KBR Memos on Violence May Undercut Defense in Iraq-Driver Cases

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Source: Bloomberg

April 21 (Bloomberg) -- KBR Inc., the largest U.S. military contractor in Iraq, received warnings about escalating violence and then sent six civilian drivers to their deaths in a battle zone in April 2004, said families of the men suing the company.

Company officials said in court filings and in an interview that they were required under the terms of their contract with the U.S. Army to send out the fuel convoys. Undermining that argument, KBR officials warned of danger to the unarmed drivers and said the contractor was within its rights to call off the fuel runs, according to memos and e-mails filed by the families in Houston federal court.

KBR’s Iraq project manager said in 2003 that supervisors could “stop any activity which you believe to be unsafe,” according to the documents. Tom Crum, the top Middle East company executive, wrote on the day of the attacks, April 9, 2004, that “we will refuse” to expose drivers to unacceptable risk. The documents were filed as part of three lawsuits over the deaths and injuries of 19 drivers.

“We need to work with the army without a doubt, relative to stopping convoys,” Crum wrote after the convoys had started, in an e-mail filed with U.S. District Judge Gray Miller. “But if we in management believe the army is asking us to put our KBR employees in danger that we are not willing to accept then we will refuse to go.”

Crum added that Houston-based KBR “cannot allow the army to push us to put our people in harm’s way.”

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