"It is a hot zone, but that doesn’t mean you can poison
people! If you can’t do it safely you shouldn’t do it."
Terry Collingsworth, Attorney, International
Labor Rights Fund
When Did Poisoning Foreign Farmers Become
US National Security Policy?
by Preston Peet
March 7, 2002
While discussions about the long term effects
of Monsanto's Agent Orange are
underway in Vietnam now, another of the company's chemical brews
is being sprayed on Colombia by the corporation Dyncorp under
US government contract as part of the US-backed Plan Colombia.
Dyncorp in turn is being sued in a class action suit in US federal
court, filed September 11, 2001, by plantiffs representing up
to 10,000 Ecuadorian indians living along the Ecuador/Colombia
border in the Province of Sucumbios, who have received fallout
from the extremely dangerous chemicals being used ostensibly to
kill coca and poppy plants.
Citing horrific examples of fevers, diarrhea,
skin rashes, eye irritations, body aches, outbreaks of sores,
vomiting, bleeding from the intestines, even 4 dead children in
the area, not to mention all the dead dogs, cats, horses, pigs,
cows, corn, coffee, yucca and other crops, the subsistence farmers,
teachers, and other plaintiffs want the spraying into Ecuador
stopped, economic recompense from Dyncorp for injuries sustained
by themselves and their environment, and medical attention. Dr.
Adolfo Maldonado Campos, a Spanish medical professional who worked
in the afflicted area of Ecuador for 6 years, becoming familiar
with the tropical diseases prevalent there, estimates after visiting
and researching the spraying’s effects that 100 percent of the
Ecuadorians living within 5 kilometers of Dyncorp’s spraying just
across the border in Colombia exhibited symptoms "associated with
acute intoxication from the aerial spray released upon them by
the DynCorp Defendants. The percentage of residents suffering
from acute intoxication decreases to eighty nine per cent of the
population within the zone located between five and ten kilometers
from which the fumigations occurred," according to the lawsuit.
Up to 94 schools in the area had to be closed due to the spraying.
No Descrimination
This poison does not discriminate between
plants, destroying them all. "It kills plants," testified Assistant
Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs Rand Beers in a sworn deposition, Wednesday, February
27, 2002. He was under questioning by Terry Collingsworth, an
attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund representing
the plaintiffs in their suit. "Yeah, they kind of danced around
that issue, but we got a pretty clear, non-ambiguous answer this
time," says Collingsworth. "This poison does not know the difference
between corn and cocaine."
Made up of glyphosate, the generic term for
Monsanto’s herbicide Round-Up, and a surfactant to make the herbicide
stick to the plants, the spray used in Colombia has never been
tested on human beings to gauge its effects, according to Beers’
testimony. Beers refused to confirm the name of the company supplying
the glyphosate, for National Security reasons. Originally the
surfactant mixed with the glyphosate was something called COZMO
FLUX, made by the British company ICI but now apparently made
by a different company, again unidentified by Beers, as ICI stopped
selling their product for use in Plan Colombia after allegations
of children growing ill after inhaling the spray were made public.
No Testing
Under US Executive Order 12114, it is required
that there be tests and documentation thereof as to the possible
ill effects upon the environment and people in a foreign country
resulting from any action on the part of a US agency or group
undertaking US policy. When asked Beers claimed in his deposition
that he had never heard of the Executive Order, but confirmed
that the mixtures of chemicals as used in Plan Colombia have never
been tested on human beings.
"Everyone is pretty amazed by that one,"
says Collingsworth. "That’s significant in that there are legal
requirements in how they test things that are applied outside
of the US. Again, we’ll follow up on that. It goes to the question
of whether they can claim that their fumigant has been approved,
and the answer is "no, it hasn’t." So, for us, that’s all we need
at this stage."
How High Is Too High?
Although Beers’ attorneys continued to raise
objections to many of Collingsworth’s questions, he was able to
confirm that Beers was aware there were negotiations, and implementation
of a no-spray zone along the Ecuador-Colombia border inside of
which planes were not allowed to spray, though Beers would not
divulge the size of the swath, claiming it might alert drug producers
of areas not subject to spraying. "There’s negotiations going
on between the governments of Ecuador, Colombia and the US about
the width of that no-spray zone," says Collingsworth. "That’s
a government to government exercise. We have the documents from
the Ecuadorian side where they initially demanded a 10-km no-spray
zone. Beers, in his deposition, says it is a National Security
secret how wide it is. But there is a no-spray zone. So for our
purposes, that is again fantastic because it does indicate that
there is no ambiguity they’re not supposed to be spraying, either
directly or by accident anybody in Ecuador."
Beers was evasive answering questions about
what sort of guidelines existed governing from how high the planes
could safely spray. "The commercial applications say that you
should spray it from no higher than 10 feet," relates Collingsworth.
"I was asking him what his requirements were, and he wasn’t very
well aware of them. For our purposes, we’re going to be able to
establish that you’re not supposed to spray it very high off the
ground because it drifts. They are spraying it way higher than
anyone would recommend in order to avoid being shot down." Beers
did note in his deposition that both Peru and Bolivia carry out
their eradication programs by hand, refusing to use the herbicides
in their countries. Beers claimed that hostile traffickers and
terrorists made that impossible in Colombia.
What in the Heck is a Dyncorp?
First founded back in 1946 in Reston, Virginia,
Dyncorp bills itself as a "technology and services company".
Dyncorp received a $600 million contract in 1997 from the US Department
of State to spray poisons, provide logistical support, and otherwise
manage operations for the US-backed anti-drug Plan Colombia, launched
in 1998. Since 1991, Dyncorp has worked with the State Department's
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement aviation program,
renewing that contract in 1996. According to the Los
Angeles Times, (link Detroit Times), as of August, 2001, Dyncorp
had approximately 335 civilian employees working on anti-drug
efforts inside Colombia. In 2000, while raising the number from
100, Congress capped the number of civilian contractors allowed
to work in Colombia on Plan Colombia at any one time at 300, a
limit Dyncorp circumvents by utilizing non-US citizens who aren't
counted by the State Department.
Dyncorp has personnel posted around the world,
hiring out private military forces to do the jobs that can‘t be
done by US troops without some sort of Congressional oversight,
often training, equipping, and even transporting foreign countries‘
forces on operations, as in Colombia. Dyncorp is currently the
target of a RICO lawsuit filed by Ben Johnson, a former employee
who alleges Dyncorp fired him for reporting that other Dyncorp
employees and supervisors stationed in Bosnia with him were buying
and trading women sex slaves. Dyncorp’s British subsidiary, DynCorp
Aerospace in Aldershot, England, has been sued in a second suit
by Kathryn Bolkovac, an American who was working as one of the
2,100 police officers Dyncorp is under contract to supply the
United Nations in the Balkans. She also alleges she witnessed
widespread sex trade involvement on the part of her co-workers.
Dyncorp fired her for allegedly falsifying her time sheets, which
Bolkovac denies, after she gathered extensive evidence of the
trade and reported it to her superiors. Dyncorp was also in the
news after a Federal Express package on its way to the Dyncorp
facilities at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida was opened May
12, 2001, inside of which was found 250 grams of a liquid resembling
motor oil that allegedly contained heroin. Dyncorp spokespeople
told the Nation, (July 3, 2001), that the test was done using
"apparently faulty equipment," but the US Embassy in Bogota confirmed
to the Nation that a package on its way to someone at Dyncorp’s
Patrick AFB facilities had been "confiscated" by Colombian police
who had detected heroin in the liquid. No subsequent test results
were forthcoming, and nothing more has been heard of this mysterious
package.
Still the Early Stages
"We’re at the very early stages of this,"
says Collingsworth, "so we have not yet had the right to get information
from Dyncorp. Once I win this first round I will be able to get
documents from them. That’s sort of what the purpose of this round
one is, to be a reality check on the complaint, and we will win
it." The International Labor Rights Fund, an AFL-CIO affiliated
organization, is filing a response Monday, March 8, to Dyncorp’s
lawyers' motion filed in front of federal judge Richard Roberts
in January 2002, seeking to dismiss the suit over mainly National
Security reasons. Their motion went to great lengths to prove
the indispensability of the spraying campaign, immediately contradicting
itself by first noting the long time US involvement in Colombia
since the late 1970s, then illustrating how the drug trade has
only exploded in size and dimension over those years. Dyncorp’s
CEO, Paul. V Lombarti, wrote a letter on October 25, 2001, to
the Rights Fund’s President, Bishop Jesse de Witt, and to all
the Fund’s board members, asserting that the plaintiffs’ actions
if successful would only benefit the drug cartels, and that in
these post- September 11 days it would be best not to be distracted
by such a "frivolous," lawsuit, meant merely to "fulfill a political
agenda."
An Excuse to Increase Spraying
All this comes at a time when the US government
is questioning whether alternative development programs in Colombia
are helping decrease the amounts of coca and poppies grown. The
General Accounting Office released a report on February 8, 2002,
noting that as they are administered now, alternative crop substitution
programs are not economically feasible, nor efficacious enough
in cutting drug production to continue at this time. GAO noted
that only $5.6 million of $52.5 million allocated for alternative
development was spent by September 30, the end of the last fiscal
year. Senators Charles Grassley, (R- Iowa), Jesse Helms, (R- NC)
and Mike DeWine, (R- OH) requested the inquiry to find out why
this money was not being spent.
"I suspect this report is part of a Republican
effort to discredit alternative development in Colombia (which
isn't hard to do) IN ORDER to say it isn't working and that the
US should be able to fumigate without worrying about providing
farmers with an alternative," says Sanho Tree of the Washington,
DC based Institute for Policy Studies‘ Drug Policy Project. "There
are indeed huge problems with the design, implementation, and
effectiveness of alternative development, but this pittance is
usually all that campesino families are left with as the fumigation
proceeds. Of course the US shouldn't be intervening in Colombia
in the first place, but I suspect Jesse Helms & Co. simply want
to forget about any compensation to peasant farmers so that they
can spray the region harder and faster. Or worse, US-backed troops
need to occupy the region before alternative development money
can be spent "effectively". The current alternative development
sham leaves campesinos between a rock and a hard place, but if
these Republicans have their way, these farmers would be left
with less than nothing. So much for compassionate conservatism.
GAO reports are a bit like Arthur Anderson: depending on which
party requests the study, they'll tell them what they want to
hear. In this case, it was requested by three of the harshest
drug warriors in the Senate."
-----------------------
Here is a collection of links leading to information
about Dyncorp, its actions, history, missions, troubles and even
Dyncorp's own views on things.
International
Labor Rights Fund Lawsuits Against Dyncorp.
Rumble
from the Jungle
Fumigation-
An Attack on the Ecology and People of Colombia
OCP
Protestors Attacked by Military
Ecuador
Hope for Settlement in ChevronTexaco Case
Oil
Inflames Colombia's Civil War
US
Contractors to Colombia
Ecuadorans
File US Suit Over Plan Colombia
Statement
of Paul Lombardi- President and Chief Executive
Dyncorp
Dyncorp International
Career Opportunities
Dyncorp-
Beyond the Rule of Law
Dyncorp
in Colombia- Outsourcing the Drug War
Dyncorp-
State Department Contract
Dyncorp's
British Subsidiary Sued in the UK
Ecuadorian
Indians To Sue Dyncorp
Defense
Contract for Dyncorp- 2002
Dyncorp
Sucks
Dyncorp's
Drug Problem
The
State Department's Disinformation Campaign
Herbicide
Spraying Violates Human Rights
Use
of Foreign Pilots Limits Congressional Oversight
Executive
Order 12114
Hold
the Line
20 Questions for Enron
Tracking
"Pug" Winokur, Wolf in Enron Clothing
The
Hijackers of Harvard: Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur
Who
Are the Terrorists?
Shades
of Vietnam
Drug
War Spraying Colombia to Death