Defense contractors buy lobbying muscle

By SAMUEL LOEWENBERG
For KBR, Danny Langford was a PR nightmare.

At a recent Senate hearing, Langford, in his Texas drawl, told of the broken bags of chemicals and the shiny particles strewn throughout the water treatment plant where he worked in Iraq for KBR, an American contractor. Along with another former employee, Langford alleged that the highly carcinogenic substances sickened them and perhaps hundreds of other workers and U.S. soldiers.

KBR has denied any wrongdoing. But with Democrats in charge on Capitol Hill, congressionally sponsored hearings about misconduct have become commonplace. So the company is fighting back by joining with other contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan to launch a new public relations and lobbying initiative to make its case.

“This is, in essence, a response to the steady drip of negative front-page media reports about contractors and growing public concerns about the effectiveness of the federal contracting process,” said David Marin, who runs the new lobbying and public relations campaign aimed at improving the images of government contractors.

Formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, the global engineering giant was until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton, the controversial oil services company once headed by Vice President Cheney. And KBR, which won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to draw fire.......