Veterans for Common Sense

March 6, 2008 – Cayman Islands – Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq – including about 10,500 Americans – are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

But the use of the loophole results in a significantly greater loss of revenue to the government as a whole, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And the creation of shell companies in places such as the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes has long been attacked by members of Congress.

A Globe survey found that the practice is unusual enough that only one other major contractor in Iraq said it does something similar. If you’re not only providing your services for the agreed job but also working on different tasks as your client sees fit, the contract is likely to be within ir35 contracting.

“Failing to contribute to Social Security and Medicare thousands of times over isn’t shielding the taxpayers they claim to protect, it’s costing our citizens in the name of short-term corporate greed,” said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who has introduced legislation to close loopholes for companies registering overseas.

With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.

The no-bid contract it received in 2002 to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure and a multibillion-dollar contract to provide support services to troops have long drawn scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 until he joined the Republican ticket with President Bush in 2000.

The largest of the Cayman Islands shell companies – called Service Employers International Inc., which is now listed as having more than 20,000 workers in Iraq, according to KBR – was created two years before Cheney became Halliburton’s chief executive. But a second Cayman Islands company called Overseas Administrative Services, which now is listed as the employer of 1,020 mostly managerial workers in Iraq, was established two months after Cheney’s appointment.

Cheney’s office at the White House referred questions to his personal lawyer, who did not return phone calls.

Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for KBR, acknowledged via e-mail that the two Cayman Islands companies were set up “in order to allow us to reduce certain tax obligations of the company and its employees.”

Social Security and Medicare taxes amount to 15.3 percent of each employees’ salary, split evenly between the worker and the employer. While KBR’s use of the shell companies saves workers their half of the taxes, it deprives them of future retirement benefits.

In addition, the practice enables KBR to avoid paying unemployment taxes in Texas, where the company is registered, amounting to between $20 and $559 per American employee per year, depending on the company’s rate of turnover.

As a result, workers hired through the Cayman Island companies cannot receive unemployment assistance should they lose their jobs.

In interviews with more than a dozen KBR workers registered through the Cayman Islands companies, most said they did not realize that they had been employed by a foreign firm until they arrived in Iraq and were told by their foremen, or until they returned home and applied for unemployment benefits.

“They never explained it to us,” said Arthur Faust, 57, who got a job loading convoys in Iraq in 2004 after putting his resume on KBRcareers.com and going to orientation with KBR officials in Houston.

But there is one circumstance in which KBR does claim the workers as its own: when it comes to receiving the legal immunity extended to employers working in Iraq.

In one previously unreported case, a group of Service Employers International workers accused KBR of knowingly exposing them to cancer-causing chemicals at an Iraqi water treatment plant. Under the Defense Base Act of 1941, a federal workers compensation law, employers working with the military have immunity in most cases from such employee lawsuits.

So when KBR lawyers argued that the workers were KBR employees, lawyers for the men objected; the case remains in arbitration.

“When it benefits them, KBR takes the position that these men really are employees,” said Michael Doyle, the lawyer for nine American men who were allegedly exposed to the dangerous chemicals. “You don’t get to take both positions.”

Founded by two brothers in Texas in 1919, the construction firm of Brown & Root quickly became associated with some of the largest public-works projects of the early 20th century, from oil platforms to warships to dams that provided electricity to rural areas.You can visit http://elicon.dk to appoint best electrician.

Its political clout, particularly with fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, was legendary, and it became a major overseas contractor, building roads and ports during the Vietnam war.

Halliburton, a Houston-based oil conglomerate, acquired Brown & Root in 1962. And after the Vietnam cease-fire agreement in 1973, it all but stopped doing overseas military work for two decades.

But in 1991, during the Gulf War, Halliburton decided to try to revive its military business. The next year, Brown & Root won a $3.9 million contract from the Defense Department under Secretary Dick Cheney to develop contingency plans to support, feed, house, and maintain the US military in 13 hot spots around the world.

That small contract soon grew into a massive logistical-support contract under which the company did everything from building military camps to cooking meals and providing transportation for troops. Under the contract, the military agreed to reimburse Brown & Root for all expenses, and to pay a profit of between 1 and 9 percent, depending on performance.

In Somalia, starting in December 1992, Brown & Root employees helped US soldiers and UN workers dig wells and collect garbage, among many other tasks. The company quickly became the largest civilian employer in the country, with about 2,500 people on its payroll. Its headquarters in Texas had a “war room,” where executives would get daily updates about events in Mogadishu.

Later the company would play similar roles supporting US troops in Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan.

As its military work increased, Brown & Root sent more American workers overseas. Americans working and living abroad receive significant breaks on their income tax, but still must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes if they work for an American company. The reasoning is that such workers are likely to return to the United States and collect benefits, so they and their employers ought to help pay for them.

But the taxes drive up costs. A former Halliburton executive who was in a senior position at the company in the early 1990s said construction companies that avoid taxes by setting up foreign subsidiaries have obvious advantages in bidding for military contracts.

Payroll taxes can be a significant cost, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “If you are bidding against [rival construction firms] Fluor and Bechtel, it might give you a competitive advantage.”

Service Employers International was set up in 1993, as Brown & Root was ramping up its roster of overseas workers. Two years later, the company set up Overseas Administrative Services, which serves more senior workers and provides a pension plan.

The parent company became Kellogg Brown & Root in 1998, when it joined with the oil-pipe manufacturer, M. W. Kellogg.

Around that time, KBR lost its exclusive contract to provide logistical support to the US military. But in 2001 it outbid DynCorp to win it back, by agreeing to a maximum profit of 3 percent of costs.

Then, in 2002, the firm received a secret contract to draw up plans to restore Iraq’s oil production after the US-led invasion of Iraq. The Defense Department has said the firm was chosen mainly for its assets and expertise, not its ability to control costs.

Nonetheless, KBR’s top competitors in Iraq do not appear to have gone to the same lengths to avoid taxes. Other top Iraq war contractors – including Bechtel, Parsons, Washington Group International, L-3 Communications, Perini, and Fluor – told the Globe that they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their American workers.

“It has been Fluor Corporation’s policy to compensate our employees who are US citizens the same as if they worked in the geographic United States,” said Keith Stephens, Fluor’s director of global media relations. “With the exception of hardship and danger pay additives for work performed in Iraq, they receive the same benefits as their US-based colleagues, and Fluor pays or remits all required US taxes and payroll burdens, including FICA payments and unemployment insurance.”

Only one other top contractor, the construction and logistics firm IAP Worldwide Services Inc., said it employs a “limited number” of Americans through an offshore subsidiary.

Officials at DynCorp, the company that KBR outbid for the logistics contract, did not return numerous calls.

KBR is now widely believed to be the largest private employer of foreigners in Iraq, and it hires twice as many workers through its Cayman Island subsidiaries as it does by direct hires. Service Employers International alone employs more than 20,000 truck drivers, electricians, accountants, and engineers, roughly half of whom are American, according to Browne, the KBR spokeswoman.

KBR declined to release salary information. But workers interviewed by the Globe who served in a range of jobs said they earned between $48,000 and $85,000 per year. If KBR’s American workers averaged even as much as $63,000 per year, they and KBR would have owed more than $100 million per year in Social Security and Medicare taxes, split evenly between them. Over the course of the five-year war, their tax bill would have been more than $500 million.

In 2004, auditors with the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency questioned KBR about the two Cayman Island companies but ultimately made no complaint. The auditors told the Globe in an email exchange facilitated by Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka that any tax savings resulting from the offshore subsidiaries “are passed on” to the US military.

Browne, the KBR spokeswoman, said the loss to Social Security could eventually be offset by the fact that the workers will receive less money when they retire, since benefits are generally based on how much workers and their companies have paid into the system.

Medicare, however, does not reduce benefits for workers who don’t contribute, and Browne acknowledged that KBR has not calculated the impact of its tax practices on the government as a whole.

She said KBR does not save money from the practice, since its contracts allow for its labor expenses to be reimbursed by the US military. But the practice gives KBR a competitive advantage over other contractors who pay their share of employment taxes.

And critics of tax loopholes note that the use of offshore shell companies to avoid payroll taxes places a greater burden on other taxpayers.

“The argument that by not paying taxes they are saving the government money is just absurd,” said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington advocacy group.

To the people listed as its workers, Service Employers International Inc. – known to them as SEII – remains something of a mystery.

“Does anybody know what or where in the Grand Cayman Islands SEII is located?” a recently returned worker wrote in a complaint about the company on JobVent.com, an employment website. He speculated that the office in the Cayman Islands must be “the size of a jail cell . . . with only a desk and chair.”

In fact, the address on file at the Registry of Companies in the Cayman Islands leads to a nondescript building in the Grand Cayman business district that houses Trident Trust, one of the Caymans’ largest offshore registered agents. Trident Trust collects $1,000 a year to forward mail and serve as KBR’s representative on the island.

The real managers of Service Employers International work out of KBR’s office in Dubai. KBR and Halliburton, which also moved to Dubai, severed ties last year.

Both KBR and the US military appear to regard Service Employers International and KBR interchangeably, except for tax purposes. According to the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, KBR bills the Service Employers workers as “direct labor costs,” and charges almost the same amount for them as for direct hires.

The contract that workers sign in Houston before traveling to Iraq commits workers to abide by KBR’s code of ethics and dispute-resolution mechanisms but states that the agreement is with Service Employers International.

Some workers said they were told that Service Employers International was just KBR’s payroll company. Others mistook the name as a reference to the well-known, large union, Service Employees International.

Henry Bunting, a Houston man who served as a procurement officer for a KBR project in Iraq in 2003, said he first found out that he was working for a foreign subsidiary when he looked closely at his paycheck.

“Their whole mindset was deceit,” Bunting said. He said that he wrote to KBR several times asking for a W-2 form so he could file his taxes, but that KBR never responded.

David Boiles, a truck driver in Iraq from 2004 to 2006, said that he realized he was working for Service Employers International when he arrived in Iraq and his foreman told him he was not a KBR employee, despite the fact that his military-issued identification card said “KBR.”

“At first, I didn’t believe him,” Boiles said.

Danny Langford, a Texas pipe-fitter who was sent to work in a water treatment plant in southern Iraq in July 2003, said he, too, initially believed that he was an employee of KBR.

But when he allegedly got ill from chemicals at the plant and was terminated that fall, he said, his application for unemployment compensation was rejected because he worked for a foreign company.

“Now, I don’t know who I was working for,” he said in a telephone interview.

For decades Congress has sought to crack down on corporations that use offshore subsidiaries to lower their taxes, but most of the debates have focused on schemes that reduce corporate income taxes, not payroll taxes. Last year a Senate subcommittee estimated that US corporations avoid paying $30 and $60 billion annually in income taxes by using offshore tax havens.

Senators Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat; Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat; and Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, are trying to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which would give the US Treasury Department the authority to take special measures against foreign jurisdictions that impede US tax enforcement.

American companies that evade payroll taxes face fines or other criminal penalties. The use of foreign subsidiaries to avoid payroll taxes, while allowed by the Defense Department, may still be subject to challenge by the Internal Revenue Service, according to Eric Toder, a former director of the office of research for the IRS.

Toder said the IRS could try to take action against a firm if the sole purpose of setting up an offshore subsidiary was to reduce tax liability. The practice could become a more costly problem in the future, Toder said, as an increasing number of American companies register subsidiaries overseas and bring American employees to work abroad.

“It obviously looks unseemly where you have a situation where, if you did it in a straightforward way, they would pay payroll taxes,” Toder said. “If this becomes the norm, and other companies do that as well, it could further erode the tax base.”

Peter Singer, a specialist in the outsourcing of military functions at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said the practice will probably attract more scrutiny in the future, as the military expands its outsourcing and as workplaces become increasingly global.

“It is fascinating and troubling at the same time,” Singer said. “If you are an executive in a company, you are thinking: ‘Wow. Cash savings and a potential loophole from certain domestic laws, lawsuits, and taxes. It’s win-win.’ But if you are a US taxpayer, it is not a positive synergy.”

March 6, 2008 – Democrats in the House of Representatives – teetering on the verge of compliance with the spy power demands of the Bush administration – have devised a plan that would give the president everything he has demanded, while keeping the majority of Democrats’ fingerprints off the most controversial elements of the proposed legislation.

    The bill at hand is an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law intended to prevent misuse of surveillance powers by presidents in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The legislation passed the Senate with the majority of Democrats voting against it. The bill evoked heated disagreement between conservative and progressive Democrats because it would broaden presidential spy powers and would grant retroactive legal immunity for a broad range of companies that may have broken the law by participating in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance programs.

    Civil liberties groups and progressive members of Congress oppose immunity because it would cut off around 40 lawsuits against the telecoms – court cases that have been the only significant source of information about the administration’s surveillance activity. However, House Democratic leaders face mounting pressure to grant telecoms immunity, from the Bush administration and from members of the Blue Dog coalition – a group of conservative Democrats who often cross the aisle to vote with Republicans on legislation framed by the Bush administration as pertaining to national security.

    “A capitulation on this point [legal immunity] would destroy a small flickering flame of hope by many citizens that Congress was not entirely in the pocket of lobbyists and could on this one occasion stand firm on a point of legal principle. If the companies and the White House were acting lawfully as they insist, there is nothing to fear from judicial review. If not, it is important to establish that this was an unlawful program,” constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley wrote on his web site.

    In what appears to be a calculated political maneuver, a plan has been proposed that would break the bill into two parts, allowing Democrats who are opposed to the immunity provision to vote against it without actually killing the bill.

    The plan, floated on February 29 by an unnamed “senior Democratic aide,” would separate the part of the bill that expands spy powers from the section that grants retroactive legal immunity for companies involved in surveillance. Progressive Democrats who have been working to remove the immunity provision could vote against it without actually killing the bill. Or, as the unnamed aide said, the plan would “allow Democrats to register their objections to the immunity provision,” according to The Los Angeles Times report.

    If the bill is split into two pieces, conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House could join with Republicans to pass the immunity provision, handing the Bush administration a victory while providing political cover for progressive Democrats and the Democratic leadership. Bush has warned repeatedly that he will veto any FISA update that does not include retroactive immunity for telecoms.

    In a January letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, 21 Blue Dog Coalition members made it known they supported granting immunity to the telecoms, and urged Pelosi to move quickly to pass the Senate version of the bill. (The 21 members who signed the letter are listed below.)

    Members of the Blue Dog Coalition were integral in the passage of the highly controversial Protect America Act (PAA), a Republican-backed bill that greatly expanded spy powers in August 2007. The PAA was allowed to expire in February in the face of stark warnings from the Bush administration.

    Spokespersons for Speaker Pelosi and for the Blue Dog Coalition failed to return numerous requests for comment on the situation.

    ACLU lobbyist Michelle Richardson told Truthout she is concerned that House Democrats may try the same tactic they used to pass the PAA. “One possibility is that by splitting the bill in half and dangling the immunity provision in front of Republicans, Democrats could get a better spy bill passed. The other possibility is that they want a repeat of August 2007, where they put up two bad bills, and let the Blue Dogs off the leash so they could vote how they wanted, while a majority of Democrats could cry victim and claim they voted against immunity,” Richardson said.

    The ACLU released a national poll conducted by The Mellman Group that showed only 31 percent support, among likely 2008 voters, for granting telecoms retroactive immunity.

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Wednesday that the House would not vote on the bill this week.

——————————————————————————–

    Blue Dog Members Pushing for Telecom Immunity

    Congressman Joe Baca (D-California) http://www.house.gov/baca/

    Congressman John Barrow (D-Georgia) http://barrow.house.gov/

    Congresswoman Melissa Bean (D-Illinois) http://www.house.gov/bean/

    Congressman Marion Berry (D-Arkansas) http://www.house.gov/berry/

    Congressman Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma) http://www.house.gov/boren/

    Congressman Leonard L. Boswell (D-Iowa) http://boswell.house.gov/

    Congressman Allen Boyd (D-Florida) http://www.house.gov/boyd/

    Congressman Christopher Carney (D-Pennsylvania) http://carney.house.gov/

    Congressman Jim Cooper (D-Tennessee) http://www.cooper.house.gov/

    Congressman Robert E. Cramer (D-Alabama) http://cramer.house.gov/HoR/AL05/

    Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-Tennessee) http://www.house.gov/lincolndavis/

    Congressman Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana) http://www.ellsworth.house.gov/

    Congressman Tim Holden (D-Pennsylvania) http://www.holden.house.gov/

    Congressman Jim Matheson, (D-Utah) http://www.house.gov/matheson/

    Congressman Charlie Melancon (D-Louisiana) http://www.melancon.house.gov/

    Congressman Dennis Moore (D-Kansas) http://www.moore.house.gov/

    Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-North Dakota) http://www.pomeroy.house.gov/

    Congressman Mike Ross (D-Arkansas) http://ross.house.gov/

    Congressman Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina) http://shuler.house.gov/

    Congressman Zack Space (D-Ohio) http://space.house.gov/

    Congressman John Tanner (D-Tennessee) http://www.house.gov/tanner/

    Blue Dog Coalition web site http://www.house.gov/ross/BlueDogs/

March 7, 2008 – The Pentagon is slated to release a suspected toxicant in Crystal City, Virginia this week, ostensibly to test air sensors.

The operation is just the latest example of the Defense Department´s long history of using service members and civilians as human test subjects, often without their consent or awareness.

Gas chambers in Maryland

Wray C. Forrest learned about the US military´s human-testing program the hard way. In 1973, the Army sent then 23-year-old Forrest to its Edgewood Arsenal chemical-research center in Maryland, promising patriotic service and a four-day work week.

Instead, he became one of roughly 6,720 soldiers used as Edgewood Arsenal test subjects between 1950-1975.

Forrest was given a new identity at Edgewood: Research Subject #6692. He says, “That was the number assigned to me … similar to the numbers assigned to the Jews in the concentration/death camps in Germany during WWII.”

The US military tested heart drugs on Forrest, which he says were administered by IV and various types of injections. Forrest was also exposed to “contaminated drinking water, food, and various ground contaminates that permeate Edgewood Arsenal. BZ [a chemical incapacitating agent], napalm, mustard agents, and any number of other contaminates in the ground and drinking water there, from previous testing done there by the military.”

A total of 254 different chemicals were researched on soldiers at Edgewood, and Forrest notes, “We were never informed as to exactly what we were being given. We also did not sign any informed consent prior to the testing. This was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention rules for the use of humans in chemical and drug experiments/research.”

The Edgewood Arsenal facility played a role in WWII human subject testing as well. Roughly 4,000 US soldiers were used as human guinea pigs in chemical research which often took place in gas chambers.

US Navy member Nat Schnurman, for example, was sent to an Edgewood gas chamber six times one week in 1942. As The Detroit Free Press reported: “On his last visit, a blend of mustard gas and lewisite was piped in. Schnurman was overcome with toxins, vomited into his mask and begged for release. The request was denied. His next memory is of coming to on a snowbank outside the chamber.”

A pattern of abuse and neglect

If the sagas of Forrest and Schnurman were isolated, they would represent a disgraceful yet closed chapter of US military history. Unfortunately, the Pentagon´s human-testing program has extended far beyond Edgewood Arsenal.

Human Experimentation , a 1994 report from the congressional General Accounting Office (GAO), lays out the Defense Department´s sordid history in detail.

Between 1949 and 1969, for example, the Army sprayed bacterial tracers or simulants on unsuspecting populations in hundreds of biological warfare tests. According to the GAO: “Some of the tests involved spraying large areas, such as the cities of St. Louis and San Francisco, and others involved spraying more focused areas, such as the New York City subway system and Washington National Airport.”

No coherent attempt was made to warn those affected or to offer follow-up medical care.

Between 1952-1975, the CIA tested LSD and other psychochemical agents on “an undetermined number of people without their knowledge or consent.”

No coherent attempt was made to offer follow-up information or care.

Over 235 atmospheric nuclear tests and experiments were conducted on roughly 210,000 personnel affiliated to the US Defense Department from 1945-1962. A further 199,000 “were exposed to radiation through work.”

No coherent attempt was made to warn those affected or to offer follow-up medical care.

One of the best known examples of US military human-testing is Project 112, whereby the Pentagon used biological/chemical agents on 5,842 service members in secret trials conducted over a ten-year period (1962-73).

Project 112, and the affiliated Project SHAD, tested everything from Sarin nerve agent to an E. coli simulant aboard Navy ships and in land trials. Tests were conducted in six states (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Utah) Canada and Britain and often without the consent or awareness of those exposed.

Only in 2003, after crucial documents slowly became declassified, did the veterans´ health complaints start to be acknowledged. By then, over 750 Project 112 veterans were already dead.

The Veterans´ Administration still had not notified more than 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of those used in Project 112/SHAD human testing by 2004. The Defense Department was blamed for foot-dragging in identifying the potentially affected service members and civilians.

The battle to receive care

Wray Forrest knows firsthand about fighting official neglect and denial over human-testing. When his health started to deteriorate, Forrest was forbidden to get medical support: “We could not tell what we were exposed to due to the classification of the project, nor could we seek medical help due to the alleged non-disclosure papers we signed.”

Forrest was discharged from the military in 1982 for health reasons (deemed “unsuitable for service”). He was still unable to talk to anyone about Edgewood Arsenal, so kept his “agreed silence, and took what the military dished out calling me, UNSUITABLE.”

In July 2006, the Veterans´ Administration (VA) released a document on health care eligibility listing Edgewood Arsenal survivors as a Category 6 disability rating, which meant that affected veterans would be eligible for clinical evaluation and “necessary treatment of conditions related to exposure without copays.” But when Forrest called the VA to seek help, he was told that the publication was an error and in fact Edgewood Arsenal veterans have no VA health care eligibility.

“How sweet, they have killed us, buried us, and now they want us to go away,” he concluded.

Forrest is not the only veteran subjected to human-testing who has fought to receive care. Even in well-documented and recent cases, compensation is elusive.

In December 2007, for example, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the widows of five veterans who died after being enrolled in fraudulent drug studies at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany, NY.

Stratton had been plagued by allegations of research violations from the early 1990s. Then in 1999, the facility hired Paul Kornak to be its Research Coordinator, despite the fact that Kornak had forged his credentials, falsified his college transcript and been arrested in Pennsylvania years earlier for related fraud. Apparently, background checks for health professionals were minimal at Stratton VA Medical Center.

From 1999-2003, Kornak falsified veterans´ medical records at Stratton, inappropriately enrolling them in studies for drug marketability. In 2001, for example, Stratton tested a powerful three-drug chemotherapy combination on Carl M. Steubing, a 78-year-old Battle of the Bulge veteran, despite his previous bout with cancer and poor kidney function.

Steubing died in early 2002. His widow still wonders if the fraudulent human-test studies at Stratton cost her husband his life.

In court, the five widows´ lawyer argued that Stratton “committed every kind of research ethics violation imaginable,” adding “when you use individuals, humans, as guinea pigs, you do them harm.”

The US government responded by saying there was no way to prove the veterans had experienced pain or died early as a result of the corrupt drug experiments.

Case closed.

Open-air testing

If veterans with solid proof of having been used as test subjects cannot receive compensation, the possibilities are miniscule for service members and civilians used in trials without their consent or awareness.

Open-air testing of chemical and biological (CB) agents is one such case.

After 6,000 sheep died following the apparent release of a nerve agent at an Army facility in Utah in 1969, open-air testing was officially said to have ended in the US.

But the Defense Department´s April 2007 report to Congress on “Chemical and Biological Defense” strongly suggests an imminent resumption.

According to Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, at least three passages of the Pentagon´s 2007 report indicate a planned continuance of open-air testing.

While one section of the document, for example, mentions the use of “live-CB-agent full system test chambers,” another passage (page 67) reads:

“More than thirty years have passed since outdoor live agent chemical tests were banned in the United States, and the last outdoor test with live chemical agent was performed, so much of the infrastructure for the field testing of chemical detectors no longer exists or is seriously outdated. The currently budgeted improvements in the T&E infrastructure will greatly enhance both the developmental and operational field testing of full systems, with better simulated representation of threats and characterization of system response.”

As Dr. Boyle notes, both “test chambers” and “field testing” are mentioned in the report.

In addition, the passage says that improvements in the T&E (testing and evaluation) infrastructure and “better simulated representation of threats” are going to be carried out using “full systems” rather than simulants.

Dr. Boyle says, “It is clear they will be engaging in ´Field Trials´ (not in test chambers) of ´full systems,´ which means ´live CB agents,´ not simulants.”

Another troublesome passage from the Defense Department´s April 2007 report (page 65) is:

“Current T&E shortfalls lie in the full systems and platform test chambers and supporting instrumentation and fixtures. These test fixtures must be able to introduce and adequately control live CB agent challenges and provide a range of environmental and challenge conditions to simulate evolving threats, while performing end-to-end systems operations of CBD equipment.”

Dr. Boyle points out that the passage says “full systems” rather than “simulants,” and it makes a distinction between “test fixtures” and “test chambers.” He adds that talking about “´a range of environmental and challenge conditions´ in a test chamber” is nonsensical. “A test chamber does not have a ´range of environmental and challenge conditions.´”

“What they are talking about here,” Dr. Boyle concludes, “is testing live CB (chemical and biological) agents in Field Tests – open-air testing, where there will be a ´range of environmental and challenge conditions´ to confront, test and verify.”

Gassing Crystal City

In May 2007, just one month after the Defense Department´s controversial report to Congress, the Pentagon quietly announced it would release “a dust simulating a biological attack in the Pentagon South Parking Lot.” The stated purpose was to study “the subsequent clean-up of roadways, people and equipment after the release.”

The announcement cryptically described the “dust” as containing “a harmless inert bacterium found in soil, water and air.”

Kirt P. Love, Director of the Desert Storm Battle Registry (DSBR), a Gulf War veterans´ group dealing with the exposures of the 1991 conflict, repeatedly phoned the Pentagon to clarify exactly what “dust” would be used in the imminent open-air test.

He soon found, however, that “the departments involved were not communicating with each other … only the people who handled the agent knew anything.”

Love described the situation as “disquieting” and said, “I thought this was very unfair to the Pentagon Police and other innocent bystanders who didn’t need to be kept in the dark about this. How could they conduct an open air test of a microbe and not tell people what it was up front?”

Eventually, Love´s phone calls paid off. A Pentagon representative told him the substance to be tested was Bacillus Subtilis, which intriguingly, was also used during the US military´s Project SHAD human testing in the 1960s-70s.

The Pentagon´s announcement was correct in saying that Bacillus Subtilis is found in soil. It failed to mention, however, that the bacterium has been linked to pulmonary disease and irreversible lung damage.

The Defense Department quietly carried out its Bacillus Subtilis release in early June 2007. A Pentagon spokesperson would not confirm if the roughly 50 test subjects and numerous bystanders had been informed about the possible health risks.

And the open air tests continue.

In the next few days, the Pentagon is slated to release perfluorocarbon tracers and sulfur hexafluoride in Crystal City, Virginia.

Dubbed “Urban Shield: Crystal City Urban Transport Study,” the operation will test the effectiveness of the city´s chemical sensors, and according to The Examiner newspaper, “the data will help the Pentagon and Arlington shape their lockdown policies for chemical and biological attacks or accidents.” Lockdown policies.

According to a Pentagon press release from late February 2008, the study “will involve releasing a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and inert tracer gas that poses no health or safety hazards to people or the environment.”

But it´s not quite that simple. Sulfur hexafluoride is a suspected respiratory toxicant ; as such, exposure in certain amounts may be harmful for those with asthma, emphysema and other respiratory issues. It also is a suspected neurotoxicant, with potential untold consequences for the nervous systems of those vulnerable.

That part is left out of the Pentagon´s press release.

Crystal City is one of the “urban villages” of Arlington County, Virginia. It features upscale offices and residential areas – in other words a lot of civilians. You would think that if the Pentagon is releasing suspected toxicants into such a compressed urban area there would be more warning about potential health risks.

Yet repeated phone calls to the Pentagon yesterday yielded no results. The Force Protection Agency seemed unaware of the upcoming test and the press office was of no help either. No one could – or would – answer basic questions such as how many people could be exposed in the open-air test, if any attempt had been made to brief citizens on potential health risks or if there would be any medical follow-up provided.

Perfectly legal

The Pentagon´s laissez faire approach to these open-air tests raises questions about the possibilities for further testing on the general US population.

There is a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code (the aggregation of US general and permanent laws). Specifically, Section 1520a lists the following cases in which the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans if informed consent has been obtained:

(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.

(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.

(3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.

In other words, there are many circumstances under which the Secretary of Defense can test chemical or biological agents on human beings, but at least informed consent has to be obtained in advance.

Or does it. Section 1515, another part of Chapter 32, is entitled “Suspension; Presidential authorization” and says:

After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

Essentially, if the President or Congress decides that we are at war then the Secretary of Defense does not need anybody´s consent to test chemical or biological agents on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual “war on terror.”

Ominously, in June 2007, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gained White House approval to update a 1981 presidential order on how US spy agencies operate. Potentially up for review in the highly secretive overhaul, referred to as Order 12333, is the topic of human experimentation.

A surge in US WMD spending

The Bush administration has quietly channeled tens of billions of dollars into chemical and biological weapons. Bush´s 2007 budget, for example, earmarked almost $2 billion for biodefense research and development via the National Institutes of Health alone.

Research aims are often dubious. In October 2005, for example, US scientists resurrected the 1918 Spanish flu, a virus which had killed almost 50 million people. And a virologist in St. Louis has been working on a more lethal form of mousepox (related to smallpox) just to try stopping the virus once it has been created.

Since the R&D is top secret and oversight limited, the public is rarely aware of escalating dangers. As of August 2007, for example, biological weapons laboratories across the country had reported 36 lost shipments and accidents for that year, almost double the number for all of 2004.

In addition to challenging international non-proliferation agreements and risking a global arms race, the Bush administration´s surge in chemical and biological weapons spending raises questions over what deadly weapons may have been tested on populations abroad. And what may be tested domestically, with or without the public´s consent.

For Wray Forrest, the battle for government accountability continues: “On September 29, 2006, Congress passed a bill that will inform veterans exactly what they were exposed to, within the next two or three years. I can just see it now: They visit my grave site and post it on my tomb stone, in order to inform me of what I was exposed to and just what exposure caused me to die.”

March 7, 2008 – As the war in Iraq slides into its sixth year a few days from now, a cottage industry has grown up to determine how much the conflict has actually cost.

Last week, Senate Democrats carried out a feckless debate over still another bill to bring the troops home. This time, they said the nation’s troubled economy left Bush no choice but to stop spending billions in Iraq. The proposal died quickly under the threat of another veto.

This week, two economists, from Harvard and Columbia, are publishing a book titled “The Three-Trillion Dollar War.” That is near the upper end of the estimates of the war’s cost. The Congressional Budget Office says that number is bloated.

At the low end of the scale, the Department of Defense says it has spent $396 billion as of November 2007. Last month, the Congressional Research Service noted that the Pentagon hadn’t counted more than $200 billion in approved but unspent funds, or money spent by other agencies.

How much has the Bush administration spent on the war? What will it cost in total if the next president begins bringing the troops home shortly after taking office next year? It all depends on what you count. The two authors blame the war, in part, for the rise in oil prices and add that to the cost. Some analysts add the lost dollars that might have flowed into the economy, had all of that money been spent in the United States. (In truth, much of the money spent for equipment is spent in the United States.)

Without larding on rank speculation, here are numbers that seem undebatable. Nonpartisan congressional analysts estimate that Iraq war’s direct cost will reach $1.2 trillion if the next president begins rapidly withdrawing troops, leaving only 30,000 in Iraq two years from now. Here’s what needs to be added:

Almost every dollar spent on the war is borrowed. The Congressional Budget office says, under the quick withdrawal scenario, interest payments through 2017 will total $590 billion.

“Resetting” the military — replacing worn and damaged equipment and rebuilding the force — is an unavoidable expense. Last year, the Pentagon asked for $46 billion in “reset” funds. Most analysts believe the costs will reach at least $100 billion more.

Finally comes the cost of veterans’ health care in the months and years ahead. So far at least 60,000 Iraq war veterans have been wounded or received mental health care. Each totally disabled veteran is eligible to receive $1.4 million in lifetime disability payments if he lives an additional 50 years. Estimates of the total cost range from $200 billion to $650 billion, a number put out by a group of physicians a few weeks ago. Let’s go with the low number.

With all of that, the Iraq war will cost at least $2.1 trillion — and probably much more.

Billion, trillion … zillion. At these levels, a fictitious number seems to hold almost as much meaning as a real one. So writers and analysts try to make sense of the sums by showing what all that money could buy. One blogger noted that “you could buy 480 million Ferrari 612s,” at $268,000 a copy. That was a year ago, when the war-cost estimates costs totaled only about $1.2 trillion.

The two authors, Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia and Linda Bilmes of Harvard, note that, for less than the cost of the war, the nation could balance the Social Security system for at least 75 years.

Here’s another way to spend $2.1 trillion over 10 years: Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. Provide preschool for every child in the United States. Give every schoolteacher in the nation a $20,000 raise. Double the research budgets for cancer, heart disease and stroke.

In the end, however, all of this number gaming is meaningless. To fight the war, Bush has not taken money intended for other purposes. He is spending money the nation doesn’t have. Almost every dollar spent on the war is another dollar added to the national debt.

Some in the Bush administration argue that war spending stimulates the economy, giving some balance to the equation. But if that were so, why did administration find it necessary to enact a $168 billion stimulus plan a few weeks ago — even as it spends $15 billion a month on the war?

As Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s former chief economic adviser, puts it: “Taking resources that could be used to build homes, manufacture appliances, or invent and develop new technologies and using them instead to make things that get blown up is not good for an economy.”

March 7, 2008 – Secretary of the Army Pete Geren will be asked today to convene a panel of officers to investigate “Army policies and practices which permit the deployment of medically unfit soldiers.”

Spec. Bryan Currie, 21, of Charleston, S.C., will ask Geren to convene a Court of Inquiry — a rarely used administrative fact-finding process — to investigate top generals at Fort Carson; Fort Drum, N.Y.; and Fort Hood, Texas.

A Court of Inquiry is composed of at least three high-ranking military officers and can subpoena civilians. Geren can refuse the request.

“It’s very important for the Army and very important for my clients. This is an investigation that is long overdue,” said Louis Font, a Boston attorney who represents Currie and Spec. Alex Lotero, 21, a Fort Carson soldier from Miami.

The request says the Court of Inquiry should “investigate the extent to which the (generals) have been derelict in failing to provide for the health and welfare of wounded soldiers.”

Font and Citizen Soldier, a veterans advocacy group, plan a news conference today in Watertown, N.Y. Copies of the request will be provided to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, Font said.

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, commander of Fort Carson since September 2007, said: “We have caring and competent commanders who make these decisions every day. I’m confident in our Soldier Readiness Processing site here at Fort Carson.”

“Not full-mission capable”

The request for the Court of Inquiry says the panel should be assembled on behalf of Currie and four Fort Carson soldiers. They include:

• Lotero, a soldier diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder “who was subjected to ridicule and threats for seeking medical attention.”

He said his commanders took his medications away from him, saying it was for his own safety.

• Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, who had a severe foot injury and was deployed to Kuwait. A physician in Kuwait urged in an e-mail to the brigade surgeon that Nelson be sent back to the United States: “This soldier should NOT have even left CONUS (the U.S.). . . . In his current state, he is not full-mission capable, and in his current condition is a risk to further injury to himself, others and his unit.”

• An unnamed Fort Carson soldier who was deployed from Cedar Springs psychiatric hospital in Colorado Springs before he could finish a 28-day treatment program for alcoholism. An Army e-mail, dated Dec. 14, 2007, shows the soldier was taking psychiatric medications, pending a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, “but that information was not passed on” before he was discharged.

• Staff Sgt. Chad Barrett, 35, a Fort Carson soldier from Saltville, Va., who died in Iraq on Feb. 2. The Army is investigating the cause of his death.

“He allegedly was found not deployable by military medical personnel, but he was deployed anyway and reportedly committed suicide in Iraq in February 2008,” the request says.

Barrett’s wife, Shelby, who lives in Fountain, said Thursday that she does not believe her husband killed himself. She said she believes he died of a heart-related ailment, a condition that runs in his family.

Before he was deployed on Christmas Day 2007, Chad Barrett was undergoing a medical evaluation board for issues related to post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from two previous tours, his wife said. He had a permanent profile — meaning he did not meet retention standards — but he asked Fort Carson to halt the medical board process so he could deploy, she said.

After an evaluation by a psychiatrist, he was sent to Iraq on the condition that he work in a light-duty job. He worked as a radio operator, she said, but was taking Klonopin for anxiety, Pamelor for severe migraines, and Lunesta and Ambien to help him sleep.

Barrett said she believes her husband was under stress because five soldiers in his unit were killed days earlier and that he worried about her being alone as well as his extended family. All of that, she said, could have brought on heart failure.

“I don’t want someone using my husband’s name as a way of furthering their cause,” Barrett said. “If that is what’s necessary, I will personally do that myself.”

Soldier will turn himself in

Currie said he served with the 10th Mountain Division for 10 months in Afghanistan. He was driving a vehicle that was blown up by a roadside bomb and suffered combat-related injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

He returned with his unit to Fort Polk, La., but he said his commanders harassed him for being injured.

“I suffer from physical injuries incurred in combat. Military medical personnel found that I am not deployable. My commanders, however, disregarded the medical findings,” Currie says in the request. “Also, I sought medical attention for PTSD but was rebuffed.”

Currie left Fort Polk, La., and is considered to be AWOL from the Army. He plans to turn himself in today at Fort Drum, where the general who commands the 10th Mountain Division is stationed.

Lotero had received a 30 percent disability rating at Fort Carson for PTSD and traumatic brain injury. In June, three weeks before he was to leave the Army with a medical retirement, he deserted because he said harsh treatment from commanders made him feel as if he would harm himself or others.

He was apprehended in Florida on Feb. 1 and spent 29 days in jail. He’s now back at Fort Carson in a Warrior Transition Unit. He will undergo a new medical board process after his legal issues are settled.

March 6, 2008 – A certain reverence is required just to approach the book’s title: “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” by noted economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. I can see why they understated it.
The pulse of outrage beats behind the cold calculations in this concise volume, newly published by Norton. We’re not just “losing” this tragic, arrogantly unplanned war in the conventional sense of failing to subdue our enemies — we’re committing slow socioeconomic suicide with its open-ended pursuit, losing, as we plunge recklessly into debt over it, our options, our ability to choose. We’re losing the future.
“Because of the war, the national deficit is $2 trillion higher,” Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, told me. “At 5 percent interest, that’s $100 billion a year, year after year after year — forever!”
Such numbers are beyond the scope of the human imagination. To begin putting the war into financial perspective, Stiglitz suggested that we need a new unit of account: “Think of what things would cost in terms of hours, days, weeks of fighting.”
For instance, he said, “Three years ago we had a financial crisis with the Social Security system. For one-sixth of an Iraq war, you could have fixed Social Security for the next 50 to 75 years.”
Or how about health insurance for children? Remember when President Bush vetoed a bill to expand it? “We’re talking about days of fighting in Iraq,” Stiglitz said.
Or, hmm, what about the fact that suddenly one of every 150 children is being diagnosed with autism? The cost of serious research on this issue? “Four hours of an Iraq war!”
(Note: The American Friends Service Committee has a Web page devoted to the Iraq war as a unit of account, at afsc.org/cost/banners.htm.)
Before we begin a serious waltz with the current war numbers that Stiglitz and Bilmes force us to confront in their book, let’s ponder some far easier stats. Remember Gulf War I? We drove Saddam out of Kuwait, racking up huge kills in the process and sustaining a mere 148 of our own dead and another 467 injured. Combat operations lasted a month. What’s more, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait paid for most of it — it was practically a free war.
Except, as Stiglitz and Bilmes point out, in the aftermath of this quickie, yellow-ribbon-festooned war, vets started getting sick — started dying — of mysterious maladies that came to be called Gulf War Syndrome. Some 17 years later, “the United States still spends over $4.3 billion each year paying compensation, pension and disability benefits to more than 200,000 veterans of the Gulf War,” they write. “We have already spent over $50 billion in Gulf War I disability benefits.”
Almost two decades later, our tax dollars are still disappearing down the gaping maw of this monthlong war. Now, consider that the current Iraq war is five years old this month and counting (John McCain is ready to go at it for another hundred), and we’ve been in Afghanistan so far for six and a half years. The secret and terrible costs of these wars are growing, growing, growing; and they are exponentially greater than the still enormously expensive, and forgotten, Gulf War I.
Just the cost of care for physically and emotionally injured vets for these two protracted wars — in which our GIs are being forced to return for two, three and even more tours of duty — will run, the authors estimate, to more than $700 billion. And, they note, the care the government refuses to pay for doesn’t simply disappear as a cost. It falls on the families themselves. Someone pays it, so it’s part of the total.
Stiglitz and Bilmes do more than ferret out the operational, medical and other war costs hidden in various parts of the national budget. When they also factor in reasonable estimates of the macroeconomic costs (including interest on our staggering debt, the war-triggered increases in the price of oil), they are forced to add another $2 trillion to the cost of the war.
When they press on with their analysis and begin calculating the global costs as well — including such arcane and disconcerting calculations as the value of an Iraqi life figured, in terms of lost income generation, at 7 percent of an American life — suddenly there’s another $6 trillion. Add it up, if you dare, and you wind up in the neighborhood of $11 trillion. Helluva neighborhood.
But there’s more to the book than numbers. The authors are clearly aware that to a certain extent they are calculating the incalculable: the value of our lost national credibility (“We have become toxic”); the value of human life; the value of shattered hopes. For instance, “The majority of Iraqi children are not attending school,” they note at one point.
The authors move on, but this is where I’ll stop. If we truly face up to what we’ve done, we’ll never go to war again.

March 6, 2008 – There was a time, back in the 1950s, when they were in the Navy together, that Tony Flaherty and Wacko Hurley were the best of friends.

When they got back to South Boston, the place where they were born and where they remain, they drank together at the old Chiefs club, a sailors’ hangout on Summer Street.

When Flaherty got married at St. Augustine’s, Hurley stood at the altar with him, his best man. When Flaherty’s first child was born, Hurley was godfather.

But something happened. Wacko Hurley went back to civilian life. Tony Flaherty, a career Navy man, went off to war, this time in Vietnam, and he came back a changed man. One day, he was walking down a dirt road, as a gaggle of Vietnamese kids straggled by, fleeing a village destroyed by American fire.

“One of the kids, a boy, had lost a leg,” Tony Flaherty was saying, sitting in his apartment on East Broadway. “I had an epiphany that day.”

Flaherty, a military man his entire adult life, had become suddenly, implacably opposed to war. Not long after, they airlifted him out of Nam. He left the Navy with the rank of lieutenant and something called post traumatic stress disorder. “I went cuckoo,” he said.

He came back to Southie and tried to pick up the pieces. But he kept picking up a bottle. Eventually he got sober and with a clear head became even more opposed to war, more convinced of its folly, furious over the fact that the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful mostly stayed home while others fight the wars started by the rich and powerful. He worked for a program that got veterans housing and help for substance-abuse problems.

He joined a national organization called Veterans for Peace and, closer to home, a group called South Boston Residents for Peace. Five years ago, as US forces prepared to invade Iraq, Flaherty and his friends asked to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Southie. He found himself seeking the permission of his old pal Wacko Hurley, the longtime parade organizer.

Wacko told them to get lost.

“He called us commies,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty’s group again asked for permission to march in next week’s parade. Not long ago, Wacko Hurley walked into a community meeting and handed them a one-sentence letter saying their application had been denied. There was no reason given.

Hurley told me the reason was obvious.

“This year’s parade is dedicated to supporting the troops in Iraq,” Hurley said. Having Flaherty’s crew in the parade, Wacko maintains, would be provocative and disrespectful.

“That’s baloney,” Tony Flaherty said. “These guys can’t tolerate dissent. This isn’t about supporting the troops. This is about glorifying war. A lot of the guys who do the most talking, they didn’t see much action. They say they support the troops. We support the troops, too. We want to bring them home and help them when they come home.”

There is a blue bumper sticker on Tony Flaherty’s door. There can’t be many of them in Southie. It says, “Out of Iraq now.” His neighbor’s door is festooned with St. Patrick’s Day decorations.

Flaherty’s living room wall is lined with Navy memorabilia. There is a commendation for valor he received in Vietnam. “It meant something once,” he said, almost to himself, touching the frame.

Flaherty’s second-floor window offers a commanding view of the parade route. But he won’t be watching.

“Peace is a dirty word,” Tony Flaherty said, looking out the window. “This has split the country right down the middle. It’s brother against brother.”

Wacko Hurley said he still says hi to Flaherty when he sees him. “He was my friend,” Hurley said. “He still is.”

But it’s different now. Hurley calls him Anthony. And Flaherty calls him John.

Wacko and Tony are no more, their friendship a casualty of war, a war that stretches from Baghdad all the way down Broadway in South Boston.

March 6, 2008 – The lead plaintiff in a warrantless wiretapping lawsuit against AT&T is talking publicly about the case. Congress may grant AT&T and other firms retroactive legal immunity. That could end a flurry of lawsuits opposing the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping program.

Listen Now

March 6, 2008 – FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal reforms were enacted last year.

Mueller said a forthcoming report from the Justice Department’s inspector general will find that abuses recurred in the agency’s use of national security letters in 2006, echoing similar problems to those identified in earlier audits.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters — which are not subject to a court’s review — to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005. An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.

Mueller testified that a follow-up report from Fine’s office, due to be released this month, will “identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.” But Mueller emphasized that the time frame in the report “predates the reforms we now have in place” to avoid further abuses.

“We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people,” Mueller said.

At yesterday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) condemned the FBI’s “widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters,” and urged Mueller to be more attentive to the problem.

“Everybody wants to stop terrorists,” Leahy said. “But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected.”

A year ago, lawmakers of both parties called for limits on the FBI’s use of the security letters, which demand consumer information from banks, credit card companies and other institutions without a warrant as part of investigations into suspected terrorism and espionage. Congress has not followed through with legislation, however, and Mueller sought to assure lawmakers that internal changes will solve the problems. He said new FBI procedures will “minimize the chance of future lapses,” including the creation of a compliance office tasked with monitoring the use of security letters.

But Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that “it’s becoming more and more obvious that outside oversight is essential since the Bureau’s learning curve is sadly unimpressive.”

“Instituting judicial oversight would guarantee that someone would be looking over the shoulder of agents using a tool as invasive as an NSL,” German said. The ACLU and other civil liberties groups say the government’s use of security letters should be significantly narrowed or brought under court supervision.

Under questioning from Leahy about the Bush administration’s controversial use of harsh techniques for interrogating suspected terrorists, Mueller defended the FBI’s practice of using “noncoercive” techniques on criminal and terrorism suspects, saying they are “effective and sufficient and appropriate.”

Mueller said the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is “particularly effective.” He pointed to the FBI’s interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government’s actions and motivations.

“Our techniques and the experts that we have . . . believe that our techniques are effective, and are sufficient and appropriate to our mission,” Mueller said. “And those techniques are founded on a desire to develop a rapport and a relationship.”

President Bush is expected to veto a bill this week that would bar the CIA from using harsh techniques, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.

March 6, 2008 – Fort Carson, CO — A month-long investigation by Fort Carson’s inspector general has found that screening processes for soldiers returning to war are sound, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, commanding general at Fort Carson.

The investigation found that a lag in paperwork prompted Fort Carson in January to report that 79 soldiers who were deemed medical “no-gos” at a screening site were deployed, though the actual number was much lower.

The inspector general’s report focused on the base’s Soldier Readiness Processing (SRP) site and did not address decisions by commanders to send injured troops, called “borderline” by a brigade surgeon, into war zones.

“The process of the SRP works fine, and the commander is the one who makes the decision on whether the soldier deploys or not,” Graham said. “I’m convinced that the process is good.”

Graham said Wednesday that the actual number of soldiers who had medical “no-gos” at the SRP site is 36; six of those soldiers have returned to Fort Carson.

Of the 36 soldiers, 30 had “temporary” profiles, meaning they had injuries that were expected to heal within a few months or weeks. They were deployed and placed in light-duty jobs.

Five soldiers with permanent profiles — limitations that can mean a soldier doesn’t meet retention standards — also were sent overseas. Four of those soldiers had hearing problems, were cleared by doctors and deployed, and a soldier with a behavioral-health issue who was cleared by a psychiatrist also was sent.

A sixth soldier, who had gone through a medical evaluation board, should have been reclassified from a mechanic to an administrative specialist. That didn’t happen, and the soldier went to Iraq with orthopedic problems, according to the report.

Fort Carson said the brigade did not deploy 500 soldiers when it headed for Iraq in November and December because of medical issues.

Soldiers told The Denver Post in January that the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, sent people to the Middle East who should not have been sent.

E-mails obtained by The Post sent Jan. 3, 2007, by Capt. Scot Tebo, the brigade surgeon, say the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had “been having issues reaching deployable strength” and that some “borderline” soldiers were sent overseas.

In one case, a Dec. 14, 2007, e-mail from Tebo shows that a soldier who checked himself into Cedar Springs psychiatric hospital for alcohol abuse was deployed before he could finish a 28-day treatment program. The e-mail shows that the soldier was on psychiatric medications, pending a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, “but that information was not passed on” before he was discharged, the e-mail said.

In another case, Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, who has served 19 years in the Army, said he was a “no-go” at the SRP site but was deployed to Kuwait with a severe foot injury.

“Without a doubt, I know for a fact, they sent soldiers to Iraq that are a liability and not an asset to the mission. There’s nothing that anybody can tell me that is going to convince me that those soldiers that I saw deployed, that that was the right thing to do. Nobody can convince me of that.”

Graham said Fort Carson believed in January that 79 soldiers with medical issues had been deployed because a roster of soldiers who were given “no-go” status was not updated.

“Those issues that made them a ‘no-go’ were corrected, but the soldier never came back through the SRP site to update the document, the roster. So, those names stayed on there as ‘no-gos,’ but now we’ve got a way to solve that.”

Graham also said a representative from the inspector general’s office would be placed at the SRP site so soldiers with concerns can report directly to the inspector general.

Lt. Col. David Thompson, who is in charge of rear detachment for the 4th Infantry Division, said: “We constantly review our policies and procedures to ensure that soldiers get access to all the care they need for their particular maladies, but we’ve seen nothing that indicates that those policies and procedures are not being followed.”