By NICK SCHWELLENBACH
This week's document(s): internal U.S. government emails regarding allegations of human trafficking
Originating agency: Army and Air Force Exchange Service
An article in the latest issue of The New Yorker details the perils many "third country nationals"--mostly South Asians and Africans--face when working for U.S. government-funded contractors and subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article tells the tale largely through the experiences of two Fijian women--Lydia and Vinnie--who worked for a foreign-owned subcontractor for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES). Under the auspices of AAFES, commercial stores, hair salons, movie theaters and other operations are conducted on military bases.
According to The New Yorker article, the Fijian women faced an array of abuses, such as being lured to Iraq under false pretenses (they believed they were going elsewhere in the Middle East and would be paid far more than they actually were), onerous work hours (12 hours a day for 7 days a week), oppressive contractual terms signed under duress, and, for one of the women, sexual assault by one of her supervisors.
The New Yorker writer, Sarah Stillman, took a peek at some of the internal U.S. government correspondence that her initial inquiry with the government generated in the beginning of 2010. POGO obtained the correspondence through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided them to Stillman, who referenced them in her article. I was familiar with Stillman because I referenced the Fijian women's case briefly in a story I co-wrote for The Washington Post and the Center for Public Integrity last summer (Stillman also briefly approached the Post with the story pitch that eventually led to her New Yorker piece, which explains why the documents refer to her as writing a story for the Post).
Although a minor point relative to the seriousness of the topic, what struck me most about the documents is the tenor of the correspondence. Much of the back-and-forth among Department of Defense (DoD) officials concerns how the matter will look in the press. At least two senior members of the "Marketing Directorate," presumably from AAFES, were involved. While it should not be surprising that PR concerns would be prominent as government employees formulate a response to a reporter, it still is revealing to see how the statements that are eventually made to the press are constructed. Several Air Force and Army generals were involved. One U.S. Army Major General (a two-star general) whose name was redacted wrote the following in an email on his AAFES Blackberry on February 11, 2010: "Let's also make sure, if appropriate, that we include the positive actions (bill of rights, etc...) That we have taken as well." The proposed response to Stillman heavily emphasizes the positive policy changes, including the AAFES worker bill of rights.
Regarding the women's specific allegations, the chief operating officer at AAFES wrote: "While the evidence gather during the IG Investigation did not substantiate the human trafficking allegation, AAFES recognized that better safeguards and improvements were necessary to protect contract workers."
Here is some further background to the documents--including one reason why I believe the Army did not substantiate the women's allegations--from Stillman's New Yorker article:
When several human-rights litigators in Washington, D.C., learned, through my investigation, of the beauticians’ experiences, they flew Vinnie to the U.S. to hear the details of her case. I sat in on several days of interviews with labor experts. Her trip culminated in a meeting with State Department officials, at which Vinnie spoke with purpose about her false recruitment and subsequent mistreatment…
After the meeting, Ambassador at Large Luis Cdebaca, the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, notified officials at AAFES and the Office of the Secretary of Defense about the allegations, and urged them to investigate. “We’re going to make sure that Secretary Clinton is aware of these allegations,” he wrote in a February, 2010, e-mail to Defense Department officials, first obtained by the Project on Government Oversight. Soon thereafter, the women’s story began to circulate among Army officials in a classified PowerPoint presentation, distributed by the U.S. Army Inspector General School. …
Yet, when reporters asked the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (C.I.D.) for details last summer, they were told that allegations of the women’s mistreatment had been investigated earlier and were “not substantiated.” (According to an internal AAFES report, “allegations of rape never surfaced” in the organization’s prior investigation of the women’s recruitment.) C.I.D. officials declined to say whether any victims had been interviewed, and, when reached recently, a C.I.D. spokesman apologized for being unable to locate any record of the case….Lydia and Vinnie both say that no one from the military or AAFES spoke with them about the sexual-assault claims.
The New Yorker, for its part, has posted some of its primary source documentation as well.
Nick Schwellenbach is POGO's Director of Investigations.
Related:
Comments