rape camps, sex slavery, the u.s. military's dirty secret

US: DynCorp Disgrace

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For more than 50 years DynCorp, based in Reston, Va., has been a worldwide force providing maintenance support to the U.S. military through contract field teams (CFTs). As one of the federal government’s top 25 contractors, DynCorp has received nearly $1 billion since 1995 for these services and has deployed 181 personnel to Bosnia during the last six years. Although DynCorp long has been respected for such work, according to Johnston and internal DynCorp communications it appears that extracurricular sexcapades on the part of its employees were tolerated by some as part of its business in Bosnia.

But DynCorp was nervous. For instance, an internal e-mail from DynCorp employee Darrin Mills, who apparently was sent to Bosnia to look into reported problems, said, “I met with Col. Braun [a base supervisor] yesterday. He is very concerned about the CID investigation; however, he views it mostly as a DynCorp problem. What he wanted to talk about most was how I am going to fix the maintenance problems here and how the investigation is going to impact our ability to fix his airplanes.” The Mills e-mail continued: “The first thing he told me is that ‘they are tired of having smoke blown up their ass.”

An e-mail from Dyncorp’s Bosnia site supervisor, John Hirtz (later fired for alleged sexual indiscretions), explains DynCorp’s position in Bosnia. “The bottom line is that DynCorp has taken what used to be a real positive program that has very high visibility with every Army unit in the world and turned it into a bag of worms. Poor quality was the major issue.”

Johnston was on the ground and saw firsthand what the military was complaining about. “My main problem,” he explains, “was [sexual misbehavior] with the kids, but I wasn’t too happy with them ripping off the government, either. DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do. There was this one guy who would hide parts so we would have to wait for parts and, when the military would question why it was taking so long, he’d pull out the part and say ‘Hey, you need to install this.’

“They’d have us replace windows in helicopters that weren’t bad just to get paid. They had one kid, James Harlin, over there who was right out of high school and he didn’t even know the names and purposes of the basic tools. Soldiers that are paid $18,000 a year know more than this kid, but this is the way they [DynCorp] grease their pockets.

“What they say in Bosnia is that DynCorp just needs a warm body – that’s the DynCorp slogan. Even if you don’t do an eight-hour day, they’ll sign you in for it because that’s how they bill the government. It’s a total fraud.”

Remember, Johnston was fired by this company. He laughs bitterly recalling the work habits of a DynCorp employee in Bosnia who “weighed 400 pounds and would stick cheeseburgers in his pockets and eat them while he worked.

The problem was he would literally fall asleep every five minutes. One time he fell asleep with a torch in his hand and burned a hole through the plastic on an aircraft.” This same man, according to Johnston, “owned a girl who couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. It’s a sick sight anyway to see any grown man [having sex] with a child, but to see some 45-year-old man who weighs 400 pounds with a little girl, it just makes you sick.” It is precisely these allegations that Johnston believes got him fired.

Johnston reports that he had been in Bosnia only a few days when he became aware of misbehavior in which many of his DynCorp colleagues were involved. He tells INSIGHT, “I noticed there were problems as soon as I got there, and I tried to be covert because I knew it was a rougher crowd than I’d ever dealt with. It’s not like I don’t drink or anything, but DynCorp employees would come to work drunk. A DynCorp van would pick us up every morning and you could smell the alcohol on them. There were big-time drinking issues. I always told these guys what I thought of what they were doing, and I guess they just thought I was a self-righteous fool or something, but I didn’t care what they thought.”

via CorpWatch : US: DynCorp Disgrace.

‘US military condones culture of rape’

According to several women who have served in the US armed forces, the US military has been accused of showing a high degree of tolerance for sexual violence and condoning a culture of rape.

Eight current and former female US soldiers filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington on Tuesday, charging that they were raped or sexually harassed while serving in the military.

According to AP, the women have also claimed in the lawsuit that they faced retaliation when they complained about the abuse.

The lawsuit accuses US military commanders of showing a “high tolerance for sexual predators in their ranks” and failing to take action to tackle the problem.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former defense secretaries Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld and former Navy secretaries are among the defendants.

The US Defense Department admitted in January that the number of rape cases in the military is around 19,000 a year.

Eight women allege rape, retaliation in U.S. military

Eight current and former female members of the U.S. military allege in a lawsuit they were raped, assaulted or sexually harassed while in the military and were retaliated against when they complained.

The suit filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington is the latest to allege widespread sexual violence in the world’s most powerful military. It comes less than two months after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced new steps to curb thousands of sexual assaults a year.

The lawsuit accuses military leaders of having a “high tolerance for sexual predators in their ranks” and failing to take steps to deal with the problem despite avowals to do so.

The eight women include a Marine on active duty and seven veterans of the Marine Corps and Navy. Seven allege a fellow service member raped or tried to sexually assault them, and an eighth said she was harassed while deployed in Iraq.

Defendants include Panetta and former and current Defense and Navy secretaries and Marine Corps commandants.

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