Daniel Vs. Goliath

Why am I not surprised to learn that a corporation like DynCorp – a company that manages small, private armies for hire – is also capable of screwing over the contractors they send into the farthest corners of hell on earth? This corporation makes part of its profit by sending people into areas where they are likely to get killed; is it reasonable to think they would care about the health or well-being of their employees?

I’m not sure which is worse; that our government uses our military forces for reasons of profit and plunder but does so under the guise of ‘spreading democracy’ or ‘defending freedom’ – or that corporations who perform the same tasks but make no secret of their motivation for what they do?

Either way, it seems the men and women who sign up with the public military force or private mercenary armies do not get the treatment they deserve when they inevitably get wounded to various degrees.  Private armies for hire carry private insurance and as in almost every case, the insurance company is reluctant to approve treatment for injuries.

Due to the mistreatment of one contractor who was shafted by DynCorp’s insurance provider, CNA, there is now a class action suit pending against them. Daniel Brink  was a former police officer working for DynCorp in Iraq when several roadside bombs blasted his SUV costing him several fingers, his right leg…and ultimately his home and life as he had known it.

CNA initially paid for treatment but then later disputed payments for the cost of counseling, follow-up surgeries & even an electric wheelchair. Daniel Brink claims that CNA took months to pay for surgeries and then outright denied other claims. During this time, Brink says that his credit rating plunged, his wheelchair was repossessed, and he lost his home to foreclosure.

He flew to Chicago in May of ‘07, believing he had an appointment to meet with a CNA
claims adjuster about his case. He arrived in Chicago only to discover that nobody from CNA would meet with him. To add insult to injury – security personnel escorted him off the property as though he were a common trespasser with no right to be there on business…

Brink, now with over $150,000 of medical debt, retained legal counsel (Law Offices of Scott Bloch) and has filed a class action lawsuit for “damages in the amount of $2 Billion to remedy the injuries and destruction caused to the lives of thousands of American families and Foreign Citizens whose loved ones were injured while serving America under contracts with the United States, and to punish the companies who made massive profits while causing this harm to people unlawfully and maliciously and working a fraud on the American public who paid them.”

Brink vs CNA et al

According to the website of Scott Bloch, “This is a class action and as such it seeks to redress wrongs to a class of individuals who are similarly situated.  The decision of whether to grant class certification is an important stage of class action litigation and is subject to many factors and intense analysis.  Some of those factors are addressed in the Complaint file in the case.”

“This abusive and illegal scheme by the defendants has been allowed to go on for too long.  We are talking about loss of life, suicide, loss of homes, marriages, families split up”, Bloch said “and the culprits are the large government contractors who should have treated their employees better, and the mega-insurance companies who were paid a hefty sum to make sure the employees were taken care of with uninterrupted benefits in the event of injuries in these war zones.”

Read the Complaint here First Amended Complaint_Brink et al v. Xe Holding LLC et al as filed filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Maybe DynCorp and CNA are just a little tight on cash and can’t afford to help Mr. Brink get his wheelchair back? Oh, oops! Silly me – apparently that isn’t the case…a quick search reveals that DynCorp’s revenue is up 32.2% to $3.4 billion from Calendar Year 2009. They also just scored some sweet contracts* with DoD for work in Afghanistan so it looks as though they’ll be more than financially stable for many years to come.

In October 2011, CNA Financial Corp. reported that its net income rose by 9.3% to $424 million during the first nine months of 2011 compared with the same period last year, as premium gains offset catastrophe and investment losses. Not as big as DynCorp but not so bad off as to not be able to afford $150,000 for medical bills and care.

It appears that there is really no excuse for either company to renege on fair payments owed to Mr. Brink – or any other contractor – who risks life and limb doing the job our government is ultimately sending them to do. Much luck to Mr. Brink and the others who have been shafted by DynCorp/CNA; seems the very least they deserve is to have DynCorp & CNA uphold their end of the employment bargain and properly compensate them for injuries incurred while under the employment of DynCorp and the US government…

*In December 2010, DI was awarded the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) contract by the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense follow-on contract to the civilian police training work that the Company performs under our CivPol contract in Afghanistan with the Department of State. The total value for this thirty-six month contract is approximately $1.0 billion.

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Learn more about DynCorp’s odious deeds and shady past by reading -

Dirty Tricks, Inc: The DynCorp-Government Connection
by Uri Dowbenko

According to DynCorp, the US Government is its biggest client, accounting for more than 95% of its revenues.

      Dyncorp’s clients include the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, CIA, and HUD — all government agencies notorious for rampant, unchecked and egregious fraud. Read Full Story Here

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U.S. Insurance Firm CNA Neglects Survivors of Iraqi Translators, May Face Criminal Charges

By T Christian Miller at ProPublica   May 23, 2011  and The LA Times

An administrative law judge has referred a U.S. insurance company for criminal investigation after the firm failed to pay benefits owed to survivors of Iraqi translators killed while working for the American government.

Under a federally funded program, Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp. provides insurance coverage to contractors killed or injured while working overseas for the United States. The slain translators were helping to train Iraqi police recruits.

Instead of paying out benefits, however, CNA withheld information from the federal government and avoided making payments to nine families who lost relatives in a 2006 attack, according to court files and interviews. One widow lost her home, unable to keep up payments after her son and other translators were ambushed by insurgents in the southern city of Basrah, one of her attorneys said. Full Story Here…

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NIH-Dyncorp-Baxter-Swine Flu Contracts of Deadly Vaccines

This vaccine will infect millions of people with dangerous genes-of African green monkeys which are known to carry the HIV -Aid virus. This is an inhuman method of infecting the monkeys with vaccines-that you will be given. The profit makers NIH and Dyncorp who are partners in billions of dollars in profits working for the US government stand to make a killing -literally. There is no medical or health benefit of being injected with the 3 viruses contained in this vaccine which are: Avian, Swine and Human flu viruses all at once.  In the natural world a person would not get all three viruses at once -this is an over abundance of bacteria entering the body. 

Read Full Story Here

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What does DynCorp hope to buy from Darrell Issa?

 In the runup to the 2010 election, it was clear that Republicans were positioned to retake the majority in the House of Representatives and that Darrell Issa was in line to become chair of the Oversight Committee. Issa’s upcoming power certainly didn’t go unnoticed in lobbyist circles, and Issa saw an influx of new donors in the leadup to election day.

Among those was DynCorp, the private military contractor with billions in federal contracts. The new support included $1,000 to Issa’s re-election campaign and $10,000 to help Issa’s leadership PAC increase its bottom line nine-fold over 2008. DynCorp’s check to the PAC joined big checks from the likes of government contractors Raytheon and SAIC, and of course Koch Industries. DynCorp’s donations to Issa mirrored a 150% increase in its PAC spending between the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. This uptick coincides with a string of scandals for Dyncorp that would be, to say the least, ripe for oversight. 

Full Story Here on IssaWatch