- WASHINGTON -- Empty flatbed
trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers
who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.
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- Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made
the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda
near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty
trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the
government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel."
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- Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and
Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater
transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq
and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more. The convoys are a lifeline
for U.S. troops in Iraq hauling tires for Humvees, Army boots, filing cabinets,
tools, engine parts and even an unmanned Predator reconnaissance plane.
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- KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the
company to pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to
3 percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support Command
in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able to provide
cost estimates for the empty trucks. Trucking experts estimate that each
round trip costs taxpayers thousands of dollars.
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- Seven of the 12 truckers who talked to Knight Ridder
asked that they not be identified by name. Six of the 12 were fired by
KBR for allegedly running Iraqi drivers off the road when they attempted
to break into the convoy. The drivers disputed that accusation.
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- In addition to interviewing the drivers, Knight Ridder
reviewed KBR records of the empty trips, dozens of photographs of empty
flatbeds and a videotape that showed 15 empty trucks in one convoy.
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- The 12 drivers, all interviewed separately over the course
of more than a month, told similar stories about their trips through hostile
territory.
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- "Thor," a driver who quit KBR and got his nickname
for using a hammer to fight off a knife-wielding Iraqi who tried to climb
into the cab of his truck, said his doctor recently told him he might lose
the use of his right eye after a December attack. Iraqis shattered his
windshield with machine gunfire and bullets whizzed by his ear. Glass got
in his eye, and he broke two bones in his shoulder, he said.
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- His truck was empty at the time.
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- "I thought, `What good is this?'" he recalled.
-
- Shane "Nitro" Ratliff of Ruby, S.C., who quit
working for KBR in February, recalled a harrowing trip in December.
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- As he was hauling an empty truck to Baghdad International
Airport, Iraqis threw spikes under his tires and a brick, a cement-like
clot of sand and gasoline through his windshield, scattering shards of
glass all over him and into his eyes.
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- "We didn't have no weapons; I had two rocks and
a can of ravioli to fight with," Ratliff said.
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- Ratliff caught up with his fleeing convoy in his damaged
truck and made it to the airport safely. He figured he'd pick up a load
there, but he was told to return with another empty trailer.
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- Iraqi insurgents have killed two civilian drivers.
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- Kellogg Brown and Root, the Army and the truckers gave
different reasons for why empty trucks were driven through areas that the
drivers nicknamed "rockville" and "slaughterhouse"
for the dangers they presented.
-
- Some of the truckers charged that KBR is billing the
Pentagon for unnecessary work. KBR described the practice as normal, given
the large number of trucks it has delivering goods throughout Iraq. Army
officials said longer convoys may provide better security.
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- The Army's contract with KBR calls for daily truck runs,
but doesn't dictate how many trucks must be in a convoy or whether they
must be full, said Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Field Support
Command in Rock Island, Ill. The area military commander or KBR officials
might choose to run empty trucks as a security measure, she said.
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- KBR denied there was any problem with the truck runs.
"KBR is proud of the work we do for the military in Iraq. It is difficult
and dangerous work and requires a lot from our employees," said Cathy
Gist, a KBR spokeswoman. KBR truckers say they can earn about $80,000 a
year, which is tax-free if they remain in Iraq for a year.
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- The empty trailer runs in Iraq peaked in January, February
and March of this year but have dwindled as violence has escalated and
forced contractors to reduce the number of trucks in each convoy and how
far they travel, the drivers said.
-
- Earlier this year, as many as a third of all the flatbed
trucks in a 30-truck convoy were empty, they said. Much of the time, drivers
would drop off one empty trailer and pick up another empty one for the
return trip.
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- "There was one time we ran 28 trucks, one trailer
had one pallet (a trailer can hold as many as 26 four-foot square pallets)
and the rest of them were empty," said David Wilson, who was the convoy
commander on more than 100 runs. Four other drivers who were with Wilson
confirmed his account.
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- James Warren of Rutherfordton, N.C., one of the fired
KBR drivers, said he drove empty trucks through Iraq more than a dozen
times. Besides the risks to the truckers, the six National Guard or Army
escorts who provided security were also in danger, he said.
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- The KBR driver who shot the videotape of the 15 empty
trailers on the road in January described it this way: "This is just
a sample of the empty trailers we're hauling called `sustainer.' And there's
more behind me. There's another one right there. ... This is fraud and
abuse right here."
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- KBR documents viewed by Knight Ridder showed that one
February run included 11 "MT" (trucker lingo for empty) trailers,
11 containers (which could be full or empty) and six with pallets on them.
On another February day, three of 15 trucks were empty.
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- KBR officials said empty runs resulted from the lack
of cargo at one depot. The company ran all the trucks so they'd be available
to pick up cargo for the return trip. "This is the same as typical
commercial trucking operations work in the U.S.," said Gist.
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- Drivers discounted that explanation.
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- "Sometimes we would go with empty trailers; we would
go both ways," said one driver who goes by the nickname Swerve and
declined to be named for fear of retribution. "We'd turn around and
go back with empty trailers."
-
- An independent expert on trucking economics put the cost
of a 300-mile one-way run at a minimum of $1,050. Researcher Mark Berwick
at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State
University used a computer model, the fuel costs that Halliburton charged
the Army and the truckers' salaries to come up with that figure.
-
- Wilson and Michael Stroud, of the Seattle area, another
former KBR trucking convoy commander, said the actual costs were probably
far higher.
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- "It was supposed to be critical supplies that the
troops had to have to operate," said Wilson, who returned to his home
in southwest Florida after being fired by KBR. "It was one thing to
risk your life to haul things the military needed. It's another to haul
empty trailers."
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- Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution
and the author of "Corporate Warrior," a book on privatization
of the military, said the use of empty trucks illustrates how the government's
contracting system is broken.
-
- The government gives out large cost-plus contracts in
which "essentially it rewards firms when they add to costs rather
than rewarding them for cost savings," Singer said.
-
- Despite a massive increase in contracts for the war and
occupation of Iraq, the Army hasn't increased the number of officials who
oversee those contractors. Only 180 Army officials monitor defense contracts
and only a little more than a handful of them are in Iraq, Singer said.
-
- - Mark Washburn of The Charlotte Observer and Mark Rogers
of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram contributed
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- © 2004 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources.
All Rights Reserved. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8726436.htm
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