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Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee

“When you have contractors that have demonstrated that they have fleeced the government agency or the taxpayer, I don’t think there should be a slap on the wrist or a pat on the back. They should be debarred. …This is the most significant waste and fraud in the history of our country. It’s not even close.” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

After a flurry of Pentagon contracting scandals involving KBR went unaddressed by Republican lawmakers under the Bush administration, Democrats ran on promises of “real and serious” oversight in their successful 2006 campaign to win back Congress.

But American soldiers poisoned by KBR in Iraq six years ago have found weak refuge on Capitol Hill. Democratic leaders have left the Qarmat Ali probe to a lone senator, Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and a largely powerless Congressional panel, the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC). Having traditionally operated as a partisan support forum, the DPC lacks the capabilities to ensure accountability for the sick veterans of Qarmat Ali—who have struggled to afford costly medical treatments while the company that endangered them continues to reap millions of dollars in windfall profits.

It was Sen. Dorgan, the DPC’s chairman, who first uncovered the Qarmat Ali incident and brought it to Congress last year. Since then, the Senate committee charged with direct oversight of the U.S. military—the powerful and highly influential Armed Services Committee—has largely stayed silent. When DCBureau called Armed Services chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), spokesman Bryan Thomas declined comment.

“I’ve tried to do as much as I can with the limited capacity I have,” Dorgan said. “It just begs for investigation.”

Composed of twenty legislators, the Democratic Policy Committee was created a half-century ago to build policy support for the Democratic Caucus in Congress; it was once tagged by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) as “a great service organization.” The DPC’s foray into the controversial topic of wartime contracting began in 2003. Lacking legislative power as the Congressional minority at the time, Democratic policymakers accused the Republican leadership of overlooking “well-documented abuses” by private military contractors—particularly KBR—and proposed using the DPC “to investigate and hold people accountable,” according to its website.

“We don’t have, and have never had, aggressive oversight on behalf of Congress,” Sen. Dorgan said in an interview.

Over the past five years, the third-term lawmaker has attempted to untangle the myriad problems plaguing U.S. military contracting, hosting some twenty hearings on Capitol Hill. But the DPC is not a Senate standing committee—and as a result, it has no oversight capacity, including the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents, or require testimony under oath. Instead, the panel relies on whistleblowers to voluntarily come forward and supply evidence.

Moreover, while the DPC invites Republican senators to attend its hearings and has, according to its reports, pursued its probes in a “bipartisan manner,” it lacks the bipartisan standing of official legislative forums. This is particularly poignant because contracting corruption has become a hotly politicized issue, commonly used by Democratic critics of the Bush administration to epitomize what they increasingly saw as an illegitimate war with Iraq.

On the eve of the 2006 Congressional elections—in which widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq invasion would prove to be a major factor in swinging the legislative majority back to the Democrats—the DPC released a report titled “Heads in the Sand.” It excoriated the “do nothing” Republicans for being “asleep at the switch” while contracting abuse ran rampant.

But since regaining control of Congress, including control of all standing committee agendas, Senate Democrats have failed to authorize the kind of sweeping probe that they criticized their Republican counterparts for avoiding in 2006. Instead, the DPC remains the central front for combating contractor corruption, where Sen. Dorgan has watched his investigations, many of them corroborated by the Pentagon Inspector General (IG), go unheeded by the Justice Department and the military.

“It’s one of the most disappointing and frustrating things that I have been involved with,” Dorgan said. “This is the most significant waste and fraud in the history of our country. It’s not even close.”

“When you have contractors that have demonstrated that they have fleeced the government agency or the taxpayer, I don’t think there should be a slap on the wrist or a pat on the back. They should be debarred.”

(left to right): Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and committee member Sen. John Warner (R-VA) Photo: Department of Defense / U.S. Navy 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley

But according to the senator, committees like Armed Services—which has been preoccupied with the escalating war in Afghanistan—face overloaded dockets, and they are not staffed with an adequate number of investigators.

Dorgan has pushed hard for the creation of a special select Senate committee, endowed with full subpoena powers, to examine abuses by KBR and other contractors. It would be modeled on the Truman Committee, which investigated waste in government contracts during World War II.

“The Truman Committee cost $15,000 and saved $15 billion,” Dorgan said. “They worked for seven years and held 60 hearings a year. That’s what Congress ought to be doing when you see substantial abuse.”

Dorgan’s proposal has met tepid support on both sides of the aisle, failing in multiple votes on the Senate floor.

“There is a certain way that things are done in Congress,” Dorgan said, noting that setting up a separate select committee requires broad legislative support. “Republicans and Democrats don’t want it.”

Instead, lawmakers compromised last year by establishing the Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC), an independent, eight-member bipartisan commission composed of non-Congressional members. After holding a round of hearings on the Pentagon’s procurement process, the CWC released a report last week asserting the need for oversight reform. But like the DPC, it does not have the power to make or enforce regulations.

“I don’t oppose having the commission, but it’s not a substitute for Congressional oversight,” Dorgan said.

For veterans groups, the cool legislative response to Qarmat Ali is similar to those that met previous cases of U.S. military servicemen being exposed to chemicals on the battlefield. It took Congress fifty years to officially acknowledge that a group of former soldiers, so-called “Atomic Vets,” were subjected to nuclear radiation during World War II. Three decades passed before the military started awarding health benefits to troops sickened by Agent Orange, a mixture of jungle-clearing herbicides used in Vietnam. And veterans plagued by Gulf War Syndrome, a bizarre illness tentatively linked to depleted uranium exposure, have struggled to receive recognition since Operation Desert Storm ended in Iraq in 1991.

“For some reason, we have developed this mindset that if we ignore these illnesses, they’ll just go away,” said Steve Robertson from the American Legion. “But there has to be a lesson learned somewhere. If we don’t hold the federal agencies responsible, and we don’t hold Congress responsible, nothing is going to happen.”

Robertson pointed to the aftermath of Desert Storm, when it took an exhaustive Congressional investigation to address the needs of sick veterans. Unlike that case, Qarmat Ali boasts a relatively small number of victims, therefore “it doesn’t get the following it deserves.” From Robertson’s perspective, leaving Qarmat Ali to the hamstrung DPC reinforces assumptions about lawmakers’ tendency to acquiesce to the military. “Congress often believes that the armed services are going to take care of the problem, and the agencies responsible for oversight will take whatever actions are needed,” he said.

But KBR, despite its unsavory reputation, remains the Army’s largest war contractor. In the few instances where it has endured fraud investigations by the military, the company has leveraged its role in U.S. operations to discourage the Pentagon from withholding payments—an indication that the company has become so entrenched in American war efforts that it is immune to punishment.

“Unfortunately, there are very few American companies that have the capacity to support large scale military support operations like KBR,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

There is one KBR worker for every three U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Contractors outnumber military personnel by 15,000 in Afghanistan. In addition to providing everything from security details for the State Department to dining halls for the Pentagon, KBR has generated some $25 billion in profits building U.S. military and diplomatic bases around the world, including the new American embassy in Kabul and its $592 million, 104-acre counterpart in Baghdad. And under a $385 million agreement with another government client, the Department of Homeland Security, KBR has constructed prisons and detention centers around the United States, including holdings cells at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Commission for Wartime Contracting during an August hearing Photo from the Commission for Wartime Contracting / www.wartimecontracting.gov

lThese contracts are not just a lingering legacy of the Bush administration and KBR-connected Vice President Cheney. One week after Barack Obama took office, the company was awarded a new $35.4 million contract by to build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in Iraq. KBR is also a prime candidate for a $200 million expansion of the Kabul embassy, and a $736 million upgrade of U.S. diplomatic quarters in Islamabad, Pakistan.

"Is part of the problem that, in essence with this one contractor, we've basically said, 'KBR is too big to fail?’” asked former Connecticut Congressman and co-chair of the Wartime Contracting Commission, Christopher Shays, during a May hearing.

Evidence of KBR’s privileged political position abounded last week, when Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) offered an amendment to this year’s Defense Appropriations bill that would punish military contractors if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual harassment cases to court. The proposal, inspired by a former KBR employee who was gang-raped by her co-workers in Iraq, received thirty “no” votes from Republican senators. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called the amendment a "political attack directed at Halliburton.”

According to Dorgan, the Pentagon enabled KBR’s ascendency back in 2002, when it forewent the competitive bidding process and handed the company a lucrative contract to manage military logistics in Iraq. “They essentially said that KBR was the only one capable of doing this,” he explained.

But as long as lawmakers entrust oversight to a committee with limited legislative powers, contractors like KBR will be allowed to continue to operate with impunity.

In response to the incident at Qarmat Ali, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) proposed a bill calling for a registry that would track exposed veterans and qualify them for health benefits. Fellow Indiana Democrat and Rep. Baron Hill has introduced a similar measure in the House. Their legislation caught the attention of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, which held a hearing on military chemical exposures last week.

KBR tower in Houston. Has the contractor become too big to fail? Photo: Flickr / Blair McFarlain (blairmc99)

“This case has brought to light the need for systemic reform,” Bayh said in an August statement on Qarmat Ali. The senator, who is chairman of the Readiness and Management Support Armed Services Subcommittee, intends to hold a broader hearing later this year on Pentagon contracting, in which the sodium dichromate exposure will “factor prominently,” his spokesman Eric Kleiman said. No date has yet been set.

Meanwhile, Bayh and Dorgan have called on the Pentagon Inspector General to conduct a more thorough investigation of Qarmat Ali.

But for the solders who were poisoned at the treatment plant in 2003, time may be running out. Indiana company commander James Gentry is dying. Former combat engineer Glen Bootay, who now walks with a cane, is up to 35 medications per day. No pill, however, can ease the pain that these veterans feel for being let down by the country and the institution that they risked their lives to protect.

“I chose the military as a way to serve my country and further my education,” said Capt. Kimberling.  “I was proud to wear the uniform and serve in theater when called to do so, as were all of the men in my company when called to do so.”

Now, he added, “my men and I are growing old well before our time.”