The business of war and profit: Aren’t we proud?
Sep 18, 2009 Uncategorized
The American Conservative’s Kelley Vlahos had what I thought was some excellent perspective on contracting in her article titled The business of war and profit: Aren’t we proud?
Pretty poignant considering that The American Conservative is not exactly the place you normally find gratuitous contractor bashing. It’s one thing to take a beating from The Nation on this subject but when TAC Magazine is on your case maybe it’s finally time to take an honest critical look at ourselves.
Kudos to Vlahos for saying what needs to be said. Most PSCs put too much emphasis on profit and not enough on staff selection, development, training, management and oversight. But the U.S. taxpayer is really to blame for not holding their government accountable.
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By Kelley Vlahos
You know what prostitutes and pimps and drugs and rape and electrocuted soldiers all have in common? You’re paying for it.
There is such a lack of outrage for the way that private military contractors have pillaged and profiteered from our nearly-decade occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan that it leaves one speechless. Almost. Thanks to whistle-blowers — at the threat of their own security, professionally or otherwise — we have been informed of some of the basest, grossest behavior coming out of the contracting world on the taxpayers’ dime today. Whether it be soldiers electrocuted by cheap, poorly installed showers by KBR and Triple Canopy, the vodka-drug- fueled pimping frat boys from the Armor Group or the gang rape of a female American contractor by her fellow KBR employees, there is seemingly no end to evidence that the proliferation of privatization has created a runaway Frankenstein of venality, arrogance, avarice and corruption and downright evil, with no restraint that I can see, whatsoever.
Take this latest bit about the Armor Group. Thanks to the Project on Government Oversight, which had the wherewithal to FOIA the goods on this group, we now know that there has been unfettered depravity — including, we heard last week, the procurement of imported, unwitting Chinese girls for sex — at our U.S Embassy. Not surprisingly, there has been a ton of finger-pointing about who knew what and when, but the fact remains that the company got its $187 million contract renewed even after allegations began to surface. Not much different than (Blackwater) Xe, which got its contract renewed in Iraq last week even as their former guards stand trial for murder and the company has banned by the Maliki government for ever working there again.
Allegations of misconduct and corruption on this level go way back — Dyncorp was accused of pimping out skinny, war ravaged girls back in Bosnia. No one seems to care. They just got another contract worth up to $7.5 billion in Afghanistan. They have contracts elsewhere in the expanding U.S footprint, including Africa.
Meanwhile, there are earnest, but ineffective attempts by members of congress to put the brakes on Frank. The Democratic Policy Committee held numerous hearings over the Bush years on these and other subjects of contractor malfeasance, to no real avail. The Commission on Wartime Contracting was created last year and has held some truly eyeopening hearings, even published a nifty report on the 240,000 private contractors now overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and the companies they work for — but to what end? As for President Obama, who pledged during his campaign to review the troubling inflation of private contracting and to hold contractors accountable — crickets.
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Afghanistan, Africa, Blackwater, contractors, contracts, DynCorp, Iraq, Obama
Boys Gone Wild!!! The Kabul Edition
Sep 4, 2009 Industry News, Jake's Posts
Recent allegations of misconduct, failing to meet contractual obligations, (to say nothing of just general stupidity and juvenile antics) by Armor Group staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul raises serious questions about leadership both at Armor Group and at the U.S. State Department.
We’ve yet to hear anyone from Armor Group comment in detail on this case but I can just imagine the way it will sound when it comes out.
We take this very seriously…
we are investigating…
it’s an isolated incident…
we are getting it fixed…
Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, when pressed on questions of contractor behavior of his Blackwater staff likes to say, “Listen, these guys are all patriots, military veterans and professionals.” As if being a patriot and a veteran meant no oversight is necessary? It’s another way of saying, “You’re an idiot for questioning us. We could not possibly do anything wrong.”
History contains any number of idiots who were military veterans and who viewed themselves as patriots yet clearly took actions which were against the interests of the U.S. One prime example is Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted and later executed for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The point is that being a veteran does not mean you are faultless or that you don’t need oversight.
Listen, I served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and I consider that organization to hold the highest standard in military professionalism. They are the consummate ‘professional’ but at no time are they ever devoid of oversight or the possibility of prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
The command structure, the rules, regulations, policies, guidelines and standing operating procedures which are normal in any military organization do not exist to any meaningful degree within the private security/military industry. At best you have a few companies who, relatively speaking, do better than most but even that’s a pretty low standard to meet.
Furthermore, the consequences for breaking rules (that is…the few rules that actually exist) is virtually non-existent. In the U.S. military the UCMJ governs service personnel and all soldiers, airmen and Marines know that failure to comply with any lawful order, law or rule or even policy or guideline runs the risk of prosecution non-judicial punishment (NJP), or court martial under the UCMJ. Again, nothing even close to this exists within the world of private security. There really is no accountability comparable to the UCMJ and NJP amounts only to dismissal from your current contract. And we all know that this is, in reality, no punishment at all since the offender often simply pop-ups somewhere else for another firm in a matter of weeks or months.
So, in short…no rules to follow at the industry level and no consequences for failing to follow any rules which may or may not exist. If these were the ingredients for today’s dinner I doubt if anyone would be eating it.
Now then. That takes care of the industry side of the equation. What about the client side? Increasingly it is coming to light that government clients, in contrast with private clients, are systemically inept at managing the procurement, selection and oversight of security contracts. I have personally worked on contracts which have both private clients and government clients and though neither do a very good job, the government side and in particular the U.S. State Department are painfully ill equipped to do this work. The reasons for this are puzzling, especially as at this stage, after 8 years of war in Afghanistan and 6+ years in Iraq there are literally hundreds of senior contractors with multiple years of operational management experience who could be hired by State in to sit on the ‘client side’ of the table during contract negotiations as well as during the later phases of contract execution.
For decades the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) program was always a sleepy little backwater in the security world. It was, and to some degree still is, full of lifelong government civil servants who, despite their hard work and good intentions, have not been able to adapt to the pace and complexity that operating in a war-zone imposed on them. They got pushed into a fast-paced and complex game that they were not prepared for.
But to date this has been like asking a local high school football coach, no matter good his record has been at that level, to jump into the NFL. Oh sure, on the surface there are many similarities, the field is the same dimensions, it’s still 11 vs. 11 players and the rules are mostly the same and certainly the concepts is the same in principle. But the speed, level of complexity and knowledge and experience to say nothing of the media attention necessary to perform at the highest level make it impossible for him to take go from High School to the NFL without a natural maturation process which usually involves a stop for many years at the university level.
The DSS small staff of only a couple thousand agents oversees (and I am using that term lightly) over 30′000 contract personnel in the protection of over 200 Embassies and consulates around the world. But, the problem is that your standard, run-of-the-mill, contract and mission to protect the Embassy in Berlin or even Kuala Lumpur or Mumbai is still about three solar-systems away from what is required to protect the Kabul embassy. Kabul and Baghdad are the big leagues and the DSS has not demonstrated anything near the capability of playing on that field. They certainly do not have a commanding position of respect or authority over the security firms they are supposed to supervise. At best they are perceived as an administrative nuisance which should be avoided at every opportunity.
To some degree the State Department knows they are are in over their head and they have relied, far too heavily, on the professionalism (I use that term lightly as well…) of the private security sector to pull their bacon out of the fire. But, as I have alluded to before the professionalism they desire and frankly rely on generally just does not exist.
The State Department needs to ‘grow up’ and on-board a wave of professional staff to oversee these programs. Preferably former senior military officers with combat experience. I can guarantee that if these programs were run by retired Colonels who had on their staff retired Majors and recently separated Captains and a cadre of former Senior Staff NCOs who know how to act professionally and provide security at the same time they will be able to hold accountable any private firm who wins the contract. Having the, in-house know-how is the first step but State also needs to get a spine and have the guts to dismiss any firm who is not meeting their contractual obligations. A PSC should be pissing in their boots when a DSS officer is in his AO. But that only happens when the DSS officer knows what to look for and has the initiative and authority to do something when he sees something amiss.
What State seems to be missing is the fact that everyone in this industry wants the U.S. government as a client. The State Department is in the drivers seat here. They can have anything they want. They can drive a hard bargain and they can run roughshod over any service provider because the line outside for the privilege of winning the contract is long. You can’t perform? Next…
State’s problem is they don’t know what to ask for, how to ask for it or know what it should look like when it gets delivered.
Tags: Afghanistan, Blackwater, contractors, contracts, Iraq, Jobs, Marines, regulation, services, wanted
Contractor killed in Afghanistan ambush
Apr 28, 2009 Industry News, Memoriam
By Rachel Myers
“Too many times we stand aside, and let the waters slip away; ‘Til what we put off ’til tomorrow, has now become today; So don’t you sit upon the shoreline and say you’re satisfied; Choose to chance the rapids, and dare to dance the tide.”
- Garth Brooks, “The River”
Craig Fuller’s last moments were nowhere near the exquisite shoreline of his most-cherished song.
The 33-year-old Cape Coral man lived his last days in the dust-choked, rocky terrain of a land marred by decades of war.
He couldn’t tear himself away from it, though family and friends had pleaded with him.
His mission was to help, and the Marine Corps veteran would not abandon it.
On Saturday, Fuller’s team of security/construction contractors were ambushed in a roadside attack as they traveled from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul.
Fuller’s family said the team was returning from delivering food supplies and fixing a leaky septic system in one of the area’s poorest border regions. After an hourlong firefight, Fuller was killed, along with his Afghan team leader, a native known only as Zia.
Fuller’s close friend, Jeff Hermey, also of Cape Coral, was injured by shrapnel. Hermey is returning home later this week.
A third Lee County resident, Lynn Terhune - office manager for Fuller’s company, Afghan Full Road Construction & Security Inc. - is remaining in Kabul. She was not present when the attack occurred.
An ambush
As Terhune, of Fort Myers, described in an e-mail Monday to her daughter, attacks along the perilous roadway are common.
The eight-member team was aware of the risks, and as part of a security team, they were heavily armed, which meant the militants couldn’t immediately overpower them.
“Miraculously only two died during this 1.5-hour attack,” Terhune wrote.
It’s unknown if any militants were killed.
Katherine Schweit, spokeswoman for the Washington field office of the FBI, confirmed her agency is working closely with officials in Kabul to investigate the attack.
“The FBI has the authority to investigate crimes against Americans overseas,” Schweit said.
If suspects are identified and arrested, it is possible they could be brought to the U.S. for trial. However, because the investigation is active, Schweit could not discuss what is believed to have happened on that dangerous road at dusk.
According to a story published Sunday by The Associated Press, there are 3,847 security contractors working in Afghanistan. That number is expected to expand as the number of troops there swell under the recent direction of President Barack Obama.
Fuller, after working for a string of private contractors during the past five years - including DynCorp International and Blackwater - decided to start his own security/construction firm. He returned to Afghanistan in January.
His family said he was quickly becoming exhausted, working tirelessly with his team to provide security to those who needed to deliver valuable supplies and construction help for those living in the crumbling, war-torn infrastructure.
But Fuller felt drawn by the great need.
“He impacted so many lives,” said his stepmother, Bert Fuller. “So many lives.”
Missing Craig
Jerry Fuller, 63, returned from Afghanistan on Thursday.
His son was growing weary, and he needed his rock. The two were not only father and son - they were absolute best friends. They even had shoulder surgery at the same time and went through therapy together.
“I told him, you’re taking this father-son thing a little too seriously,” Jerry Fuller joked.
Jerry Fuller stayed three months.
But in Afghanistan, the grainy dirt fragments that constantly blanket the air were too much for Jerry Fuller’s lungs.
“I couldn’t breathe there, couldn’t function,” he said. “I had to come home.”
He left, telling his son he was so proud, and urging him to return home soon.
Two days later, his son was killed.
On Monday, friends streamed through Jerry Fuller’s Cape Coral home, locking in long embraces.
Those who knew Craig Fuller say his name fit him perfectly.
“He lived his life ‘fuller’ than anyone else,” said friend Mike Hannon, 26, of Cape Coral.
Fuller’s early years were spent in New York, and he moved to Cape Coral with his brother, Ken, and sister, Cary Ann, when he was 8. His friends became too numerous to count.
“He would do anything to help anyone,” said friend Kyla Brouillette, 27. “He was like, ‘Oh, you need a place to stay, you’re welcome here.’ Or, ‘Oh, you need a car, use mine.’ Just anything for anybody.”
Last Christmas, he called home and arranged to send money anonymously to a local family.
At Jerry Fuller’s kitchen table Monday, sun spilled over photos of Craig, images that told the story of his exuberant life. Bert Fuller clasped her husband’s hands. He tightly shut his tear-filled eyes, and shook his head.
In happier times, Craig Fuller was an energetic student at Cape Middle School. He later graduated from Eustis High School in Lake County. From there, he joined the Marine Corps, and his work ethic drove him quickly through the ranks to staff sergeant, his family said.
“I realized my son was no longer my baby when I traveled to see him in Buenos Aires, and ambassadors were bowing to him,” Jerry Fuller said. “They thanked me for raising such a wonderful son. I was so proud of him.”
After he left the Marines, Craig Fuller came back to Lee County and founded “The Scrapyard,” a boxing enterprise. That’s where the 5-foot-11, 160-pound Fuller met 6-foot, 220-pound Jeff Hermey.
“Jeff thought it would be an easy fight,” Jerry Fuller said. “He underestimated Craig’s heart.”
It has long been disputed who actually won the fight, but the two were close ever since.
Craig Fuller had no shortage of friends, his father said.
Later this week, they will gather to honor him during a service at the Iwo Jima statue near the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Cape Coral. Later, his ashes will be scattered in the mountains of Tennessee. Fuller once told his father during a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains that it was “the closest to heaven I’ve ever been.”
And after he sacrificed everything surrounded by suffering, those who loved him don’t doubt that heaven is where Craig Fuller rests.
Tags: Afghanistan, Blackwater, contractors, DynCorp, fighting, fitness, Marines, Obama, services
Dogs of War: Slippery slope
Jan 24, 2009 Commentary, David Isenberg
By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) — If anything about the private military contracting industry is certain, it is that it will continue to grow in the future. And that raises an interesting question: What impact will the continuing and growing dependence on private contractors have on the U.S. military establishment?
In 1992 U.S. Air Force officer Charles Dunlap published an article, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012,” in the Army journal Parameters. In it he described a future in which a military coup had taken place and Gen. Thomas E.T. Brutus now occupies the White House as permanent military plenipotentiary.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: contractors, mercenary
Report: Iraq security contractors poorly managed
Jan 10, 2009 Industry News, Iraq
By RICHARD LARDNER – Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has poorly managed a nearly $2 billion deal with Blackwater Worldwide and other security contractors in Iraq, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general, which cites failures to station guards in the right places and weak oversight as key problems.
Tags: contractors, Iraq
Fatal Shootings by Iraq Contractors Drop in 2008
Dec 20, 2008 Industry News, Iraq
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 20, 2008; A09
Private security contractors guarding State Department officials in Iraq have been involved in just one deadly shooting incident through the first 10 months of this year, compared with 72 during the same time period in 2007, the federal government reported this week.
Improved oversight of the contractors, through a number of changes in procedure, led to the sharp drop in incidents, the department’s Middle East Regional Office reported.
The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security has assigned 45 additional special agents to Iraq, and one agent now accompanies most security movements. Cameras and recording equipment have been installed in security vehicles to record all motorcade movements and events, and all trips are tracked and monitored in real time by department personnel in a tactical operations center.
The establishment of “Go Teams” to immediately investigate any shooting by private security contractors and new rules for the guards’ use of deadly force “strengthened the embassy’s ability to hold its private security contractors accountable for their actions,” the office’s inspector general said. In addition, State added to its contracts with Blackwater Worldwide, DynCorp and Triple Canopy that the companies employ Arab-speaking staff members, provide cultural training to their employees and familiarize themselves with U.S. military tactics and procedures.
The review of private security firms’ use of force comes more than a year after Blackwater security guards escorting U.S. Embassy officials killed at least 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded 20 others in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. Five of the six guards have been indicted on U.S. charges including voluntary manslaughter, and the sixth pleaded guilty.
Incidents still occur, according to the report: Go Teams this year have investigated 13 incidents in which contractors fired guns, 39 in which they discharged small flares and 49 motor vehicle accidents. The newly established Embassy Joint Incident Review Board, set up to review incidents involving injury or death, has not yet needed to meet, the report said.
The situation is far from that in earlier years, when, as one former senior embassy security officer described it in the report, contractor convoys “sped through crowded urban streets, sometimes on the wrong side of the road, and threw water bottles and fruit and used gunfire to warn off civilians.”
The inspector general raised questions about whether the State Department had taken into consideration a possible need for more protective services as the U.S. military presence in Baghdad and other major cities transforms next year.
It also discussed the impact of the status-of-forces agreement between Iraq and the United States that takes effect Jan. 1. Iraq will assume civil and criminal jurisdiction over deadly-force incidents involving contractors; currently the firms have U.S. immunity from prosecution in most instances. According to the IG report, “It was the consensus of the department, embassy and security contractors” that if immunity were removed, “many [contractors] would leave and those contractors staying would ask for and receive premium compensation.” The IG report said that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is working with the Iraqis on crafting a new law that would govern private security contractors.
Iraq has renewed licenses for DynCorp and Triple Canopy to do business in Iraq, but Blackwater’s request for a renewal is still pending. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday that the FBI is conducting an ongoing investigation, after which the Baghdad embassy would make a recommendation about Blackwater and other companies. He added that he expected the final decision on renewal would rest with President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.
Tags: contractors, Iraq
Read Full Indictment Against BW Operators
Dec 12, 2008 Industry News
Click here to read the full indictment document against 5 Blackwater Worldwide operators.
Tags: Blackwater, contractors
Contractors could face increased oversight on the Hill
Dec 12, 2008 Industry News
Government Executive
By Elizabeth Newell
The Democratic Congress is unlikely to take on many investigations or oversight hearings scrutinizing the incoming Obama administration in its next session, which could lead lawmakers to steer their oversight focus toward contractors, procurement experts said on Wednesday.
“I think the oversight on the Hill is going to be fairly gingerly applied the first couple of months … they’ll give this administration a chance to get people in place and priorities started,” said Alan Chvotkin, vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council, a contractor association, at an acquisition panel discussion hosted by the Washington law firm Venable LLP.
Tags: contractors
Some Contractors Not Getting Rich
Dec 12, 2008 Industry News
Washington Post – Government Inc. Blog
Many contractors hired by the federal government are poorly paid and poorly treated. Far from being the big ticket Beltway Bandits that get so much attention — the consultants et al that make so much more per week than civil servants — these workers must do the government’s scut work.
That’s according to a new report by the Democrat-leaning Center For American Progress Action Fund. (Yes, that’s the group run by President-elect Barack Obama’s transition chairman John Podesta.)
Though the report has a partisan flavor, it also has some very interesting facts.
“An estimated 80 percent of the 5.4 million federally contracted service workers are low-wage earners,” says an overview by authors David Madland and Michael Paarlberg. “Contracted workers are often excluded from prevailing-wage law protections and, for many jobs, the minimum prevailing wage allowed is below a living wage. And contractors often violate labor laws.”
The authors also assert:
“Companies that violate laws designed to protect workers are among the most wasteful of taxpayer funds, and contracted workers are often paid far less than taxpayers are charged.”
In a story in The Post, Federal Diary columnist Joe Davidson writes this:
“If you think of well-paid, highly skilled people like brainy engineers at Lockheed Martin or tough Blackwater gunmen in Iraq when you hear the phrase ‘government contractors,’ think again.
“Many contractors do grunt work and don’t get paid much for it, says a report by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. These people wash laundry, drive buses and dish food. They are rent-a-cops, janitors and laborers. They have titles of waiter, cook and cashier.”
He checks in with Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, which represents contractors.
Soloway believes there are “‘valuable recommendations that could help improve federal contracting.’”
“But he’s not happy with the report’s tone and some of its data. Soloway doubts, for example, the 80 percent figure because, he said, professional services is the largest contracting category. Information technology and research and development work, gigs not populated by the poorly paid, also are big categories, he said. He also noted that the Service Contract Act requires employers to pay wages and benefits that are not less than those in the local market.”
Tags: contractors
Private Contractors Sought As Guards in Afghanistan
Dec 9, 2008 Afghanistan
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post
The U.S. Army is looking to private contractors to provide armed security guards to protect Forward Operating Bases in seven provinces in southern Afghanistan. In a recent study, Anthony H. Cordesman, an intelligence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described five of those provinces — Helmand, Kandahar, Nimruz, Zabol and Uruzgan — as among the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan.
The proposed contracts would be for a minimum of one year, beginning Jan. 1, but with options to continue for four years. The move to hire contractors to provide armed guards comes as the United States is deploying more American troops to Afghanistan and looking to double the size of the Afghan National Army from 80,000 to 162,000 over the next five years.
Ironically, a year ago, there was a crackdown on private security contractors in Afghanistan, including a U.S.-based company, because of complaints of fraud. At that time, however, the private guards were protecting U.S. Agency for International Development employees and their contractors, not U.S. military bases.
In a Nov. 26 notice, the Army said the proposed guards would protect the entry control points of the bases to prevent “threats related to unauthorized personnel, contraband, and instruments of damage, destruction and information collection from entering the installation.”
The hired guards would be required to carry out surveillance of the perimeter of the base from fixed positions to see whether someone is attempting to sneak inside. They are also to engage in counter-surveillance, watching to see whether someone is monitoring who enters and leaves the base. The contractor guards are also to be available to protect supply routes, facilities, convoys and property.
The guards would be required to employ “the appropriate force to neutralize any threat,” particularly from individuals trying to enter illegally “with the intent to harm personnel or damage facilities and equipment . . . but are NOT authorized to undertake offensive operations.”
According to the proposal, the guards are to wear unique uniforms that are “easily distinguishable” from those of U.S. forces, coalition forces, the Afghan National Army, the Afghan national police or International Security Assistance Force units — or any other contractor performing a similar function.
The contractor would, when required, provide vehicles for the armed guards and be responsible for maintenance and repair. As with uniforms, the vehicles must be “distinct in both color and markings” from those of U.S. and other official armed services, as well as Afghan police units.
The solicitation offers four hypothetical pricing scenarios for contractors. For example, a Forward Operating Base in Farah province would require 32 guards, 30 male and two female, to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They would be given billeting space, water, potable water and a kitchen for food preparation.
For the Baylough Forward Operating Base in Zabol province, the solicitation estimates that 34 guards, plus supervisors and a program manager, would be needed, but no vehicles. About 10 guards at a time would be needed to man the Baylough observation post, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The government will supply communications equipment for the personnel at the observation post.
The guards will be armed, “at a minimum,” with AK-47s and 120 rounds of ammunition with four magazines that have 30-round capacity. They all must carry identification documents and a letter authorizing the carrying of a weapon, but off-duty personnel “shall not carry concealed weapons,” the solicitation specified.
Tags: Afghanistan, contractors
