges exists. For a corporation operating abroad, the Labor Dept. has no way to pursue scofflaws. And hundreds of companies contracted to work in Iraq are based overseas.

David Barnett, a Florida attorney who handles injured worker claims, has argued several cases in which foreign firms contracted with the U.S. government failed to purchase insurance. He said foreign companies face little incentive to cover workers since the Labor department does not pursue actions against them.

"If there are no repercussions to not having insurance coverage, why would you do it?" Barnett said. "It’s a huge problem."

Falsehoods

The Labor Department has not done much better overseeing insurance carriers.

Under the Defense Base Act, it is illegal to intentionally falsify claims information. Violators face five years in prison or a $10,000 fine. Yet the government has rarely enforced the provision, according to interviews and federal records.

Insurance experts and claims attorneys said the lack of enforcement opens the door to abuse by insurance carriers. Civilian contractors have been forced to spend months, and sometimes years trying to get benefits restored after having payments cut on false grounds submitted by carriers, according to court records, injured workers and their attorneys.

Terry Marshall suffered back and hip injuries in May 2005 when he fell from the top of his truck while working for defense contractor KBR at a U.S. base in Iraq.

His hip shattered, he went through years of surgeries and rehabilitation. KBR’s workers compensation carrier, American International Group, faithfully paid Marshall’s medical bills and disability payments.

Then, this March, Marshall was surprised when AIG cut off his disability payments without warning. AIG told the Labor Dept. that Marshall had failed to attend a doctor’s appointment arranged by the firm.

The problem? AIG itself had cancelled the appointment, according to an email Marshall received from his case manager.

Marshall appealed his case to the Labor Dept., which instructed AIG to reinstate his benefits. "There would appear to be no basis for the employer/carrier to have terminated" benefits, a Labor claims examiner wrote to AIG in April.

AIG simply ignored the notice, which carries no legal weight. Marshall is now in the final stages of negotiating a settlement agreement with the carrier.

AIG "can punch in anything it wants, and the Department of Labor accepts it," said Marshall, 53, of Springville, UT. "I have to go in and prove that I’m innocent."

AIG declined to respond to questions about individual cases. But the company denied making false statements. It noted that it had never been sanctioned by the Labor Department for such a violation.

"We do not make false statements to the federal government on (Defense Base Act) claims," the company said in response to written questions. "Our claims personnel are held to the highest standard in handling claims ethically, professionally and fairly."

If true, Fred Busse, 44, has a hard time understanding AIG’s handling of his claim. Earlier this year, AIG refused to provide Busse medical and disability payments for a neck injury he suffered while riding in a truck in Iraq in 2007.

Busse "never reported this alleged injury to employer," an AIG attorney told a Labor Department judge to explain why the company was denying the claim.

Yet Busse’s employer, KBR, had sent Busse to a doctor in Kuwait to examine his neck, according to court records. And AIG had sent an investigator to Busse’s house, where Busse recounted his neck injury, records show.

Perhaps most puzzling of all, a Labor department judge explicitly noted Busse’s neck injury: Busse "injured his neck in an automobile accident," the judge wrote in a decision involving a separate injury that Busse had suffered.

More than two years after hurting his neck–diagnosed by KBR’s doctors, noted by AIG’s investigators and litigated by a federal judge– Busse finally won his case earlier this month. A Labor department judge ruled that AIG must pay for Busse’s neck treatment and disability wages, records show. "No medical evidence disputes claimant suffered a neck injury during his employment in Iraq for employer," Judge Clement Kennington wrote in his decision.

"They’re doing this to everybody," Busse said. "They’re just trying to get rid of you is what they’re doing. Period. They’re trying to dismiss you."

Gillelan, the former attorney for the Labor Department, said that Labor officials have a duty to report instances of fraud–when committed either by claimants or insurance carriers.

Over the years, however, staff has been cut back and successive Democratic and Republican administrations have emphasized "compliance assistance" over enforcement.

"They no longer have the personnel to be proactive," Gillelan said. "They can’t even be reactive."

Hallmark, the Labor official, said that today’s system depends heavily on checks and balances between workers and insurance carriers. Claimants’ attorneys and unions battle in court with insurance carriers, employers and their attorneys.

"This is an insurance-driven program. It presumes that the parties have access to the mechanisms for resolving disputes," he said.

Hallmark acknowledged, however, that Iraq and Afghanistan lack the components which help protect worker rights. There are no unions for contract employees. Nor are there many attorneys who specialize in Defense Base Act cases.

"There are limits to what we can actually do in a foreign location that’s in the middle of a war," Hallmark said.

Richard Philemon learned about the Labor department’s limits the hard way. He was driving a fuel truck for KBR in northern Iraq in October 2006 when he was hit by a roadside bomb. He jumped out of the burning truck, his face, chest and arms on fire.

"I looked like a Roman candle," Philemon said. "I was surrounded by flames."

After returning to the U.S. for initial treatment for his burns, Philemon flew back to the Philippines, his home. He repeatedly asked to be treated at Filipino medical centers. AIG adjusters told him he had to return to the U.S., but never paid for his flights, court records show.

After several trips to the U.S., Philemon decided to start treatment in the Philippines. In September 2007, he began seeing a rehabilitation specialist and a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him as suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. He also hired an attorney to force AIG to pay for his care in the Philippines.

Three months later, AIG cut off his disability and medical benefits. The company told the government that Philemon had "apparently abandoned medical care," according to federal records–even though Philemon was seeing doctors regularly.

Philemon spent the next year living off money from relatives as he waited for his case to wind through the system. Finally, this February, a judge ordered AIG to pay Philemon’s disability, starting from the cut off date in December 2007.

"We put our lives in danger for our military. We supply them with water, food, ammunition, housing. And yet, we’re screwed," said Philemon, an Air Force veteran. "I almost give my life for my country and I get treated like dirt?

"Something’s not right with that picture," he said.

Honoring Veterans of the Disposable Army

Scott Klein — 2009-11-11T16:14:30-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

Today we honor the veterans who have served in the country's armed forces. Nobody seriously questions whether they deserve such recognition. The men and women who defended this country and fought its wars made immeasurable sacrifices.

I have spent much of the last year writing about another group of people who suffered losses on behalf of U.S. interests abroad: the civilian contractors injured or killed while doing their jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are not, of course, soldiers. They could quit their jobs and go home any time they wanted. Many were paid far higher wages than their military counterparts. They knew they were signing up to take a specific job in a dangerous part of the world.

And yet, neither are the contractors working in Afghanistan and Iraq ordinary laborers. Civilians compose half the manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have seen and experienced the full horror of war. More than a thousand have been killed. Thousands more have suffered debilitating physical and mental injuries. And yet, the Pentagon does not even know how many have died, nor how many are actually working (PDF).

I have come to see the civilian contractors as a new kind of class in the demography of war. They are quasi-veterans: civilians who have experienced war much as soldiers do. There are tens of thousands of them. And while it's hard to argue that they deserve ticker tape parades and Medals of Honor, it's also hard to believe that they should be sent home with little more than a pay stub and a patchy health care system that doesn't even address basic medical needs.

I received a letter from a former KBR contractor which crystallized the strange position of those who work in a war zone. D.A. Corson, who worked at a variety of companies in Iraq until 2008, wrote the following, which I thought worth sharing:

Civilian contactors in combat zones will likely continue to be a staple of military engagements. They cook, clean, make ice, purify water, install housing, do laundry, install and maintain generators for lighting, air conditioning, truck the beans, bullets and bandages, install latrines, wastewater treatment facilities, and as many of the other logistical functions as the military can give them to do so the troops can do their job, i.e., go out and, God willing, win the peace.

They too left their families, homes, and friends. They too labor 84-hour weeks, endure shellings, mortars, and RPG attacks, IEDS, and heat strokes. They too live on three meals a day of four different flavors of noodles or MREs when the convoys cannot get through and rations are running low. Some of them see to it that the bodies of your fallen sons, daughters, husbands, and wives are seen off from combat airfields with proper honors when no military personnel are available to do the honors themselves. They watch helplessly on Armed Forces media as our homes thousands of miles away are blown and washed away in hurricanes, floods and other disasters and wonder if their families are safe. Many die, are injured, captured and held as POWs; some have been beheaded. They too suffer high divorce rates and come home with their own cases of Combat Stress. Many serve for over a year and then came back 2 and 3 times for another year. Many are still there going on 5 and 6 years now. When they come home they have no Veteran's benefits, indeed, no benefits at all in many instances, save perhaps a very pricey COBRA.

Yes, all go for the money. They too are doing what they think necessary for their families to get a little piece of the American Dream, but they are not all a bunch of money-grubbing, carpetbagging, war profiteers. We are your neighbors, friends, relatives, and fellow Americans. So many are there because they have to be. One young lady had just had a baby. Her husband had cancer, and she had to leave her newborn infant and other children, as well as her terribly ill husband to pay the bills and keep a roof over their head. But more than that, each wanted to serve our troops. They wanted to do their part. So many are Viet Nam veterans. They do their jobs; they serve our troops, proudly. They do it for them. They do it for freedom; they do it for our country. The American contractors all still take off their hats and get tears in their eyes when hearing the national anthem. When they go home their benefits end. Many are having to fight to get their medical insurance benefits for the injuries received and many families are fighting to get their life insurance benefits for their fallen loved ones.

They knew going in that returning to bands playing, flags waving, and such were not part of their bargain. That’s not why they went. However, in your churches and other ceremonies, when you ask your veterans to stand, after you have given them their well-deserved honors, you might want to give a thought to then asking any civilian contractors who served the troops in combat zones to stand up beside the vets too. I’ll bet they’d be proud to do so, again. Maybe there won’t be many in your particular gathering, but they are there: one for every soldier according to the Congressional Budget Reports and one dying for each 3 soldiers killed.

And by the way, you’re welcome. Maligned, appreciated, even counted or not, I am sure most would do it all again. It was an honor.

D. A. Corson
Camp Anaconda, Balad, Iraq --June 2004 through October 2006 B.I.A., Basrah, Iraq --July 2006 through May 2007 Ali Al-Saleem Air Base, Kuwait -- September-October 2007

God Bless America !

Labor Dept., Congress Plan Improvements to System to Care for Injured War Contractors

Scott Klein — 2009-10-13T10:15:07-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

The Labor Department has launched a series of changes to improve the controversial federal system designed to provide medical care and disability benefits to civilian contractors injured in war zones, department officials say.

The agency has stepped up enforcement, set new goals to speed delivery of benefits and begun tracking the performance of the insurance carriers that sell the highly lucrative policies for war zone workers, a senior official said.

The department is "reaching out to the carriers who are on the front lines to get them to perform at a higher level," said the official, who declined to be named because he was discussing internal issues. The department will "start collecting data so we can show who's doing well and who's doing not so well."

A joint investigation we did with ABC News and the Los Angeles Times showed that civilian contractors' claims for medical care and disability payments were routinely denied by insurers. Another investigation by us showed that foreign workers often received no payments at all, though taxpayers had paid premiums to cover their injuries.

The Labor Department oversees the system, which requires defense contractors to purchase workers’ compensation insurance for employees in war zones. The insurance giant AIG dominates the market for such policies, which earn as much as 40 percent profit in some cases. Taxpayers have paid more than $1.6 billion for the policies, which are required by a law known as the Defense Base Act.

Labor officials plan to schedule informal meetings to settle disputes between insurers and injured contractors within 14 days of a request and convene the meeting about 45 days later. Currently, such conferences are set at the discretion of Labor officials. But it remains unclear whether speeding the process will quickly resolve disputes. The meetings hold no legal weight, and the insurers and the contractors are free to ignore recommendations made by Labor Department examiners.

The department will also begin collecting data on how quickly insurers pay out claims. Without that information, the department has been unable to measure their performance.

Labor and Defense Department officials also met late last month to discuss broader reforms to the system, the Labor official said. The discussions follow a Pentagon report in September that suggested the government provide its own insurance to cover contractors, at a potential annual savings of $250 million. The system has ballooned in size and cost as civilian contractors have flooded into Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We believe there's a need for reform," the official said. "DOD has indicated they believe so as well. Now it's a matter of getting together and figuring out how to build something.''

The Labor Department's efforts come as legislators consider new legislation to address flaws in the system.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., held a hearing on the system this summer and had planned to introduce fixes in a bill this year. But he now plans a larger effort to include the Defense Department suggestions, a major legislative undertaking that will probably not take place until next year, according to a Hill staffer.

"I read the report from the Department of Defense with great interest, and I have directed my staff to alter the bill, taking into account this new information." Cummings said. "The opportunity to keep our civilian contractors protected, while saving the government hundreds of millions of dollars, is one we cannot ignore."

Civilian Contractor Toll in Iraq and Afghanistan Ignored by Defense Dept.

Scott Klein — 2009-10-09T10:13:39-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

As the war in Afghanistan entered its ninth year, the Labor Department recently released new figures for the number of civilian contract workers who have died in war zones since 9/11. Although acknowledged as incomplete, the figures show that at least 1,688 civilians have died and more than 37,000 have reported injuries while working for U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than 5,200 soldiers have died in the two war zones, meaning that one civilian contractor has died for every three soldiers — a ratio that reflects the unprecedented degree to which the Pentagon has outsourced the work of war. Civilian contractors make up about half the total U.S. forces in the war zones and they have been deployed on the front lines far more than any previous U.S. conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are the most outsourced wars in U.S. history.

Despite the importance of civilian contractors to its mission, the Defense Department hasn’t been measuring their sacrifice. A little-noticed report from the Government Accountability Office last week noted that the Pentagon has yet to implement a Congressional requirement to track contractor fatalities.

Military officials brushed off inquiries from the GAO, telling the agency that they "continue to lack a system to reliably track killed or wounded contractor personnel." To get a handle on the issue, the GAO examined a sample of files from the Labor Department, which oversees a workers compensation program required by a federal law known as the Defense Base Act. The act requires contract firms to purchase insurance to cover civilians injured or killed while working abroad on federal contracts.

While the system is not designed to track war injuries, investigators determined that about 11 percent of reported contractor casualties stem from combat — about the same percentage of soldier casualties attributed to hostile action, according to an April 2007 report by the Veterans Affairs Department. For both groups, most injuries are due to vehicle collisions, muscle or back strains or common, everyday accidents.

The Department of Defense is not alone in its lack of attention to the issue. Neither the State Department nor USAID could tell with certainty how many contractors they employed, the GAO found. USAID, for instance, failed to report how many civilians it had put to work under a $91 million contract to develop hydroelectric plants and small and medium businesses in Afghanistan. A State Department contracting officer insisted that there was no need to track local Iraqi hires, despite specific statutory language to the contrary, the report found. "Officials acknowledged that they are likely undercounting the actual number of contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan," the GAO concluded. State, USAID and DOD officials all told the GAO that they were working to fix the problem.

What it all means is that nine years after the launch of the most contractor-intensive war in U.S. history, nobody is sure how many contractors there are, what they are doing, or how many have been killed or wounded.

Contractors in Iraq Are Hidden Casualties of War

Scott Klein — 2009-10-06T02:23:53-05:00

by T. Christian Miller

This story was published in the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 6, 2009.

Reporting from Central Point, Ore. – A nurse rocked him awake as pale dawn light crept into the room. "C'mon now, c'mon," the nurse murmured. "Time to get up."

Reggie Lane was once a hulking man of 260 pounds. Friends called him "Big Dad." Now, he weighed less than 200 pounds and his brain was severely damaged. He groaned angry, wordless cries.

The nurse moved fast. Two bursts of deodorant spray under each useless arm. Then he dressed Lane and used a mechanical arm to hoist him into a wheelchair.

He wheeled Big Dad down a hallway and parked the chair in a beige dining room, in front of a picture window. Outside stretched a green valley of pear trees filled with white blossoms.

Lane's head fell forward, his chin buried in his chest. His legs crossed and uncrossed involuntarily. His left index finger was rigid and pointed, as if frozen in permanent accusation.

In 2004, Lane was driving a fuel truck in Iraq for a defense contractor when insurgents attacked his convoy with rocket-propelled grenades. For most of the five years since, Lane, now 60, has spent his days in silence -- a reminder of the hidden costs of relying on civilian contract workers to support the U.S. war effort.

His wife, Linda, said visiting her husband was difficult. They were childhood friends and fiercely loyal to each other. On this spring morning, she caressed his hand and told him she loved him.

"He was a good man. He paid his bills. He took care of his family," she said, her breathing labored from a pulmonary disease. "He's a human being who fought for his country. He doesn't deserve to be thrown away."

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has depended on contract workers more than in any previous conflict -- to cook meals for troops, wash laundry, deliver supplies and protect diplomats, among other tasks. Tens of thousands of civilians have worked in the two battle zones, often facing the same dangers as U.S. troops and suffering the same kinds of injuries.

Contract workers from the U.S. have been mostly men, primarily middle-aged, many of them military veterans drawn by money, patriotism or both, according to interviews and public records. They are police officers, truck drivers, firefighters, mechanics and craftsmen, mostly from rural corners of America, especially the South.

Nearly 1,600 civilian workers -- both Americans and foreign nationals -- have died in the two war zones. Thousands more have been injured. (More than 5,200 U.S. service members have been killed and 35,000 wounded.)

Many of the civilians have come home as military veterans in all but name, sometimes with lifelong disabilities but without the support network available to returning troops.

There are no veterans' halls for civilian workers, no Gold Star Wives, no military hospitals. Politicians pay little attention to their problems, and the military has not publicized their contributions.

"These guys are like the Vietnam vets of this generation," said Lee Frederiksen, a psychologist who worked for Mission Critical Psychological Services, a Chicago-based firm that provides counseling for war zone workers. "The normal support that you would get if you were injured in the line of duty as a police officer or if you were injured in the military . . . just doesn't exist."

Herbert J. Lanese, former chief executive of DynCorp International, one of the largest employers of civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan, said: "These are people who have given their lives in the service of our country. They are the unappreciated patriots of our country at this point in time."

Lane was born in Ventura and moved to Grants Pass, Ore., when he turned 12. He met Linda there, and the two grew up together.

After high school, Reggie enlisted in the Army and went to Vietnam. He and Linda found each other after he returned. By then, each had been married and divorced, and each had a child.

As a pair, they were inseparable. Reggie was steady, strong. Linda was energetic and outgoing. They eventually found work as a truck-driving team, steering tractor-trailers across the country.

His CB radio handle was "Grizzly." Hers was "Wild Cat." He loved country music and Tom Clancy novels, G. Gordon Liddy's talk show and Honda motorcycles. She loved the open road, the speed of the truck.

"We went to see the big wide world driving a truck. What an adventure," Linda recalled.

But work was haphazard, and the pay was modest. Together, they made about $32,000 a year. They had a hard time keeping up with bills and twice filed for bankruptcy.

In the late 1990s, they sold their home in Oregon and moved to Montana, where land was cheaper.

In the fall of 2003, Linda heard that defense contractor KBR Inc. was hiring truck drivers to deliver fuel, food and supplies for the military in Iraq. The salary was $88,000 a year, more than they had ever earned.

"We wouldn't be on easy street," Linda said. "But we wouldn't be stressed."

By November, Reggie was on his way to Iraq. He arrived during a turbulent period, with the insurgency raging. Convoys regularly came under attack. The trucks were not armored.

"He didn't go over there to fight a war. He went over there because [KBR] said, 'You'll have armed guards,' " Linda said. "They promised big money. 'You'll be protected, no problem.' "

On April 9, 2004, Reggie Lane and a friend, Jason Hurd, rolled out of a base south of Baghdad to deliver fuel to Balad, north of the city. The convoy was outside Baghdad when gunfire rang out. Hurd saw Reggie's truck careen to the side of the road.

Hurd pulled over. A rocket-propelled grenade had shattered the windshield. Reggie was lying face-up on the shoulder of the road. His right arm was gone below the elbow. His face was covered in shrapnel wounds. He was drenched in blood.

The rest of the convoy moved ahead, apparently oblivious. Hurd fumbled with Reggie's arm, trying to apply a tourniquet. Then a group of military vehicles pulled over to help.

Soldiers helped stabilize Lane, who shuddered awake and asked for water. An Army helicopter evacuated him to a U.S. base, where he was put on an emergency flight to Germany.

Linda got the news from a military doctor. A few days later, Reggie called. He told her not to worry.

"I still got one arm left to hug you with," he said.

It was the last conversation she would have with her husband.

Two days later, another military doctor in Germany called Linda, asking permission to perform an emergency tracheotomy on Reggie. A blood clot had dislodged, blocking the flow of blood to his brain.

"My head is spinning. I'm trying to digest what they're telling me," Linda said. "I'm deciding this long-distance by phone, and it's someone I love."

Ten days after the attack, Reggie Lane was on a flight back to the U.S., headed to a Houston hospital. KBR paid to have Linda meet her husband in Texas.

She was unprepared for the sight. A raw, red stump was all that remained of his right arm. There was a hole in his throat. She could see his intestines, which were left exposed to aid in cleaning out shrapnel. His body was swollen and purple. He was unresponsive, his pupils mere pinpoints.

Over the next nine months, Linda lived out of a hotel in downtown Houston. She became her husband's advocate, navigating a complex medical world with little guidance.

"It was a lot of one foot in front of the other. I was pretty devastated," she said.

Slowly, Lane's condition improved. Toward the end of his hospital stay, he could respond to questions. He would say: "Love Linda." He was trying to stand up with help.

"By the time he left, he was interacting, communicating," said Dr. Sunil Kothari, a neurosurgeon who coordinated Reggie's care at the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR) Memorial Hermann in Houston, one of the country's top rehabilitation hospitals for brain injury. "Near the end, he was beginning to answer questions, starting to vocalize."

In January 2005, doctors cleared Reggie for release. He was going home.

Grants Pass had a handful of nursing homes. They provided physical and speech therapy, but Linda was dissatisfied with the care. She confronted workers at one home, leading to Reggie's discharge. He returned to a hospital.

Linda was dealing with her own health problems. Her weight ballooned. She was admitted to the hospital repeatedly with breathing difficulties.

As Linda searched for a home for her husband, she got into a dispute with American International Group Inc., the insurance carrier for KBR. Linda wanted her husband close to home. She said AIG insisted that he go to a facility in Portland, where care was less expensive than in the hospital.

Troops injured in Iraq are guaranteed care at Veterans Affairs facilities. In contrast, contract workers depend on workers' compensation insurance paid for by the federal government under the Defense Base Act. They often must fight with insurers to get medical bills paid.

Linda hired a lawyer, and AIG relented, allowing Reggie to be placed in an adult foster care home near Grants Pass.

The lawyer, Roger Hawkins of Los Angeles, said it was the least Reggie deserved.

"You look in his eyes and you see that somewhere, he realizes what is going on," Hawkins said. "He's sitting there with his arm missing and knowing that he's never going to get better."

AIG and KBR declined to comment on the case.

Reggie's mental state had gradually declined since he'd left Houston. Before, he spoke. Now he descended into long silences broken only by grunts.

Told of Lane's condition, Kothari, who treated him in Houston, expressed concern.

"Decline is not typical," Kothari said. "If someone goes to a nursing facility, if they happen not to get stimuli, it means the brain could not heal as well as it would otherwise."

Jim Gregg, operator of the foster care home where Lane was placed, said the facility was not equipped for advanced physical or speech therapy. In their home on a 4-acre farm, Gregg and his wife provided basic medical care and monitoring to half a dozen elderly patients.

"It's a boring life. He just sits here," Gregg said. "It's not a stimulating environment."

Gregg closed his facility earlier this year, and Lane was moved to another foster home. The total cost of Lane's care for the rest of his life could be as much as $8.9 million, according to an AIG estimate. The bill will be paid by the federal government, which reimburses insurers for combat-related claims from war zone workers.

Linda Lane died July 10. She had been hospitalized after suffering respiratory distress, family members said.

Reggie let out a wail when relatives told him the news. "I had never heard anything like that before," said Bev Glasgow, who runs Lane's current foster home.

Glasgow arranged for a van to take Reggie to a memorial service for his wife. It was held in a state park alongside the Rogue River. Under the shade of scrub oak and aspen, he watched as Linda's family and friends sang "Amazing Grace" and looked at old photos of the couple.

Diane Firestone, Reggie's sister, visited him shortly after Linda's death. She said the family accepted that Reggie's condition was unlikely to change. But, she said, they did not believe his sacrifices had been adequately recognized, by his company or the country.

She knelt beside her brother and asked him about the attack on his convoy.

"Hey, Reg," she said. "Do you know it's been five years? It doesn't seem that long to me. Does it seem that long to you?"

Reggie blinked twice, hard -- his signal for yes.

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Times staff photographer Francine Orr contributed to this report. View an audio slideshow of Reggie and Linda Lane.

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of injured war zone contractors.