Forum Post: So quickly the American people forget the crimes of Haliburton

In America there is a growing trend of unethical behavior displayed by large corporations. An organization from the U.S. that is present in Iraq has the potential to allow even more conflicts to arise. Situations that have occurred within Halliburton spinoff KBR have made ethics, diversity and harassment issues evident. Jamie Leigh Jones, “A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.” (Ross, 2007) As of April 29th 2009, according to Branson (2009), “Nearly four years after Texan Jamie Leigh Jones was allegedly raped by co-workers…she came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to fight against "hidden" contract clauses that take away employees' right to trial…Jones' case has not yet come to trial. Halliburton attorneys said last year that Jones' employment contract she signed before taking her job states that claims by employees have to be settled in private arbitration.” According to The People Speak Radio (2008), “In private arbitration, there would be no judge or jury, and the case would be handled by an arbitrator hired by the corporation.” "Unfortunately, my case is not an isolated incident," she [Jamie Leigh Jones] said Tuesday. "With the misuse of arbitration, we have made corporate entities in this country above the law."” (Branson, 2009) “Dawn Leamon, who worked for a subsidiary of KBR, described being sodomized and forced to have oral sex with a KBR colleague and a Special Forces soldier two months earlier. Another woman, Mary Beth Kineston, who worked as a commercial trucker for KBR in Iraq, testified that she had been raped in the cab of her truck by a KBR subcontractor employee.”(Houppert, 2008) These horrendous examples of mistreatment of female employees seem to demonstrate not only an absence of ethics in the KBR organization but a definite problem with the company’s ability to keep employees safe. Legal Concerns The United States government is claiming to have problems with jurisdiction, and the Iraq government, still in its infancy, barely has jurisdiction over its own people, let alone a U.S. contractor. The example of Jamie Leigh Jones brings up interesting issues. She does not trust a company that held her hostage, to hire an arbitrator that is unbiased. “In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.”(Ross, 2007) According to The Nation, “As the number of women coming forward rises, Congress has begun to question why these crimes are not being prosecuted. In fact, there are several laws on the books that would allow these cases to proceed: the problem is not a lack of legal tools but a lack of will…says Scott Horton, a lecturer at Columbia Law School, Prosecutorial jurisdiction for crimes like the alleged rapes of Jones and Leamon is easily established under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and the Patriot Act's special maritime and territorial jurisdiction provisions.” (Houppert, 2008) It is difficult to comprehend the lack of prosecution of so many unlawful events that are displayed openly in the public eye. Can the U.S. government truly keep walking down the sidewalk ignoring the crime at their feet? At a smaller business, something relatively less intrusive than rape, such as verbal abuse or inappropriate contact, would result in reprimands and likely termination. How is it that a large corporation can write itself out of the U.S. Judicial system? November 21st 1864 in the last year of the Civil War, President Lincoln wrote in a letter to his friend Colonel William F. Elkins, "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." (Hartmann, 2003) It seems that things have turned out worse than Lincoln could have imagined.

References Ross, Brian. (2007). Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR . ABC News. Retrieved September 7, 2009, from http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3977702 Branson, Hailey. (2009). Jamie Leigh Jones fights to bring Halliburton rape claims to court. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved September 6, 2009, from http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/2009/04/jamie_leigh_jones_fights_to_br.html The People Speak Radio. (2008). Jamie Leigh Jones. Retrieved September 7, 2009, from http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net/2008/jamie-leigh-jones/ Houppert, Karen. (2008). KBR's Rape Problem . The Nation. Retrieved September 5, 2009, from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080505/houppert Hartmann, Thom. (2003). Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie" . Common Dreams.org. Retrieved September 7, 2009, from http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0101-07.htm