Army Captain Pleads Guilty to Gratuities Charge

A Colorado Springs, Colorado, man pleaded guilty today in federal court before U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina to solicitation and receipt of a gratuity, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Thomas G. Walker of the Eastern District of North Carolina.

In connection with his plea, Captain David Anthony Kline, 32, admitted that while serving as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army stationed at Kandahar Air Field (KAF) in Afghanistan, he sought and accepted $50,000 in gratuities from a contractor who was doing business with the U.S. military.  Specifically, from January 2008 to April 2009, then-1st Lt. Kline was deployed to KAF where he oversaw the handling of transportation movement requests (TMRs) directing the transport of supplies from one location to another across Afghanistan.  Although contracting procedures technically did not permit the authorizing officer to specify the particular Afghan trucking company that would perform the transportation, in practice, Kline and others were able to designate the Afghan company of their choice.  Kline admitted that he sought and accepted $50,000 in U.S. currency from an Afghan national who owned a trucking company doing business on government contracts at KAF, in return for Kline’s facilitation of the award and payment of numerous transportation contracts.

The case was investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigation Service, Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and FBI.  The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Wade Weems of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Banumathi Rangarajan of the Eastern District of North Carolina.