DynCorp still taking the moral low ground

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 2, 2002 | by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

Sometimes it seems there's little left to do except scratch your head in bewilderment. For INSIGHT, this is one of those times.

A little more than a year ago, Kathryn Bolkovac brought a lawsuit against Virginia-based DynCorp, one of the federal government's biggest contractors, claiming she had been fired by the multibillion-dollar company for blowing the whistle on sexual misconduct, including sex-trafficking, by her fellow DynCorp employees in the Balkans.

DynCorp holds the government contract in Bosnia-Herzegovina to hire and train U.N. police forces, and in June 1999 Bolkovac signed on for the project as one of DynCorp's 23,000 employees worldwide. It wasn't long before Bolkovac became aware that other U.N. police officers, officials and DynCorp employees frequented brothels in Bosnia and were involved in the white-slave trafficking of women and children.

Bolkovac wrote both to DynCorp and U.N. officials, alerting them to her findings. Within months she was fired from her job as an investigator. DynCorp asserted that it dismissed Bolkovac from her employment as a member of the International Peace Task Force (IPTF) for falsifying time sheets. INSIGHT investigated, and exposed DynCorp's problems in two cover stories [see "DynCorp Disgrace," Feb. 4, and "Broken Wings," April 291.

The British tribunal that heard the Bolkovac case didn't buy DynCorp's assertions, and instead found unanimously that Michael Stiers, deputy commissioner of the mission in Bosnia and a DynCorp employee who dismissed Bolkovac, "had his knife in [her] and was determined that she should be removed from her role as a gender monitor with IPTF." The tribunal further found that DynCorp's dismissal of Bolkovac was an act in "complete defiance," and that the company's evidence was "sketchy to the point of being nonexistent."

While clearly a very refined decision, typical of a British court, what the folks back in Bolkovac's native Nebraska heard was: "DynCorp is lying, got caught and they're not getting away with it."

Apparently DynCorp understood the Nebraska version, too. Within hours of Bolkovac's victory, attorneys for the federal contractor rushed to Texas to make a yet to be disclosed financial settlement in a similar lawsuit with former DynCorp employee Ben Johnston. He also filed suit against DynCorp after being dismissed for blowing the whistle on fellow DynCorp employees participating in the trafficking of women and children in Bosnia.

Johnston's case included allegations of such sordid behavior as middle-age men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds and a DynCorp supervisor who actually videotaped himself having sex with two females (ages undisclosed). The supervisor never faced criminal charges despite the fact that one of the women on the video repeatedly said "no" to his sexual acts.

Johnston's allegations further included a nightclub in Bosnia frequented by DynCorp employees where young women were sold "hourly, daily or permanently." According to Johnston, many DynCorp employees purchased women for use in Bosnia, then sold them before returning home.

DynCorp's reason for firing Johnston was stated in writing as "bringing discredit to the company and the U.S. Army while working in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina." A company spokesperson in February told INSIGHT that DynCorp "stands by its decision to terminate Ben Johnston." According to DynCorp at that time, "the notion that a company such as DynCorp would turn a blind eye to illegal behavior by our employees is incomprehensible."

The fact is, DynCorp didn't turn a "blind eye" on either Bolkovac or Johnston. DynCorp heard their complaints and, rather than reward them for exposing outrageous sexual behavior that would be criminal even in the permissive United States, company officials took the moral low ground--acting swiftly and decisively to fire the two whistle-blowers. But the embarrassed company's behavior got weirder still.

One might expect that DynCorp, which very well could be out of business should it be removed from the federal trough, would applaud the victory of Bolkovac and Johnston, or at a minimum the victory for sexually abused women and children around the world. Instead, DynCorp is "very disappointed in the tribunal's ruling," and the company is considering an appeal. Is this denial or yet another indication of where this company stands on human slavery? If so it assuredly makes one wonder why the Virginia based Missing and Exploited Children organization continues allowing its logo to be displayed on DynCorp's Website.

But the main question that has to be asked, and which is so bewildering, is what it takes to get disqualified as a federal contractor. Are lawmakers, who appropriate hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to DynCorp, oblivious to the sexual outrages tolerated by this federal contractor, and would taxpayers approve of such enormous expenditures to a company that even appears to excuse or protect such behavior? There's little doubt what the folks back in Nebraska would think about that, so what's the problem in Washington?