PMCs: Private Military Contractors

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday October 29, @11:20AM

Private Firms Assist U.S. Military

AP Guardian -October 29

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

In Iraq, private contractors do just about everything a soldier would do. They sling Spam in mess tents. They tote guns along base perimeters. They shoot. They get shot. Sometimes they get killed. And it's not just in Iraq, but around the world — in conflict zones from Liberia to Kosovo to Afghanistan — that the United States is putting hired help behind the front lines to ease the burden of its overworked armed forces.

By paying civilians to handle military tasks, the Bush administration is freeing up U.S. troops to fight. But the use of contractors also hides the true costs of war.

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Their dead aren't added to official body counts. Their duties — and profits — are hidden by close-mouthed executives who won't give details to Congress. And as their coffers and roles swell, companies are funneling earnings into political campaigns and gaining influence over military policy — even getting paid to recommend themselves for lucrative contracts.

For the civilians handling these soldierly jobs, the risks are high.

A contractor near the Iraqi city of Fallujah died and an American engineer was wounded when their vehicles came under attack Monday — possibly by U.S. soldiers, said the British-based company, European Landmine Solutions. U.S. officials said their soldiers weren't responsible.

The chief military contractor in Iraq, Kellogg, Brown & Root, has had three workers killed in Iraq, two of whom died in ambushes.

Another top U.S. military contractor, DynCorp, saw three of its workers killed in an ambush by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip this month.

In Afghanistan, two civilian contractors working for the CIA were slain in an ambush Saturday.

And in Liberia, contractors guarding the U.S. Embassy have fought like soldiers during rebel sieges, at times lifting guns from slain rebels, said Horacio "Hersh" Hernandez, a retired Marine with Intercon security in Liberia. He owes his job, he says, to post-Cold War defense cuts and a slew of new U.S. engagements.

"It's a massive business boom for the private security field," Hernandez said.

As the United States slashes the size of its standing army from 2.1 million in 1990 to 1.4 million now, the Pentagon began running out of soldiers to handle postwar violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo while facing threats elsewhere.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued wars could still be fought without boosting the number of soldiers by outsourcing just about everything except battlefield gunning.

Under U.S. employ in Iraq, American companies turn profits while operating missile defense batteries, piloting unmanned aerial vehicles and snapping satellite pictures of bombing targets.

The machine-gun toting guards who shadow Afghan President Hamid Karzai and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, are private-sector workers, as are those who built and operate the cavernous white mess tent on the base of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Baghdad.

There, a $3 million contract with Kellogg, Brown & Root paid for the tent's construction and the Bangladeshi and Indian cooks who feed 4,000 troops daily. One soldier breakfasting inside the tent, a nine-year veteran, said she's been sent to patrol Baghdad since contractors took her job as a cook.

With Kellogg, Brown & Root handling everything from mail delivery to bug control on U.S. bases in Iraq and around the world, plenty of other soldiers are finding themselves on the front lines.

Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution military analyst, estimates there is one contractor for every 10 foreign soldiers in Iraq — 10 times the private involvement in the Gulf War.

Worldwide, private military companies earn about $100 billion in yearly government contracts, Singer believes. Ninety private military companies are listed on the Web site for the Center for Public Integrity. In comparison, the U.S. defense budget is about $380 billion this year, excluding emergency spending, and is expected to rise to more than $400 billion.

Some of the firms working in Iraq are huge, politically connected conglomerates like Halliburton — corporate parent of Kellogg, Brown & Root and formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites). Others are little known, like Erinys, a security firm chocked with former South African special forces that will train 6,500 Iraqis to guard oil installations.

The world of military contracts is a murky one.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, important buildings in the capitals bristle with gun-toting Americans in sunglasses. They favor khaki photographers' vests and a few military accoutrements, but lack the name tags and identifying patches of a soldier.

Ask who they work for and one often hears "no comment" or "I can't tell you that."

Contractors' deaths aren't counted among the tally of more than 350 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. No one is sure how many private workers have been killed, or, indeed, even how many are toiling in Iraq for the U.S. government. Estimates range from under 10,000 to more than 20,000 — which could make private contractors the largest U.S. coalition partner ahead of Britain's 11,000 troops.

Global Risks Strategies, a security firm with about 1,100 workers on the ground — mainly armed former Nepalese and Fijian soldiers — is among security companies that have more personnel in Iraq than some other countries taking part in the occupation, Singer said.

To the consternation of U.S. lawmakers, there is little or no Congressional oversight of contractors hired by the executive branch of government — whether through the State Department, Pentagon or the CIA.

Many, like San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., which trains Iraqi journalists, police and soldiers, are privately held firms employing ex-soldiers and spies.

"We refrain from talking about things our customers don't want us talking about," said Science Applications spokesman Jason McIntosh. "That's just good policy."

Some private contracts look like covert operations once handled by the CIA — such as cocaine eradication in South America now done by companies that fly crop-dusters in Colombia.

In September, a contractor's spray plane was shot down and its pilot killed in Colombia. Then in February, three employees of California Microwave Systems were captured by a rebel group when their plane crashed on a U.S. anti-drug mission.

Had those been U.S. soldiers, the public outcry and government response would have been sharp, said Deborah Avant, a political scientist at George Washington University.

The connection between companies and politicians in Washington raises the specter of executives lobbying for a hawkish U.S. foreign policy since they profit from war, Avant said.

Iraq contractors DynCorp, Bechtel and Halliburton donated more than $2.2 million — mainly to Republican causes like the 2000 Bush presidential campaign — between 1999 and 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In the case of Halliburton, the U.S. government hired the company in Iraq without a competitive bid, after the company recommended itself in a study. Halliburton's Iraq oil services contract, worth $1.59 billion so far, will be extended until December or January. The company reported Wednesday that its government work in Iraq and elsewhere helped boost yearly third-quarter earnings by 39 percent, to $4.14 billion.

Contractors don't appear to be pulling personnel out of Iraq despite attacks — something that has chased U.S. forces out of hotspots before.

AP writers Austin Merrill in Monrovia, Liberia, and Tini Tran in Baghdad, Iraq, contributed to this report.

Center for Public Integrity contractor site

Some Things Just Can't Be Handed Off

LA Times -October 25, 2001

By P.W. SINGER,
P.W. Singer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry." .

No one would seriously think of having private companies do our bombing for us in Afghanistan. Yet we have privatized our national security in many dangerous ways.

Companies such as BioPort, Argenbright Holdings and Aviation Development Corp. may have bland-sounding corporate names, but the organizations behind them are anything but ordinary. They are private businesses that have been paid to take over critical government responsibilities. More important, they have failed, and it is now the American public that is paying the price.

BioPort is the firm that has a monopoly over the production of the anthrax vaccine in the U.S.

Until the mid-1990s, a government-owned lab in Michigan was the primary vaccine supplier, but in 1998 the lab was auctioned off to the highest bidder. The firm has yet to pass an inspection by the Food and Drug Administration. There are disputes over the effectiveness of the vaccine it makes and its side effects on U.S. soldiers. The last visit by inspectors found that employees working in the supposedly sterile section where the vaccine is produced sometimes did not even bother to wash their hands.

Argenbright Security is the company that provides security and pre-boarding screeners at a number of the nation's airports, including Newark International, Boston's Logan and Washington's Dulles. We all know of its failure to stop the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11. Less publicized is the fact that the firm was recently cited by the Justice Department for allowing more than 1,300 untrained screeners to work at airports, including dozens of convicted criminals.

Aviation Development is the company that provides contract pilots and radar technicians to the CIA and State Department. This spring, its employees mistakenly directed the shoot-down of a private passenger plane in Peru. The plane was carrying a family of missionaries.

These companies are only the tip of the iceberg, and yet we seem to have learned nothing from their failures.

For example, the responsibility for developing the next generation of vaccines was given to Dynport, a company intricately linked with BioPort. Argenbright remains at work at the airports. Contractors still run vast sections of the U.S. intelligence and reconnaissance programs.

In the last few decades, the government has outsourced or privatized a wide variety of functions. They range from accounting and garbage collection to supply-chain management and information technology.

These programs have not only trimmed the excess fat of government but also have provided large gains to the American public in money saved and better service.

However, in our rush to privatize we may have cut too deep. A number of activities—especially those in the national security field—that should have stayed under the strict control of public institutions were contracted out. The companies that now provide them are motivated solely by profit.

This is a sword that cuts two ways. It may drive the firms that have taken over these tasks to be more efficient, but it also may lead them to cut corners. If it happens in the wrong areas, the resulting risks of failed outsourcing can be dangerous.

When a company mismanages garbage collection, trash piles on the street. When a company fails to deliver a safe vaccine, lives are at stake.

The exact divide between public and private responsibilities is often murky. When it comes to the security of our society, however, there must be no confusion.

Security is a fundamental public service that requires a special public trust. Those who carry out its core missions should be responsible to the public and not other entities, in particular not those with an eye on the bottom line.

According to the U.S. Constitution, the most basic role of government is "to provide for the common defense."

Something is wrong when we turn over this essential responsibility to private companies with track records that can only be described as horrible.

Just because private companies can do the job doesn't mean they always should. There are some things that are best left to government, with all the assurances of public controls and accountability.

Our security is one of them.

Brookings Institute- Institute with a different "spin"?

Disinfopedia.org

The Brookings Institution traces its beginnings to 1916, when a group of leading reformers founded the Institute for Government Research (IGR), the first private organization devoted to analyzing public policy issues at the national level. In 1922 and 1924, one of IGR's backers, Robert Somers Brookings (1850-1932), established two supporting sister organizations: the Institute of Economics and a graduate school bearing his name. In 1927, the three groups merged to form the Brookings Institution, honoring the businessman from St. Louis whose leadership shaped the earlier organizations.

"Today, Brookings is financed largely by an endowment and through the support of philanthropic foundations, corporations, and private individuals. The Institution's funds are devoted to carrying out its own research and educational activities. Brookings also undertakes some unclassified government contract studies, reserving the right to publish its findings from them.

Brookings scholars articles on Disinfopedia include Kenneth W. Dam, Kenneth M. Pollack, Peter Singer, James B. Steinberg, and Strobe Talbott.

Cooperation & Affiliation

* American Enterprise Institute, US (AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies; joint conferences, publications, research)

* Wharton Business School, US (Brookings-Wharton Papers on Economic Activity; joint research, conferences, publications)

How the CIA is revealing the identity of their own people to support "privatized Intelligence"

CIA Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
28 October 2003

CIA Statement on the Deaths of Civilian Contractors in Afghanistan

On Saturday October 25, 2003, two civilian contractors working for the Central Intelligence Agency were killed during an ambush near Shkin, Afghanistan. The officers, William Carlson and Christopher Glenn Mueller, assigned to CIA’s Directorate of Operations, died while tracking terrorists operating in the region.

Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said, “These two men were no strangers to the hardships of service to country. They had been counted among the best of America’s military.”

Before working for the CIA, Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, North Carolina had extensive experience in Army special operations. Mueller, 32 of San Diego, California was a veteran of Navy special operations.

Tenet added, “With the Central Intelligence Agency, they continued their contributions to the security of the United States and the cause of freedom in the world. William Carlson and Christopher Mueller were defined by dedication and courage.”

Please read also BENS (at 911review.org)

"...Business Executives for National Security (BENS) is a nationwide, non-partisan organization and primary channel through which senior business executives can affect national security policy. BENS is located in front of the White House. (1717 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20570) Chairman Stanley A. Weiss is a member of the Advisory Board of RAND's (->) Center for Middle East Public Policy and a member of the Cfr. In November 2002, Weiss released his pro-war article "Axis of Hope: Iraq, Turkey, Israel".

http://www.bens.org/sw_ar110702.html President General Charles G. Boyd, formerly US Air Force, served before at the CFR, as a commander of Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base (->, Mohammad Atta ->), as strategy consultant to then Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. In July 1998, he became executive director of the Hart-Rudman National Security Commission (->), "which already foresaw the growing terrorist threat to the United States well before the September 11, 2001 attacks." http://www.bens.org/who_CharlesBoyd.html http://www.bens.org/who_board.html

Larry K Smith, Chief Operating Officer is with BENS since 1992. He was Counselor to Secretaries of Defense Les Aspin and William Perry in 1993 and 1994 and served as Chief-of-Staff for Senator Gary Hart (->) from 1978 to 1982, who received an early warning (->) on an attack in September 2001 and informed Condoleeza Rice (->) on this info, who ignored it. (-> early warnings)

Members of BENS are Norman R. Augustine (Director Lockheed Martin ->), David S. Browning (Vice President of Schlumberger ->), Daniel H. Case, III (Chase), Rudy de Leon (Senior VP, Boeing), Victor Ganzi (The Hearst Corporation), Richard Grasso (New York Stock Exchange), Frank W. Jenkins (SAIC ->), Paul V. Lombardi (President and CEO of DynCorp ->), Stephen T. McClellan (Merryl Lynch), Philip A. Odeen (->, TRW ->), Peter G. Peterson (->) and Stephen A. Schwarzman (->Blackstone Group), Stanley A. Weiss (Chairman and Founder Business Executives for National Security, Washington DC) and Laurence F. Whittemore (Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which was Prescott Bush -> first company, established with the help the Dulles Brothers, Nazi company IG Farben and the Hamburg-Amerika-Line). http://www.bens.org/members.html

On February 28th, 2002, Josh S. Weston, Honorary Chairman of BENS, testified, that in early 2001, Warren Rudman and he delivered and discussed their "Tail-Tooth Call to Action with each of the incoming new service secretaries and their deputies.

Starting with Donald Rumsfeld and Pete Aldridge (-> thermobarics), each of them enthusiastically endorsed our blueprints for action. Secretary Rumsfeld indicated so as recently as last September 10th." The Tail-Tooth Call to Action was a blueprint "to redirect unnecessary and wasteful overhead resources", which had been already used before Sep11th. http://www.bens.org/highlights_testimony_weston.html Assistant President of the Tail-to-Tooth Commission Commission is Paul E. Taibl, a retired Air Force officer and former command pilot, airlift planner and senior fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Vice President of the TTT commission, which tried to "change Pentagon business practices" before Sep11th is Kenneth D. Beeks, another retired Navy test pilot who joined the BENS staff in June 2000. 2 months earlier, BENS was joined by Michael W. Doubleday Vice President for Communications, former deputy spokesman for the Pentagon from 1995 to July 1999 and part of the military public affairs operation in Riyadh, SaudiArabia during the Gulf War. Eric Fanning from CBS National News joined in March 2001 as Vice President for Strategic Development. BENS currently partners with New Jersey HomelandSecurity.

Linda Millis from the NSA and CIA joined one month earlier, in February 2001 as Vice President for "New Threats". http://www.bens.org/who_staff.html From 1994-96, Millis was the Assistant Director on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Her expertise at the NSA was in intelligence programs management, arms control and Russian military and political affairs. During early 2001, Millis was working as the Deputy Chief of Cryptologic Services Group of the CIA, where she briefed the Deputy Director of Intelligence daily and contributed to Presidents Bush's Daily Brief. Millis holds a Master in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (->). Millis resides in Vienna, Virginia, the same city, where official hijackers Saled Alghamdi and Waleed M. Alshehri lived.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/terrorism/experts/bios/millis_linda.html

http://www.newsday.com/ny-usprob152367589sep15,0,2383011.story http://cjonline.com/stories/091501/ter_wtchijackers.shtml Vienna is furthermore home of CIA officers CIA agents Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren and FinCen (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) (-> James Fl. Sloan ->) In May 2002, FinCen started "vehemently" to deny a U.N. report that "Mohamed Atta, one of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, received a transfer of funds into his U.S. account which was flagged by his bank", while it was already reported different in the official indictment against Moussaoui,HabibZacarias.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20020523_2026.html http://www.bens.org/ http://www.bens.org/about.html (See Intellibridge) Compare: http://www.burningbush.netfirms.com

Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations

AP -October 30

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their executives have had important political and military connections, according to a study released Thursday.

The study of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years.

The report was released by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research organization that produces investigative articles on special interests and ethics in government. Its staff includes journalists and researchers.

The top contract recipient was the Halliburton subsidiary KBR, with more than $2.3 billion awarded to support the U.S. military and restore Iraq's oil industry.

Halliburton was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney before he resigned to run with Bush in 2000.

Bechtel was second with a $1 billion capital construction contract involving Iraq's utilities, telecommunications, railroads, ports, schools, health care facilities, bridges, roads and airports.

The top 10 contractors contributed $11 million to national political parties, candidates and political action committees since 1990.

Fourteen of the companies won contracts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Those companies, combined, have given more than $23 million in political contributions since 1990.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz is a member of Bechtel's board of directors, although he has no management role, according to the company's Web site.

Riley Bechtel, the chairman and chief executive officer, was named early this year to the President's Export Council, which advises the president on programs to improve U.S. trade.

Jack Sheehan, senior vice president in Bechtel's petroleum and chemicals business, served on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the defense secretary on a variety of issues.

Other contractors also had connections. Among those cited by the Center:

David Kay, head of the Bush administration's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a former vice president of Science Applications International Corp. He left the company in October 2002.

Christopher "Ryan" Henry left the same company as a vice president in February 2003 to become principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

Scott Spangler, principal owner of Chemonics International, was a senior U.S. Agency for International Development official during the first Bush administration. The company receives 90 percent of its business from USAID.

Sullivan Haave Associates Inc. was founded by Carol Haave, currently the deputy assistant secretary of defense for security and information operations.

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