Tarnished Witness in Iraqi Kidnapped-Labor Allegations
Neil King Jr. reports on whistleblower Rory Mayberry.
His star testimony before a House panel in July made the nightly newscasts and ran in newspapers around the world.
Rory Mayberry, a 45-year-old medic-turned-whistleblower from Oregon, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad was being built by ?kidnapped? workers from the Philippines.
NBC News anchor Brian Williams started his newscast that night with this question: ?Did the United States build its sprawling new embassy building in Baghdad in effect on the backs of workers who were treated almost like slaves?? Mayberry?s testimony, which he gave wearing a stars-and-stripes tie (check it out on YouTube), became the fodder of dozens of blogs and video casts. In June, The Wall Street Journal quoted him on alleged labor practices at the embassy.
Since then, another question has popped up: Did Rep. Henry Waxman, committee chairman, have any idea who Mayberry was when he asked him to testify before his oversight panel?
Extensive police and court records from Oregon and California show that Mayberry has a string of convictions going back to the mid-1980s, including two for forgery, one for burglary and a fourth for welfare fraud. In 2004, before heading off to Iraq to work as a medic, food service manager, radio technician, and sometime mortician, Mayberry was fined $4,000 for working as an embalmer without a license and for various Oregon state infractions as a ?crematory operator,? records show.
Attempts to reach Mr. Mayberry weren?t successful.
Waxman has relied in part on Mayberry?s testimony to accuse First Kuwaiti, the company in charge of building the vast $600 million embassy, of ?illegal labor trafficking.? This week Waxman also blasted the State Department?s inspector general, Howard Krongard, of thwarting investigations into abuses in Iraq, including investigations of First Kuwaiti?s practices in building the embassy.
Mayberry worked for First Kuwaiti for five days in 2006, until the company fired him, it says, for failure to prove he had proper qualifications. In his July testimony, he described being on a plane en route to Baghdad in 2006 when 51 Filipinos broke out in panic when they heard they were going to work in Baghdad instead of Dubai. A Philippines government inquiry last month found that only 11 workers were on the flight and that all of them knew there were going to Iraq.
In a lengthy statement sent to the Washington Wire Friday, Waxman said he ?was not previously aware? of Mayberry?s background. ?His prior criminal convictions are relevant in assessing his credibility,? the statement said. Nonetheless, Waxman said, the committee relied on ?multiple sources for the allegations of trafficking and adverse conditions beyond Mr. Mayberry.?
?The existence of these multiple sources does not make the allegations true,? Waxman wrote, ?but it certainly makes them worthy of oversight.?
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/09/21/tarnished-witness-in-iraqi-kidnapped-labor-allegations/?mod=blogs
