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The testimony from KBR employees comes from videotaped depositions taken during an arbitration lawsuit against the company in 2008 Longer length videos can be viewed here.

The origin of KBR’s role in Iraq has already shrouded the company—and its political patrons—in controversy. In 2004, reports surfaced that the contract under which KBR was working in Basra, Project Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO), was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers under a secret, no-bid agreement in coordination with the office of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney became a multi-millionaire in the 1990s as the head of Halliburton, KBR’s parent company. A further outcry followed an investigation last year by the Boston Globe, which found that KBR hired workers for project RIO through two shell companies in the Cayman Islands as part of a ploy to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security and Medicare taxes.

KBR has served as a U.S. government contractor since World War II, but it was during Vietnam that the company first made political inroads. Then known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, it developed cozy ties to the administration of Lyndon Johnson—a close friend of one of KBR’s founders—that helped it become a major infrastructure provider for the Defense Department. In 1991, KBR rekindled its relationship with the Pentagon under then-Defense Secretary Cheney, which awarded the company a contract to develop contingency plans during the first Gulf War.

(From left to right) KBR's political patrons: Former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfield and ex-Halliburton CEO and Vice President Dick Cheney Photo provided by the US Government

Over the course of the next decade, Halliburton and KBR would receive billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to build overseas military bases and support American forces in Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Uzbekistan. Following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, with the support of Bush administration officials like Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld—who told his staff on September 10, 2001, that the military could save $3 billion a year by outsourcing non-combat duties to the private sector—KBR became the primary beneficiary of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2003, as part of project RIO, U.S. soldiers would accompany contractors into Iraq from Kuwait as they assessed southern oil sites, including Qarmat Ali. Their orders forbade them from leaving KBR personnel alone at any time. Even when they were working, soldiers had to remain an arm’s length away—which not only exposed them to whatever chemical elements the contractors uncovered during their work, it allowed KBR managers ample time to notify them of any potential health risks.

“We spent a great deal of time with KBR employees,” said Oregon Staff Sgt. Rocky Bixby. “There were countless opportunities to communicate with us about environmental hazards.”

Company records, alongside sworn testimony from former employees, show that KBR identified the presence of sodium dichromate, a known poison, at Qarmat Ali months before it took action.

KBR has maintained that it was the military’s responsibility to assess the safety of Iraq’s oil facilities. But in March 2003, weeks before work began at Qarmat Ali, the Army issued KBR a task order under project RIO to establish a “health safety program, conduct environmental assessments, and provide daily status reports” for projects throughout Iraq. The Army had dispatched KBR to Qarmat Ali with a United Nations assessment of Iraq’s oil infrastructure from March 2000, which found that “issues of safety and environmental damage require urgent and immediate attention.”

A more ominous—and obvious—warning were the 1,000 tattered white bags labeled “sodium dichromate” scattered around the facility, leaking noxious orange dust. “It looked to me like someone had spread it all over the plant on purpose because it was everywhere,” former KBR technician Danny Langford told the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) last June. According to Sgt. Russell Powell, the bags were placed by doorways, forcing military and KBR personnel to walk through piles of powder. “We used them as security measures, as sand bags. We’d eat there.” Powell said.

The toxin had stained the walls and concrete around the facility, and turned the soil yellow—a clear indication, according to former Environmental Protection Agency official Herman Gibb, of significant sodium dichromate spillage. “They were ignoring the obvious,” Gibb told DCBureau.

Numerous signs of sickness developed as a result. “KBR, Halliburton, Iraqi Oil Company, U.S. Army National Guard, and British soldiers all were suffering identical symptoms,” former KBR safety manager Ed Blacke said in testimony before the DPC. Langford remembers spitting up blood and getting continuous nose bleeds.

Despite these red flags, KBR did not undertake measures to ensure that Qarmat Ali was clean.

Areas of Qarmat Ali showed a distinct orange residue, a sign of sodium dichromate spillage.

“We were working all over the country,” said KBR site manager Doug Fletcher in a lawsuit deposition videotaped last year. “There were a lot of things happening.”

Chuck Adams, a KBR health and safety manager, said in his deposition that he was given a “verbal confirmation” that the site had been examined. Though KBR billed the Pentagon for conducting a full site analysis, Adams never received any written notes or documentation of it—a clear break from company protocol.

But an internal KBR memo, dated June 2003, shows that one of its industrial hygienists was notified of the presence of sodium dichromate at Qarmat Ali by Iraqi employees of the South Oil Company, a national Iraqi oil company based in Basra. Johnny Morney, another KBR health and safety manager, confirmed in his deposition that he was told earlier, in May—one month after American troops arrived in Basra—that sodium dichromate was concentrated “in a particular area” of the site. Morney said that there was no attempt to quantify the amount of the carcinogen found throughout the facility, or to notify the Army of the possible danger.

Sodium dichromate is generally used at facilities like Qarmat Ali as an anti-corrosive. Injected directly into the piping system, it can easily spread throughout the facility. Due to revelations of its toxicity, the chemical is no longer used at most industrial sites in the United States.

More bizarre than KBR’s reticence after identifying a known carcinogen is the fact that, when asked, the company claimed that the toxin was a “mild irritant,” according to former employees and soldiers. The Army had stocked a ready supply of chemical suits in case of a biological attack. According to Dr. Aaron Barchowsky, a toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh, a “simple dust mask” would have been sufficient to prevent exposure.

But KBR managers, soldiers said, assured the military that protective equipment was unnecessary.

“If KBR had told us about the toxic nature of the chemical, we would not have been exposed,” Sgt. Bixby said.

Ed Blacke insists that he tried. Soon after arriving at Qarmat Ali in July 2003, Blacke said that he requested information on the “orange powder” and was advised that it was a “non-issue.” In testimony to the Democratic Policy Committee last June, he explained how, after his co-workers started to become ill, he raised his concerns in a meeting with a KBR detail and was chastised for being “insubordinate” and “disruptive.” When Blacke continued to question his superiors’ inaction, he was put on a plane back to Houston—and subsequently forced to resign.

Blacke was not the only one reprimanded, according to Danny Langford, who sat with Blacke in the meeting where he was dismissed by KBR management. Another of Langford’s colleagues, Tommy Bayless, asked his supervisors about chromium exposure several days later, only to have them avoid the question. “[He] said, ‘this is a bunch of BS,’” Langford recalled.  “Within 24 hours, Tommy Bayless was on an airplane back to the States.”

It is clear that KBR knew, Blacke said, “that they were putting not only KBR workers, but our security details from the U.S. and British military in harm’s way.”

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This became evident to Capt. Russell Kimberling during one routine escort of KBR employees to Qarmat Ali in August 2003. After stepping out of his humvee and approaching the water treatment plant, Kimberling noticed that the civilians were donning white protective suits. “They obviously knew something we didn’t,” Kimberling said. According to the Army captain, the KBR chain of command maintained upon questioning that sodium dichromate was a “mild irritant that one would have to literally bathe in for any toxicity to occur.” By then there were reports that Iraqi workers had developed ulcers on their chests and stomachs.

On August 7, KBR released a memo documenting “serious health problems at water treatment plant with a chemical called sodium dichromate,” a problem “that seems worse than initially indicated” having exposed those working at the facility “to something that may be very dangerous.” The chemical, the memo read, “could have been dumped on the ground for quite a long time.”

After KBR found that 60 percent of its workers were exhibiting symptoms, a medical team tested their blood and discovered elevated chromium levels four to 10 times higher than normal.

In response, the contractor dispatched environmental specialists to test the air and ground around Qarmat Ali for sodium dichromate. In the soil, they found “extremely high levels” of up to 16,000 parts per million—nearly three times the amount that is considered “actionable” under the Military Exposure Guidelines. Dr. Max Costa, the medial expert from New York University, told Congress that he has “never seen such high concentrations” of the chemical.

But KBR tried to hide behind the results of its air test, which found only small traces of sodium dichromate. According to company records, however, the air test was only collected for one hour because rioting in Basra—coincidentally, backlash from KBR’s refusal to hire Iraqis for work at Qarmat Ali—forced the health team to evacuate prematurely. By comparison, concentrations used by the U.S. Department of Labor to assess airborne hazards are based on an eight-hour sample.

Moreover, KBR’s test was performed on a non-windy day, past Iraq’s summer windstorm season that had made working at Qarmat Ali like operating “in a blow dryer,” according to Indiana Sgt. David Rancourt.

Indiana Capt. Russell Kimberling remembers seeing KBR workers wearing chemical suits at Qarmat Ali, where stacks of torn white bags leaked sodium dichromate around the facility. Photo courtesy of MIke Doyle / Doyle Raizner LLP

“More air testing monitoring with winds present should have been conducted to get a more accurate diagnosis,” said Dr. Costa. Even KBR’s own industrial hygienist, Dr. Sudhir Desai, said in a taped deposition that it was “obvious” the company should have collected an air sample during a dust storm to simulate working conditions.

In 2004, the Army released a report acknowledging the flaws in KBR’s environmental testing, saying that its sample data was “limited in scope” and “did not provide enough information to assess past exposures.”

The contractor’s lackluster response can be traced back to the inertia and denial of some of its managers back in Houston. In an e-mail dated September 3, 2003, Bruce Keyston, an employee in KBR’s Health, Safety and Environmental Department, wrote:

"We must be careful from a litigation standpoint how we address the chemicals. My basic premise that we cannot say sodium dichromate is a known human carcinogen still stands."

Company attorney William Bedford, who counseled KBR personnel in the field on how to proceed at Qarmat Ali, also played down the chemical’s toxicity. “It appeared not to be something that was…an obvious carcinogen or something that had an acute exposure problem to it,” he said in his deposition.

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On August 30, 2003, two weeks after KBR conducted environmental tests—and three months after the company was first alerted to the presence of sodium dichromate—the contractor completed a remediation of Qarmat Ali, covering contaminated areas with asphalt and gravel. Several weeks later, the British Army’s Environmental Monitoring Team (BRITFOR) determined in a soil analysis that “the degree of risk” associated with the treatment plant was “high,” with the level of contamination prior to KBR’s remedial efforts likely being “considerably worse.”

Yet KBR did not caution Kimberling and his soldiers, who did not leave Qarmat Ali until October, to wear chemical suits. Some contractors continued to report that they lacked protective equipment.

KBR has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that its response was prudent and thorough. “When KBR discovered the sodium dichromate [at Qarmat Ali], the company immediately notified the Army and took steps to remediate the site,” read a statement from KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne.

Browne did not respond to questions about the three-month window between when KBR personnel were first notified of the chemical and when the company decided to stop work and remediate the site. On its website, the company’s mission includes an “uncompromising commitment to health, safety, and environment.”

Supervisors like Johnny Morney maintain that responsibility lay with KBR workers. “If it [sodium dichromate] was in the water injection system and workers encountered it, they should’ve reported it,” he said in a videotaped deposition. He points a special finger at Ed Blacke. “Mr. Blacke should have observed this himself, long before [the meetings where he was reprimanded]. As a safety professional, that’s what we had him there for.”

But Blacke did not arrive in Iraq until early July, over a month after Morney was first notified that sodium dichromate had been found at Qarmat Ali.

Click here for more details about the Defense Base Act and the KBR / AIG dream team.

KBR is facing dozens of lawsuits from Army National Guard veterans accusing the contractor of criminal negligence and concealing the dangers of a known toxin. 46 Indiana soldiers filed suit last December, and in June, seven Guardsmen from West Virginia and five from Oregon joined them. At least 48, and perhaps up to 181, military personnel from Oregon alone may have suffered exposure to sodium dichromate, according to The Oregonian.

One piece of litigation, an arbitration suit filed by several ex-KBR workers, including Ed Blacke and Danny Langford, recently ruled in favor of the company—because of KBR’s immunity from litigation under the Defense Base Act.

For the embattled contractor, Qarmat Ali is the latest controversy in a string of scandals by which KBR has gained unprecedented infamy. Over 100 civil suits have been leveled at KBR and Halliburton in the past four years alone, alleging a litany of transgressions that include overbilling, accepting kickbacks, human trafficking, sexual assault, wrongful death, and serving unpurified water and spoiled food at military mess halls.

In May, the Defense Department’s top auditor revealed that KBR is connected to a “vast majority” of war contracting fraud cases, months after its former chairman, Jack Stanley, pleaded guilty to participating in an elaborate bribery scheme. And in July, the Pentagon Inspector General claimed that faulty electrical wiring installed by the contractor led to the electrocution of several servicemen in Iraq. According to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) eighteen U.S. soldiers have died overseas as a result of KBR’s “shoddy work.”

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The company has also come under fire for its domestic work, reportedly overcharging the Navy for a construction contract to rebuild New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

By 2007, KBR’s image had become so tarnished that its parent company, Halliburton, spun it off as an independent corporation.

Qarmat Ali is not the first time that KBR has exposed U.S. troops to environmental hazards. Earlier this spring, civilian and military personnel stationed at Joint Base Balad in Iraq accused KBR of endangering their health by burning massive heaps of garbage in toxic, open-air burn pits.

Despite these allegations, KBR has collected over $34 billion from the United States government in military and reconstruction contracts since 2001. It received $5.7 billion in taxpayer funds in 2008, up from $4.8 billion in 2007.