Many prostitutes in the Balkans are not natives of the region, but are imported from poor Eastern European countries such Russia, Moldova and Romania, according to Ann Jordan, a lawyer with International Human Rights Law Group who works on human trafficking. Some come willingly, Jordan says, knowing that the region is home to a population of highly paid, unaccompanied men from military forces, international aid organizations, the United Nations and private military firms. These women hope to carve out a better life for themselves, maybe send some cash home to their families. Others are tricked by human traffickers who tell them they are going to Italy or another Western European country where they will work at conventional jobs. Many of these women are in their teens, or younger.

However the girls get there, they usually end up trapped. They become indebted to pimps and brothel owners, ostensibly for the cost of importing them. These men take the women's passports and force them to repay the debts through prostitution.

"In the beginning they hold out hope that the situation will improve and they'll be able to go free," Jordan says. "But it's not true."

And sometimes, according to Jordan, these girls are sold outright to a customer -- usually a member of the international contingent participating in some way in rebuilding the region.

According to deposition testimony from DynCorp employees and DynCorp e-mails made public by Johnston's lawsuit, Bosnian police started an investigation in the summer of 1999 after local news media reported that five DynCorp employees had purchased the women's passports from local Serbian mafia elements. Johnston was still relatively new at the job, and says at the time he knew nothing of that investigation. A Bosnian government representative brought the allegations to the attention of the Task Force Eagle commander (Camp Comanche is one of the bases that make up the larger Task Force Eagle). The men were accused in the Bosnian press of "harboring illegal immigrants and participating in organized crime activities to buy ownership (passports) of these aliens," according to an e-mail from Martin Ayers, then DynCorp's manager of European operations, to DynCorp vice president Chris DiGesualdo.

According to e-mails, on Aug. 10, the Army informed DynCorp of the men's names and the accusations against them, and requested they be removed from Bosnia within 48 hours. By Aug. 12, DynCorp had flown the men to a DynCorp office in Germany to be interviewed. Within a few days of arriving in Germany, the men were fired. This apparently satisfied the Army. Thanks to DynCorp's swift action, Ayers' e-mail says, "We were able to turn this into a marketing success."

But an Aug. 11 e-mail from DynCorp manager Joe Becker to Ayers indicates that even as these events unfolded, DynCorp already had an inkling that the problems were more widespread than had been addressed.

"[I]t appears that as many as three other employees are participating in similar activities that have not drawn the police attention and reporting we have seen with these first five," Becker's e-mail says. His solution: "Recommend that any action include counselling of our people to correct further embarrassment of this nature."

Joseph Becker conducted interviews with the four employees when they arrived in Germany, according to his deposition testimony in the Johnston case (the fifth accused employee had already been fired and sent home for failing to show up to work). The impression Becker got from these interviews, he says, was not one of slave and master, but rather one of honorable men who had fallen in love with local prostitutes and tried to buy their freedom. According to Becker, the men had "saved the women."

"I had an opportunity to interview those people and without exception all of them indicated that they would [buy the women] again," Becker says. "They were in tears."

He went on to say in his testimony that he did some research into the idea of men buying sex slaves in order to free them and then marry them, and found it to be common. He asserts there were grounds for dismissal because the men broke the local law, but he says that he found the men's intentions admirable and indicates that he would consider hiring them again if they possessed the right skills for a position he had open.

Ann Jordan of the International Human Rights Law Group says she has heard of men buying women to free them but is uncertain how often they actually do free them. In any event, she says, the transactions are troubling.

"Why not go to the police and help the women get out who want to get out?" Jordan asks. Otherwise, "the person who sold her is still free." And now the good-hearted customer has given money to the slave owner to go buy another girl.

In some cases, Jordan says, the claim of "buying their freedom" is merely an excuse.

"They don't free them to free them," she says. "They free them to keep for themselves."

As the Bosnian investigation was underway in 1999, Johnston says that while he knew that several employees were fired (according to deposition testimony, one of them was his supervisor at the time), he only heard rumors about the circumstances. He had seen prostitution in Germany, but says he didn't yet realize the slavery implications of the profession as practiced in the Balkans.

One of the first things that drove the point home, according to Johnston, was when co-workers began openly talking about it, bragging, even telling him point-blank that they owned women. And that was weeks, even months after DynCorp had fired the first five employees.

In his deposition, Johnston names at least seven co-workers who, he says, openly admitted buying women. An eighth man, according to Johnston, bragged about owning half interest in a brothel and called himself "pimp daddy."

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