Ben Johnston objected to sexual slavery.

The courtroom scene in A Few Good Men is best remembered for a grizzled U.S. Marine colonel (portrayed by Jack Nicholson) bellowing on cross-examination, "You can't handle the truth," and then spewing testimony that gets him hauled to the pokey while the defendant is set free. Imagine a dozen Nicholsons being grilled, and it's easy to visualize the upcoming civil trial involving DynCorp. The company, a major Fort Worth employer, provides overseas civilian personnel to U.S. military branches. Many DynCorp employees are former military personnel instilled with the same code of loyalty displayed by Nicholson's fictional colonel -- and, apparently, the same tendency to stick their feet in their mouths.

Transcripts of the depositions that DynCorp employees are providing could be pasted directly into a screenplay. A DynCorp movie might be difficult to market -- criticizing Americans assigned to foreign lands is currently unfashionable. But some people are always willing to buck trends, especially when human decency and our country's reputation are involved.

Former airplane mechanic Ben Johnston, of Shallowater (near Lubbock), filed a lawsuit against DynCorp, claiming breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, willful or malicious conduct, and violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute (Fort Worth Weekly, "To Bosnia, With Lust," Dec. 6, 2001). DynCorp denied the allegations, and the case could go to trial as early as May in a Fort Worth district court.

DynCorp hired Johnston in November, 1998, and sent him to Bosnia to work on airplanes at a U.S. Army base. Bosnia was scorched by war in the 1990s, and the human carnage was devastating. The United States worked with the international community to rebuild Bosnia by reducing arms, reversing ethnic cleansing, and re-establishing human rights. The U.S. military outsourced some jobs and relied on DynCorp to provide workers. DynCorp is no smalltime temp service -- the company claims to generate more than $2 billion in annual revenues with a $4 billion contract backlog, and boasts more than 20,000 employees in 550 locations.

Johnston settled in Tuzla, Bosnia, and grew to appreciate the conservative Muslim community. He met and married a Bosnian woman and planned to stay there forever, he said. That changed when he took a stand against what he considered indecency by co-workers, some of whom he deemed "bottom dwellers." He accused supervisors and co-workers of regularly soliciting prostitutes and participating in the sex trade by purchasing the passports of young girls duped into sex slavery. The practices outraged the local community, but DynCorp generally ignored and even discreetly promoted the practice, Johnston said.

His accusations made him a marked man. Johnston became a verbal target of peers and a liability to Bosnian organized criminals who operated brothels, smuggled prostitutes, and relied on Americans' money. A U.S. Army criminal investigation unit placed Johnston and his wife in protective custody for 10 days before they fled Bosnia and returned to Johnston's hometown in West Texas. DynCorp fired him and characterized him as a malcontent with work-performance problems who squealed when he realized he would be laid off.

Most employees support DynCorp. Mechanics working in Bosnia typically earn more than $100,000 (tax-free) in a country where locals live on about $5,000 a year. Being wealthy and immune to prosecution in a land struggling to re-establish the rule of law opens a door to abuses, and some Americans rushed through with libidos raging. And why not? DynCorp employees who run afoul of Bosnian authorities are hustled out of the country before they can be prosecuted. Some are reassigned. At worst, they lose their jobs and go their merry ways.

Attorneys for Johnston and DynCorp are now taking depositions, or sworn statements provided prior to trial. Witnesses can face perjury charges if they lie. Depositions so far show employees as guarded and evasive, yet their testimony still reveals an underlying picture of corruption.

Consider the testimony of Dan Martins, a DynCorp supervisor in Bosnia, who rivals Bill Clinton when it comes to dodging questions. An attorney asked him who he had discussed his testimony with prior to the deposition. "Who do you mean by who?" Martins responded.

"I mean like the names of human beings with whom you've had conversation, is what I mean by who," the exasperated attorney replied.

The attorney led the conversation to an e-mail that Martins wrote accusing Johnston of acting like a sponsor for the brothels and showing new employees where bars and prostitutes were located. "Are those statements true?" the attorney asked.

"Yes sir," Martins replied.

"Did he show you around where all the local bars and all the women were located?"

"Not directly, no," Martins said, and admitted that his accusations were based on secondhand information from "different people who are now since gone."

Further grilling prompted Martins to name Johnston's accuser -- a mechanic who had been fired after Johnston's complaints prompted the U.S. Army investigation. The mechanic was discovered to have illegally purchased weapons and immigrant women, and had in his possession a videotape showing a DynCorp supervisor having sex with two young women, one of whom is heard on the tape saying, "No, no." The mechanic admitted buying the tape from a Bosnian mafia member called "The Belly," who operated a local brothel, to use for blackmail should the supervisor ever target him. DynCorp also fired the supervisor. Neither faced Bosnian or American prosecution.

The attorney finally asked Martins if his portrayal of Johnston as something similar to a pimp was fair.

"It may not have been," Martins said.

As for Martins' credibility, a co-worker and local translator accused him during the U.S. Army investigation of purchasing a young Romanian woman. During his deposition, Martins denied that he bought the woman, saying he met her at a party; they conversed using rudimentary sign language since she spoke no English, and they later moved in together. He described her as his fiancée but had trouble spelling her last name. He said he couldn't determine where the various immigrant women in Bosnia hailed from because, "You talk to one, they all sound the same." Later, he contradicted himself by saying he met his fiancée at a bar -- a well-known brothel -- in 1999 when she was 19. Martins, 50, is still a DynCorp supervisor in Bosnia.

Other revelations in the depositions included a co-worker's claim that Johnston bragged of having sex with a prostitute while he wore a wetsuit and flippers. Johnston, in a recent conversation with Fort Worth Weekly, remembered otherwise. "I said I wouldn't go in one of those places with a wetsuit on, because of diseases and things," he said. "How do you even find a wetsuit in Bosnia?"

Another co-worker claimed that employees passed the hat and raised money for Johnston to sleep with two prostitutes during his bachelor party. After questioning by Johnston's lawyer, the employee admitted that he wasn't sure why the money was collected and, on second thought, it might have been for a wedding present.

Several employees said Johnston tried to sell them illegal weapons. Johnston scoffed at the claims and volunteered to take a lie detector test. "It's just them trying to say I'm bad," Johnston said. "They didn't like me breaking up the boys' club, that's the only reason."

More than a dozen depositions have been provided so far, and, combined with other evidence, they portray some DynCorp employees as clannish whoremongers and DynCorp officials as deceitful spinmeisters more concerned with shrouding illegal activity than correcting it. DynCorp officials, in fact, can't seem to agree on why Johnston was fired. Reasons have ranged from poor work performance to bringing discredit to the company to being involved in illegal activities to a simple layoff due to workforce reduction.

DynCorp has denied Johnston's accusations, but company officials, in e-mails exchanged at work, revealed their awareness of employee behavior. The e-mails have become part of court filings in Johnston's lawsuit. After Johnston complained, U.S. Army officials targeted DynCorp employees for interrogation on June 2, 2000. Two days later, company officials traded e-mails that discussed the situation. One official wrote, "The (U.S. Army) agents told me that they expect five people to be banned from the base when it is over. They believe (Johnston's supervisor) to be the one setting all the people up with the Mafia leader. They have told me that they are not after DynCorp; they want information so that the local authorities can arrest the Mafia leader. It just happens that the DynCorp employees are the direct link for the military to this Mafia leader." Later, in the same e-mail, the official wrote, "I will do the best I can to clean this mess up for all of us. I have the company's interest at heart and all of our jobs."

The whole truth may not come out during trial, but testimony could provide more entertainment than a Jack Nicholson courtroom scene, and that's no small feat.