KBR Tells Court It Was Following Military Orders When Employees Burned Toxic Waste in Open Pits

In October a class action suit combining 22 lawsuits from 43 states was filed in US District Court in Maryland against KBR, Halliburton, and other military contractors for damages to health from open air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.  According to plaintiffs' lawyers the military contracting giant had been paid millions of dollars to safely dispose of waste on bases but negligently burned refuse in open pits, spewing toxins, including known carcinogens, into the air. Last week, KBR sought to dismiss the charges. Their tack was not to deny that they burned lithium batteries, petroleum, asbestos, trucks, cars, paint, plastic, Styrofoam, medical waste including human limbs, and more, as the soldiers have charged, but to challenge their liability for any ensuing problems.  According to KBR's press fact sheet on the suit, the Army, not KBR, decides if a burn pit or an incinerator will be used, where it will be built in relation to living and working facilities, and what it can burn. KBR insists it was and is still  just “performing under the direction and control of military commanders in the field.” In short, they were only following orders and the soldiers are going after the wrong guy.

But in the Bush-Cheney government, the DoD and its contractor were best buddies if not one and the same guy. As Defense Secretary, when the large scale  privatization of the military's civil logistics activities was still just a gleam in his eye, Cheney paid KBR almost  $9 million to study the feasibility and advisability of private companies handling massive logistics. In a classified report, KBR determined that privatizing civilian logistics was a good idea for the governement, and later that year Cheney awarded KBR the first comprehensive LOGCAP contract. Three years later Cheney became CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR. Two years after that, KBR was fired by the Clinton DoD for fraudulent billing, only to be rehired when the Bush Cheney DoD renewed its contract in 2001. KBR is the largest government contractor in Iraq, earning more than $20 billion dollars for logistical support of troops alone, often in no-bid contracts riddled with obvious but overlooked fraud.

Until recently, the DoD was deaf to the stories coming out of Iraq about “plume crud” and "black goop," as soldiers have termed the dark slime that those living and working close to the burn pits' black smoke blow out of their noses and cough, spit, and vomit from their mouths, or the reports of breathing problems, cancers, and deaths. But they clearly knew about the practices and its problems of the pits its contractors had built and continued to run.  As early as 2006 Air Force Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander Darrin Curtis warned senior officials about the risks of the largest burn pit at the Balad Airbase 70 kilometers north of Baghdad. In a memo he titled “Burn Pit Health Hazards,” he wrote, “It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years without significant engineering controls being put in place.” Curtis cited the toxic byproducts of the burning waste, including benzene, arsenic, sulfuric acid, and other carcinogens, as “an acute health hazard for individuals” and the smoke itself as a possible "chronic health hazard.” In 2008, the Pentagon distributed a burn pit fact sheet to troops, acknowledging some carcinogens in 2004-2006 air samples reported in classified studies, but asserting that “the potential short- and long-term risks were estimated to be low due to the infrequent detections of these chemicals....Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidance, long-term health effects are not expected to occur from breathing the smoke.” The fact sheet failed to mention that 2007 air samples found toxic particulates, including dioxin, benzene, cyanide, and arsenic at as many as six times the allowable levels.