Pubdate: Mon, 26 Feb 2001
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2001 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Forum: http://www.freep.com/webx/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Juan O. Tamayo

U.S. CIVILIANS HELP FIGHT COLOMBIAN NARCOTICS WAR

Smaller Military Turns To Outsourcing Missions

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Former Green Beret? Retired CIA? Chopper pilot or 
mechanic? If Uncle Sam doesn't want you, DynCorp might.

As $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid pours into Colombia for an 
assault on its narcotics industry, firms like DynCorp are providing 
security forces with items ranging from coat-and-tie logistics consultants 
to helicopter gunship pilots.

With the U.S. military's staff plummeting by 40 percent since the late 
1980s, Washington has been increasingly turning to private U.S. firms to 
carry out quasi-military missions in foreign trouble spots.

It's not work for the average G.I. Joe retiree.

A team that included several U.S. contract workers landed a helicopter in 
the middle of a firefight earlier this month to rescue the crew of a police 
chopper downed by leftist guerrilla gunfire in southern Colombia.

U.S. officials call it outsourcing, making it sound as innocuous as 
contracting a computer adviser. The firms contracted bill themselves as 
consultants or service companies.

If privatization is the trend these days, the argument goes, why not 
privatize war, too?

Firms such as DynCorp have been around for decades. Founded in 1946 to 
handle post-World War II airplane surpluses, DynCorp is the biggest, with 
revenue of $1.2 billion a year.

It runs everything from one of the computer centers that handled the 2000 
Census to the administration of a U.S. military air base in the Honduran 
town of Palmerola.

Other such firms have trained police in Haiti, armies in the Balkans and 
military logistics officers in El Salvador and handled logistics for the 
ill-fated U.S. military involvement in Somalia.

But with Washington pumping huge amounts of money into Colombia, the roles 
of firms like DynCorp have come under increasing scrutiny -- and aroused 
concerns about the safety and accountability of its employees.

They are not bound by the orders to avoid combat that apply to the 200 
regular U.S. military trainers in Colombia, and it's unclear whether they 
are covered by U.S. congressional restrictions on contacts with Colombian 
security units alleged to have links with right-wing paramilitary squads.

As civilians, their work and fate comes under less scrutiny. When a DynCorp 
paramedic died of an apparent heart attack in October, the U.S. Embassy 
handled his case like the death of any American abroad, declining to 
release information on his background or next of kin.

Israeli Defense Industries also has several contracts in Colombia, mostly 
in the communications and electronics firm.

Military Professional Resources Inc. of Alexandria, Va., has a contract 
with the Defense Department, expiring March 8, to provide a dozen advisors 
to Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff on mostly administrative and logistics 
issues.

MPRI's Web site touts the firm, with reported annual revenues of $12 
million, as "the greatest corporate assemblage of military expertise in the 
world," with 2,000 retired generals, admirals and other officers on call.

Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles provides an unknown number of U.S. citizens 
who operate and maintain five radar stations in eastern and southern 
Colombia that track suspected drug smuggling flights.

But by far the largest firm operating in Colombia is DynCorp, hired by the 
U.S. State Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau 
six years ago under a reported $600 million contract to support coca 
eradication programs in Colombia as well as in Peru and Bolivia.

DynCorp provides American pilots for herbicide fumigation planes and 
helicopter gunships that protect those missions, mechanics and search and 
rescue teams like the one that pulled a downed helicopter crew from the 
middle of a firefight Feb. 19 in southern Colombia.

American pilots earn about $90,000 a year while mechanics earn about 
$60,000, but they must live on remote military bases.

DynCorp employees are under strict orders to avoid journalists.

DynCorp and MPRI officials said they could not comment on their operations 
in Colombia under the terms of their contracts with the U.S. government.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart