A General’s False Testimony on KBR

by Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium: Fri., Jun 6, 2008
Filed under: War Making and Oversight • Congressional Oversight

Sen. Byron Dorgan, in a May 21, 2008, meeting with reporters, speaking about the April 2007 testimony of Major Gen. Jerome Johnson - 29 seconds.

Will the Pentagon correct Major Gen. Jerome Johnson’s tainted testimony on the contaminated water KBR provided to the troops?

By Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium

When Major Gen. Jerome Johnson appeared under oath before a congressional
committee last year, he told enough untruths about KBR’s work for the
military that the US Army took the unusual step of retracting a portion of
his testimony. Now it appears that Johnson also misled members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on another KBR-related matter: its provisioning of contaminated water to U.S. troops in Iraq.

Nearly three months ago Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chair of the
Democratic Policy Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates
on the subject of Johnson’s testimony, but he has yet to received a reply.
“This was either an attempt by General Johnson to deliberately deceive the
Congress, or a display of negligent disregard for facts,” Dorgan wrote in
the March 12 letter. “I hope you will review this matter and take
appropriate action.”

In April 2007, Johnson, then the commanding general of the US Army
Sustainment Command, which is responsible for providing food, lodging, and a
range of logistical support to the troops, appeared before the Senate Armed
Services Committee to answer questions about the Pentagon’s primary
logistics contract in Iraq. During the hearing, the committee’s chairman,
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., alleged that the Army had reimbursed KBR, then a
Halliburton subsidiary, for the cost of overpriced trailers the company had
purchased through a subcontractor.

“[T]he [Defense] department has not paid KBR the $100 million for the
trailers,” Johnson told Levin. “As a matter of fact, KBR’s cost is still
suspended.” Johnson when on to say that the DOD document from which Levin
drew his information was “inaccurate.” But it was Johnson who didn’t have
his facts straight.

More than seven months passed before the Army acknowledged Johnson’s
misstatement. “We sincerely regret the confusion that arose during the
testimony and apologize for any impact to the Committee’s deliberations,”
wrote Claude Bolton, assistant secretary of the Army, to Levin. In his
“correction for the record,” Bolton wrote that the Army had indeed paid KBR
for the trailers, even though the Defense Contract Audit Agency had called
the purchase “unreasonable due to KBR purchasing the [trailers] from someone other than the low bidder without…adequate justification.”

The media paid little attention to the slip-up and subsequent correction,
perhaps in part because, as the Army Times noted, “Bolton’s letter ends the argument between the Army and Levin’s committee because there is no way to recoup the money.”

Overlooked entirely, though, was a different part of Johnson’s testimony,
when he claimed the Army was unaware of reports that KBR had also been
supplying military bases with contaminated water. Because of their
negligence, a 2006 investigation by Dorgan’s policy committee found,
soldiers had unwittingly bathed in and brushed their teeth with water that,
by the senator’s account, was more polluted than the Euphrates river. The
committee’s findings prompted Dorgan to request an investigation by the
Pentagon’s Inspector General.

When Levin raised Dorgan’s charge that water provided to troops in Iraq
had tested positive for E. coli and other bacteria common to animal feces,
Johnson disputed the allegations
[PDF]. Acknowledging the inspector general’s then-ongoing investigation,
Johnson told the committee, “No issues have been found thus far that I’m
aware of.” Johnson did confirm that allegations had been raised about
contaminated water at Camp Ar-Ramadi, a base about 70 miles west of Baghdad, but said “we found no issues with the water there. After an inspection, we did not confirm the allegations that were made.”

Johnson even denied that KBR had anything to do with the provision of
water to troops at the base. “KBR was not operating the water site,” he told
the panel. But this March, when the inspector general’s office released its
report, investigators noted that the Pentagon had been notified on March 31,
2007 — three weeks before Johnson’s testimony — of KBR’s role in
providing polluted water to military bases, which “may have degraded to the
point of causing waterborne illnesses among US forces.”

Investigators found that KBR was indeed in control of water quality at Camp Ar-Ramadi, and that at three of four US bases subject to inspection, including Ar-Ramadi, KBR had shirked its contractual obligation to test the water it supplied.

At a meeting with reporters last month, Dorgan described his efforts to
uncover the extent of the unsanitary water conditions at US bases in Iraq in
the face of denials from both the Army and its contractor, KBR. “It’s clear
everyone was lying, including [Gen. Johnson], who came to the Senate
committee and deceived the committee,” Dorgan said.

At press time, Levin had not responded to a request for comment.

Johnson now serves as deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Army Forces Command in Fort McPherson, Georgia. The Pentagon declined to comment on Johnson’s testimony or why Dorgan’s letter to Gates has gone unanswered.

More from Sen. Dorgan’s May 21 meeting with reporters - 1:51