Military, Security & Surveillance

A grieving family is suing Halliburton for the wrongful death of Tony Johnson, a truck driver killed while en route on the deadliest day the Iraq war has seen so far. Did the company knowingly place their workers in harm's way? The Johnsons -- and the flood of families waiting to file similar lawsuits -- say they did. Read More

Halliburton officials are being investigated for taking millions of dollars in bribes while staying at a lavish seaside resort in Kuwait, in return for sub-contracts to supply the US military in Iraq. Jeff Alex Mazon is the first of these Halliburton managers to be indicted for corruption. Read More

Time and again, there was little or no competition for the huge contracts the US administration awarded, and repeatedly, it seemed that senior army people were stepping in to overrule attempts by the highest-ranking civilian in the US Army Corps of Engineers to make KBR accountable. Read More

US military interrogators -- who will work at sites ranging from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay -- must first receive training at one obscure military fort in Southern Arizona. Today, that training has been taken over by private contractors working for profit. ALSO: An Interrogator Speaks Out Read More

A former military interrogator talks about what went wrong at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Read More

A Virginia judge has been asked to decided whether or not Custer Battles, an upstart security company assigned to guard Baghdad airport, had defrauded its customers by as much as $50 million. But company lawyers are arguing that the United States government did not control the Iraqi oil money, seized during the occupation, used to pay the company. Read More

New evidence suggests that the Abu Ghraib prisoners were subjected not only to torture and psychological abuse, they were underfed, malnourished and made to eat food so bad it inspired riots. A little-known private contractor, run by an American civilian, is said to be to blame. Read More

Newly revealed documents, dating from December 2003 and the early months of 2004, allege that Halliburton staff in Kuwait asked for kickbacks from selected contractors while undermining others who were looking for work from the multi-billion dollar contracts that the company oversees for the military occupation force in Iraq. Read More

Companies working in support of U.S. troops in Iraq are hauling Houston-headquartered defense contractor, Halliburton, into U.S. federal court with claims that the company stiffed them for hundreds of millions of dollars after they provided essential services in the war effort. Read More

Rwandan and Nigerian soldiers will arrive in western Sudan this week as the first deployment of a five nation 4,500 strong peacekeeping force dispatched from the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to stem the violence in Darfur. Providing logistical support for the mission will be two private contractors from California, both of whom have mixed records carrying out similar enterprises in the past. Read More