Private Military Contractors – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
by Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief
I’ve been an open critic of the evils of hiring private military contractors (PMC) who add another layer of secrecy to the public’s right to know what legal and illegal acts our government is involved in. Some of my subscribers are current and former members of contract military operations. They are patriotic and don’t feel they should be getting a bad rap because of a few bad apples. True enough, but my response has always included the fact that there is something sinister going on in the very creation and growth of these private military contractors and it has to do with black operations with an evil purpose that the good employees may not see. When a person works for an organization that participates, even peripherally, in an evil and secret government agenda, even good employees eventually get tainted by it. One insider and subscriber who was involved directly in the founding of one of the major military contractors has given me some deeper insights into these operations, which I’ll share here.
First, he responded to my question of why the CIA would start outsourcing covert operations to PMCs. “There are a couple of reasons that the agency outsources projects. The primary one, is the lack of internal talent and the second is a stifling bureaucracy that is truly adverse to risk. There may well be others [like my suspicion that the agency has to cover up some operations that are completely antithetical to America’s interests], but I am not familiar with them [which is true of all people on the good side——unless they happen upon information they aren’t supposed to see].
“In the days leading up to Sept 11, the Agency was down to approximately 40 Operators (yes, forty) in its vaunted Directorate of Operations (D.O.). While things have improved somewhat since then, the Agency still continues to have challenges associated with attracting talent from the SOF [Soldier of Fortune] community, in particular the Tier One guys (black side operations) represented by CAG [Combat Applications Group] (i.e. Delta Force), DevGru (formerly Seal Team 6) an, as of yet, unnamed organization that is one step beyond the capability of Delta.
“From the perspective of the Operator, once they decide to leave the military, their employment options have historically been limited until recent years. With the advent of the PMC’s, the Operators have been presented with further options for employment that has only exacerbate the recruiting situation for the agency… I can’t tell you how pissed off the DO guys at the agency were once they realized we had recruited virtually the entire pool of tier one talent.
Through the PMC’s, the private Operators are: 1) offered the opportunity to earn some [very good] $ doing interesting work; 2) they are doing something slightly less dangerous within their field of expertise, but continue to get to work with many of the same guys they served with; 3) they don’t have to deal with the ridiculous bureaucracy at the Agency; 4) and lastly, experienced Tier One guys, who are typically older (mid to late 30’s) don’t want to have to baby sit a fresh new punk that just graduated from the Farm [CIA covert training camp in Virginia]- something they hate.
“Bottom line, the agency can’t attract the talent because it is run by a bunch of risk adverse attorneys and the guys who know how to do the stuff they need, don’t want to work for them. This has resulted in the wholesale outsourcing of many (most) projects to include the Agency’s field security. For example, the primary agency ‘security’ contract has been held for years by MVM Inc. (owned by Northrop Grumman), but as the GWOT [Global War on Terror] jobs expanded [code name for Special Ops jobs], Blackwater, Triple Canopy and others got into the action.
"It is a completely closed world [to insiders only]. You have to have the right ‘clearances’ to even bid on the contracts, but if you don't have a contract, you can't have the clearance, and therefore are not even aware the business exists. It is basically a closed, tight knit fraternity that few people are aware of, much less know how it operates. For example, in my experience, most people don't now know that most ‘agency’ guys [CIA] won't even go into the field without a private security team to keep them out of trouble. That being said, these contracts are competitively bid - sort of.
"As for some of your [WAB editor] assumptions about Black side operations [that there is a dark side agenda, including the training up of thugs to someday take down American patriots], I won't tell you that they are wrong, but I will tell you that they are not nearly as conspiratorial, evil or underhanded as you think [He’s correct about the day to day affairs most of his group is involved in]. The hundred or so Tier One Operators that I know, are by and large great guys and they truly love their country, however most are wired a little differently, which is the psychological make up that allows them to do what they do on a daily basis."
Next this source gave me some insider details about a large PMC company he was involved in. I’ve deleted the company names to protect his identity. "The Agency tried to force a merger between [ ] and [ ] a Spook shop (with approx 90% of its revenues coming from the intel community) and I was against it as it was going to screw our early shareholders. This led to a coup, where two closet leftists I had brought into the company conspired to steal it and sell it to the [Spook shop] on the behalf of the Agency. They were unsuccessful and eventually lost a costly court battle that resulted in a bunch of slimy underhanded moves on their part... I was eventually bought out once they realized that the litigation associated with their coup was going to kill them.
"The [unnamed PMC] has struggled somewhat since then - having lost the majority of their Tier One guys and only in recent history, as Blackwater (BW) struggled with the attacks from leftists, have they begun to really grow again (taking over BW's DOS contracts in Iraq, among others).
"The ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] is merely a pawn in the game. To this day, I will always remember the ATF arriving unannounced at our offices... and telling us they were ‘here to help.’ ——Oh really? ——well that was an interesting conversation... Anyway, the ATF was told to get our paper work in order by someone up the "food chain" [higher powers in Washington DC——this confirms my claim that no one but insiders get invited to get the special licenses required to deal with lethal military equipment].
"Most PMC's don't own the weapons they operate. While the weapons are purchased by the companies, they are purchased on the behalf of the US government (under contract) and are used by the PMC during the term of their contract and at the end of the contract, are theoretically returned to the Government’s custody [except that the contracts are almost always replaced by another contract, so they keep the weapons]. Every contract is different, however the ‘ballet’ of securing weapons usually involves DOD [Department of Defense] (or the Agency) and DOS [Department of State] as they are the body that implements the ITAR [International Traffic in Arms Regulations] export permits. I cannot begin to tell you how screwed up those DOS people are as they overtly and repeatedly tried to thwart our attempts to purchase and legally export American made weapons to service contracts for the US government. Talk about government waste and the right hand fighting the left.... Incidentally, it was this nonsense at DOS and ITAR that I believe caused BW and others to illegally export weapons as they were faced with DOD contractual deadlines to have men on the ground, but could not get the permits to arm them in time."
MORE DETAIL ON PMC SCANDALS
The above source also told me, "The next scandal will involve 3C [Triple Canopy] and should provide some real fodder for all. Basically, the emerging train wreck that was Blackwater in Iraq has now been rebranded under the 3C flag [hiding their presence in Iraq within Triple Canopy contracts——outsourcing the outsourced] and if they are not careful it won't be long before the train wrecks."
The details on the Blackwater prosecutions paint a dark picture. Jeremy Scahill writes that, "On September 7, federal prosecutors in Washington DC submitted papers in the criminal case against five Blackwater operatives for their alleged role in the 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others. Blackwater forces ‘fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause,’ the acting US Attorney in DC, Channing Phillips, alleges in court papers submitted by Kenneth C. Kohl, the lead prosecutor on this case.
"The allegation that stands out most in the court filing, as Mother Jones noted, is this one against one of the Nisour Square defendants: ‘During the twelve months preceding the events charged in the indictment, while assigned to the Raven 23 convoy operating at various locations in the Red Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, defendant Nicholas Slatten made statements that he wanted to kill as many Iraqis as he could as ‘payback for 9/11,’ and he repeatedly boasted about the number of Iraqis he had shot………… [During these 12 months,] Slatten deliberately fired his weapon to draw out return fire and instigate gun battles in a manner that was inconsistent with the use of force and escalation of force policies that governed Blackwater personnel in Iraq.’
"Here are some other key excerpts from the court document: ‘[T]he United States will seek to introduce evidence that in the year leading up to the events of September 16, 2007, several of the defendants had harbored a deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians which they demonstrated in words and deeds. The defendants’ demonstrated hostility toward Iraqi civilians bears directly on the defendants’ respective states of mind when they fired rounds at innocent civilians at Nisur Square on September 16, 2007. In addition to verbal expressions of hatred towards Iraqi civilians, the defendants engaged in unprovoked and aggressive behavior toward unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. In so doing, the defendants routinely acted in disregard of the use of force policies that they were required to follow as a condition of their employment as Blackwater guards [this politicized statement is included at the end of every paragraph to make sure that Blackwater itself is exonerated].
"During the twelve months preceding the events charged in the indictment, while assigned to a turret gun position on the Raven 23 convoy operating at various locations in the Red Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, defendants Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten and Evan Liberty routinely threw water bottles and other items at unarmed civilians, vehicles, wagons, and bicycles without justification in an attempt to break automobile windows, injure and harass people, and for sport [this comes from damning testimony by fellow guards]... defendant Evan Liberty discharged an automatic weapon from the turret of a Blackwater armored vehicle without aiming the weapon, and without regard for who might be struck by the rounds... [in another separate incident] discharged an automatic weapon from a port hole of a Blackwater armored vehicle, while driving that vehicle, without aiming the weapon, and without regard for who might be struck by the rounds...’
"It is also significant that federal prosecutors reject any suggestion by Blackwater or the defendants in this case that the men at Nisour Square acted in self-defense in response to an attack by ‘insurgent,’ as Blackwater alleged from day one. ‘None of these victims was an insurgent, and many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee’ Blackwater’s operatives, prosecutors allege."
Then there is the growing story of the sexual horror stories among PMC tasked to replace US Marines as embassy guards. However the systematic corruption within these contracts goes even deeper as detailed by Spencer Ackerman: "The private security company hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul lost its contract with the State Department in 2007 over the failure of its guards to speak English, according to two senior diplomats who worked in the embassy at that time. Yet ArmorGroup, which was hired by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security to replace that company —— and which is currently embroiled in a physical and sexual harassment scandal —— was allowed to keep its contract despite exhibiting exactly the same deficiency that those diplomats said jeopardized the security of the embassy.
"In late 2006, shortly after the Virginia-based security company MVM Inc. took over the protection of the embassy from the British firm Global Risk, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan began to notice problems with the company’s guards. The guards demonstrated ‘an inability to understand instructions in English that prevented following orders in an emergency situation,’ said Ronald Neumann, who served as ambassador in Kabul from 2005 to 2007. Yet that same lack of proficiency in English that Neumann felt endangered the embassy was allowed to recur with ArmorGroup.... Neumann sent out a formal notice, back to the State Department that MVM’s performance ‘was not adequate for our security.’ The State Department sent a ‘special team’ from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to investigate. Their findings were so evidently serious that MVM lost its contract —— something that didn’t even happen after guards working for Blackwater killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007.
"A second senior diplomat... said, that ultimately the contract of MVM’s predecessor for embassy security, Global Risk, was extended on an interim basis until the contract was re-awarded. Private security contractors routinely hire non-English speaking guards from the developing world who are willing to work for comparatively little. A former ArmorGroup official, James Sauer, sued the company for unjust termination in 2008, and claimed in an ongoing lawsuit that the guards ArmorGroup hired to protect the embassy in Kabul were ‘nothing more than slave labor.’
"In April 2008, the State Department sent ArmorGroup a formal advisory that deficiencies with how it did its job were endangering its contract. Among them: ‘a lack of English proficiency in a large portion of the guard force,’ according to Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, summing up a series of whistleblower allegations and Senate investigations brought to the good-government advocate’s attention. But in July 2008, the State Department extended its contract with ArmorGroup for another year —— a contract worth $189 million [happens all the time because these are not truly open bid contracts, but contracts among insiders——all of whom seem to have a large degree of internal corruption].
"That letter disclosed a number of additional alarming claims about ArmorGroup, including widespread physical and sexual harassment of employees, and threats made against Afghan employees. The State Department’s inspector general has opened an inquiry... on how the State Department could have allowed ArmorGroup to repeat the same language-proficiency problems that it fired MVM for exhibiting."
It’s the same situation in the new Iraq embassy: "According to a senior government official intimately familiar with the operations of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, many of the guards employed by contractor Triple Canopy —— also overseen by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security —— to protect the embassy similarly have little proficiency with English. ‘There is a language problem with the guards at the embassy in Iraq,’ said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ‘They are employees of Triple Canopy, chiefly from Peru, and they speak virtually no English. That has certainly presented a problem with respect to certain crisis situations. I’m aware of a few, wherein the guards themselves were difficult to call upon in crisis situations....It shows they [DOS] haven’t learned the lessons from the past,’ said the first senior government official, ‘namely that an essential element of a good guard at the gate of an embassy is that that guard speak English. That was previously recognized in Afghanistan, that that weakness presented a threat. But in trying to solve the problem, the department instead perpetuated it.’ ‘[T]hese failures raise questions about the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s basic competence with reigning in its contractors. It’s hard to see [the Diplomatic Security bureau] having any role in overseeing contracts anymore.’" Indeed!
Here’s more on the Bureau of Diplomatic Security by Nathan Hodge: "In the wake of the 1983 suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Secretary of State George Shultz appointed retired Adm. Bobby Inman to head an advisory panel to review diplomatic security. The Inman report, as it came to be known, recommended stringent new building standards for U.S. embassies —— and it called for creation of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Diplomatic security agents have a number of different jobs: They protect high-ranking VIPs visiting the United States, guard the Secretary of State and other officials, investigate passport and visa fraud, and conduct security investigations. But the diplomatic security corps was not designed for the post-9/11 world, in which diplomats and other government personnel are out getting their hands dirty doing reconstruction work in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So the State Department started outsourcing.
"In July 2005, the State Department selected three U.S. security firms - Blackwater (now known as Xe), DynCorp and Triple Canopy - to compete for task orders under the Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) II contract, a program worth a potential $1.2 billion to each contractor over five years to provide protective services to U.S. diplomatic personnel in war zones. WPPS II task orders have included missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Israel. That plan, however, hasn’t worked so well.
"[T]he entire security industry is still reeling from the [Blackwater Nisour Square shooting] incident. More recently, details emerged about a pattern of debauchery by contracted guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The State Department has now fired contractors who were caught on camera, and the entire management team of ArmorGroup North America, which has the Kabul embassy security contract, is being replaced. This all begs the question: Does the State Department have the faintest idea how to manage private security?
"According to Concerned Foreign Service Officers, an association of diplomats and civil servants, the answer is ‘Hell, no.’" In my opinion, the answer is more complicated. These people are not stupid——they just have secret orders to keep these 3 PMC companies in contracts no matter what!
ARE THEY ABOVE THE LAW? Yes. "In a statement released yesterday, Concerned Foreign Service Officers pointed to an ‘internal corporate culture of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security [that] promotes the concept that all things are allowable in defense of the nation’s security, and that employees who perform illegal acts in the name of security will be protected.’ The group complained that the bureau ‘encourages agents to view themselves as being above the law,’ and that whistleblower complaints are ignored as a matter of course."
This was just recently reinforced by a judge in the US who happens to be a crony of VP Dick Cheney, as detailed in a separate article by Scahill: "On September 11, the US appeals court for the District of Columbia announced in a 2-1 decision that it was throwing out a lawsuit against CACI International and L-3 Communications Titan unit, which are being sued by Iraqi civilians for their alleged role in the torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. The companies provided interrogators at the prison at the height of the abuses there. The suit alleges that employees of the companies conspired with U.S. Army reservist Charles Graner, who was convicted of prisoner abuse on January 14, 2005 and is currently serving 10 years at Fort Leavenworth, and others to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Several of the plaintiffs are Iraqis whose torture was depicted in graphic photos revealed over the past several years. The judge who wrote the majority opinion, Laurence H. Silberman, said: ‘During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor’s engagement in such activities shall be preempted.’" Incredible. This constitutes official court sanction for lawless behavior.
Nathan Hodge covers the way in which whistleblowers are ruthlessly treated both by PMC and the federal government charged by law to protect whistleblowers. "Last week, allegations surfaced that the contracted guard force at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had descended into a booze-soaked debauch. The drunken antics weren’t the worst part: An investigation by the Project on Government Oversight and previous congressional testimony raised larger concerns about the State Department’s management of its private security guards in Afghanistan, and ArmorGroup, which holds the $187 million embassy security contract, was accused of cutting corners to put in the winning bid.
"Now the whistleblowers are coming forward. This week, two former employees of ArmorGroup fired a lawsuit against the firm claiming they were forced out for blowing the whistle on employee misconduct and other problems. But the most shocking allegation was raised by whistleblower James Gordon, former director of operations at ArmorGroup, who claimed that the firm quashed an investigation into employees frequenting brothels in Kabul that housed trafficked women.
Spencer Ackerman has this key paragraph: "Perhaps most seriously, Gordon said that he found out that both guards and even ArmorGroup program manager Nick Du Plessis were regularly frequenting brothels in Kabul. ‘Many of the prostitutes in Kabul are young Chinese girls who were taken against their will to Kabul for sexual exploitation,’ Gordon said. Federal contracting regulations designed to support the Trafficking in Victims Protection Act prevents contractors from ‘procuring commercial sex acts during the period of performance of the contract,’ meaning that ArmorGroup could lose its contract if State learned of the violation. Yet Gordon’s lawsuit alleges he was shut out of an investigation into the solicitation of prostitutes at the behest of Armor Group’s London-based parent company, despite recurring evidence that ArmorGroup employees continued to solicit prostitutes and perhaps even run their own prostitution services. A trainee boasted to Gordon ‘that he could purchase a girl for $20,000 and turn a profit after a month’
"It’s strongly reminiscent of the decade-old DynCorp scandal in Bosnia. The company became embroiled in a controversy over military contractors buying and ‘owning’ young women, many of whom had been forced into prostitution. Two DynCorp employees were fired after they complained that co-workers were involved in Bosnia’s sex-slave trade. While several DynCorp employees were dismissed, none were brought up on criminal charges; the whistleblowers were later vindicated in whistleblower-relation lawsuits. DynCorp remains a top security provider to the State Department."
Two final comments 1) The manner in which these security companies continue to receive contracts despite egregious violations of those contracts is evidence that there is a deeper and darker underlying agenda and support system for this mercenary system. There will always be mistakes in government, but the pernicious manner in which this pattern of corruption is both tolerated and allowed to continue smacks of something only conspiracy and corruption at the highest levels can explain. It reminds me frankly of the decades the US State Department continually aided and abetted Communist takeovers of nation after nation, and yet no one responsible was ever fired or brought to account. In fact, they were always promoted.
2) My readers will note that there is a stark contrast between my source who was generally defensive of the good personnel working for PMCs and the emerging stories of immoral debauchery and unjustified killings of civilians. Both are true. There is a white side and a dark side to every government agency or arm that has lethal power. I’ve been a military officer and corruption in personnel widely exists, even though most do a good job when on official duty. It’s their private lives that are a mess, with a few notable exceptions. Immorality among military personnel on deployment is by my estimate above 90%. The use of prostitutes is epidemic and the military makes no attempt to stop it——only to mitigate the effects of venereal disease and evade or buy off the legal damages when drunken sailors, soldiers or Marines abuse, rape or beat up local women. Occupation military forces always corrupt a nation morally, even when the cause might be just——which in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan is very doubtful.
©2009 World Affairs Brief and Joel Skousen, all rights reserved.
Tags: blackwater, contractors, halliburton, military
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