Pubdate: Wed, 23 Jul 2003
Source: Durham Independent (NC)
Copyright: 2003, Durham Independent
Contact:  http://indyweek.com/durham/current/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2329
Author: Barry Yeoman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm (Bush, George)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

SOLDIERS OF GOOD FORTUNE

They fly helicopters, guard military bases and provide reconnaissance.
They're private military companies--and they're replacing U.S.
soldiers in the war on terrorism

At a remote tactical training camp in a North Carolina swamp, six U.S.
sailors are gearing up for their part in President Bush's war on
terrorism. Dressed in camouflage on a January afternoon, they wear
protective masks and carry nine-millimeter Berettas that fire
nonlethal bullets filled with colored soap. Their mission: recapture a
ship--actually a three-story-high model constructed of gray steel
cargo containers--from armed hijackers.

The men approach the front of the vessel in formation, weapons drawn,
then silently walk the length of the ship. Suddenly, as they turn the
corner, two "terrorists" spring out from behind a plywood barricade
and storm the sailors, guns blazing. The trainees, who have
instinctively crowded together, prove easy pickings: Though they
outnumber their enemy 3-to-1, every one of them gets hit. They return
from the ambush with heads hung, covered in pink dye.

"You had people hiding behind their teammates!" barks their
instructor, Tony Torres, a compact man with freckles and
salt-and-pepper hair. "That's as shameful a thing as I can think of.
That's fucked up. That's just fucked up." When approaching a "bad
guy," Torres reminds them, a unit must move aggressively, fanning out
to divert the terrorists' attention. "You guys need to get your shit
together," he scolds. "There's not a lot of cover in this structure.
The only thing to do is move toward your threat." The men listen
attentively. They know that Torres, a Navy vet, honed his skills
during nine years in the service, performing search-and-rescue
operations and providing nuclear-weapons security. But Torres no
longer works for the military. These days he is an employee of
Blackwater USA, a private company that contracts with the U.S. armed
forces to train soldiers and guard government buildings around the
world. Every day, the Navy sends chartered buses full of trainees 25
miles from Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base, to
the company's 5,200-acre facility in Moyock, N.C. Last fall,
Blackwater signed a $35.7 million contract with the Pentagon to train
more than 10,000 sailors from Virginia, Texas, and California each
year in "force protection." Other contracts are so secret, says
Blackwater president Gary Jackson, that he can't tell one federal
agency about the business he's doing with another.

When Blackwater opened in 1998, the business of war didn't look like
such a sure bet. "This was a roulette, a crapshoot," recalls Jackson,
a former Navy seal. During the Gulf War, the Pentagon had begun
replacing soldiers with private contractors, relying on civilian
businesses to provide logistical support to troops on the front lines.
Blackwater's founders were banking on predictions that the military
was eager to speed up the process, privatizing many jobs traditionally
reserved for uniformed troops. Their investment paid off: Since the
attacks of September 11, the company has seen its business
boom--enough to warrant a major expansion of its training facility
this year. "To contemplate outsourcing tactical, strategic,
firearms-type training--high-risk training--is thinking outside the
box," Jackson says. "Is this happening? Yes, this is happening."

As the U.S. military wages the war on terrorism, it is increasingly
relying on for-profit companies like Blackwater to do work normally
performed by soldiers. Defense contractors now do more than simply
build airplanes--they maintain those planes on the battlefield and
even fly them in some of the world's most troubled conflict zones.
Private military companies supply bodyguards for the president of
Afghanistan, construct detention camps to hold suspected terrorists at
Guantanamo Bay, and pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter
gunships to eradicate coca crops in Colombia. They operate the
intelligence and communications systems at the U.S. Northern Command
in Colorado, which is responsible for coordinating a response to any
attack on the United States. And licensed by the State Department,
they are contracting with foreign governments, training soldiers and
reorganizing militaries in Nigeria, Bulgaria, Taiwan, and Equatorial
Guinea.

This year, private military companies also played a key role preparing
for the invasion of Iraq. They supply essential support to military
bases throughout the Persian Gulf, from operating mess halls to
furnishing security. They provide armed guards at a U.S. Army base in
Qatar, and they use live ammunition to train soldiers at Camp Doha in
Kuwait, where a contractor, whose company ran a computer system that
tracks soldiers in the field, was killed by terrorists last January.
They also maintain an array of weapons systems vital to the invasion,
including the B-2 bomber, F-117 stealth fighter, Apache helicopter,
KC-10 refueling tanker, U-2 reconnaissance plane, and the unmanned
Global Hawk reconnaissance unit. In the war against Saddam Hussein,
the military planned to use as many as 20,000 private contractors in
the Persian Gulf. That's one civilian for every 10 soldiers--a 10-fold
increase over the first Gulf War.

Indeed, the Bush administration's push to privatize war is swiftly
turning the military-industrial complex of old into something even
more far-reaching: a complex of military industries that do everything
but fire weapons. For-profit military companies now enjoy an estimated
$100 billion in business worldwide each year, with much of the money
going to Fortune 500 firms like Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin,
and Raytheon. Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former vice
chairman of Enron, "has really put a mark on the wall for getting
government employees out of certain functions in the military," says
retired Colonel Tom Sweeney, professor of strategic logistics at the
U.S. Army War College. "It allows you to focus your manpower on the
battlefield kinds of missions."

Private military companies, for their part, are focusing much of their
manpower on Capitol Hill. Many are staffed with retired military
officers who are well connected at the Pentagon--putting them in a
prime position to influence government policy and drive more business
to their firms. In one instance, private contractors successfully
pressured the government to lift a ban on American companies providing
military assistance to Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation
accused of brutal human-rights violations. Because they operate with
little oversight, using contractors also enables the military to skirt
troop limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine
operations without committing U.S. troops or attracting public
attention. "Private military corporations become a way to distance
themselves and create what we used to call 'plausible deniability,'"
says Daniel Nelson, a former professor of civil-military relations at
the Defense Department's Marshall European Center for Security
Studies. "It's disastrous for democracy."

The push to privatize war got its start during the administration of
the elder President Bush. After the Gulf War ended, the Pentagon, then
headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary
called Brown & Root Services nearly $9 million to study how private
military companies could provide support for American soldiers in
combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton--and Brown
& Root, now known as Halliburton KBR, has since been awarded at least
$2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret
locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
In March, the Pentagon hired Cheney's former firm to fight fires in
Iraq had Saddam Hussein sabotaged oil wells during the U.S. attack.

Pentagon officials say they rely on firms like Halliburton because the
private sector works faster and cheaper than the military. When U.S.
Marines distributed relief supplies in Somalia in 1992, for example,
the military contracted with Brown & Root for logistical support.
"They had laborers and vehicles at the Port of Mogadishu within 11
hours after we had given them notice," recalls Don Trautner, who runs
the Army logistics program.

The use of private military companies, which gained considerable
momentum under President Clinton, has escalated under the Bush
administration. "There has been a dramatic increase in the military's
reliance on contractor personnel to provide a wide range of support
services for overseas operations," one Washington law firm advises its
defense-company clients in a recent briefing paper. "In addition, the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in a rapid expansion
of U.S. military activity in many areas of the globe, and President
Bush's ongoing war on terrorism will likely require even greater
contractor support for military operations in the future."

Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of
mercenaries--individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for
personal gain--private military companies are careful to distance
themselves from any associations with such hired guns. To emphasize
their experience and professionalism, many firms maintain websites
brimming with colorful PR material; the industry even funds an
advocacy group, the International Peace Operations Association, which
portrays military firms as more capable and accountable than the
Pentagon. "These companies want to run a professional operation," says
the group's director, Doug Brooks. "Their incentive is to make money.
How do you make money? You make sure you don't screw up."

When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private
entities often shields them--and the government--from public scrutiny.
In 2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that
provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an
errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on
the company's information, the Peruvian air force shot down the
aircraft, killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter.
Afterward, when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State
Department and the CIA refused to provide any information, citing
privacy concerns. "We can't talk about it," administration officials
told Congress, according to a source familiar with the incident. "It's
a private entity. Call the company."

The lack of oversight alarms some members of Congress. "Under a shroud
of secrecy, the United States is carrying out military missions with
people who don't have the same level of accountability," says Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leading congressional critic of privatized war.
"We have individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow
the Military Code of Conduct. Their main obligation is to their
employer, not to their country."

Private military companies emphasize their patriotism and expertise,
positioning themselves as a sort of corporate battalion staffed by
ex-soldiers who remain eager to serve their country. Military
Professional Resources Inc., one of the largest and most prestigious
firms, boasts that it can call on 12,500 veterans with expertise in
everything from nuclear operations to submarine attacks. MPRI deploys
its private troops to run Army recruitment centers across the country,
train soldiers to serve as key staff officers in the field, beef up
security at U.S. military bases in Korea, and train foreign armies
from Kuwait to South Africa. At the highest echelons, the
Virginia-based firm is led by retired General Carl Vuono, who served
as Army chief of staff during the Gulf War and the U.S. invasion of
Panama. Assisting him are General Crosbie Saint, former commander of
the U.S. Army in Europe; Lt. General Harry Soyster, former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agency; and General Ron Griffith, former Army
vice chief of staff.

It is precisely this concentration of experience that makes military
firms so politically formidable. Their executives have worked
with--and sometimes commanded--officials in the U.S. military,
diplomatic, and intelligence communities. (Secretary of State Colin
Powell describes General Vuono, his one-time boss, as "one of my
dearest friends.") "Someone at MPRI opens the Defense Department phone
book and says, 'Oh, so-and-so, I served with him,'" explains Nelson,
the former Marshall Center professor. "He picks up the phone: 'Joe,
remember me? I'm working with MPRI now. Hey, listen, bud, we have a
real opportunity to go to Equatorial Guinea.' Nothing more complex
than that. It is a relationship based on years of camaraderie."
(MPRI--along with Halliburton and DynCorp--declined requests for
interviews.)

The companies don't rely on informal networking alone, though. They
also pour plenty of money into the political system--especially into
the re-election war chests of lawmakers who oversee their business. An
analysis shows that 17 of the nation's leading private military firms
have invested more than $12.4 million in congressional and
presidential campaigns since 1999. DynCorp, a Virginia-based military
and technology company that receives more than 96 percent of its $2
billion in annual revenues from the federal government, wrote more
than a dozen checks to the Republican National Committee over the past
three years and made dozens of other contributions to key Capitol Hill
lawmakers on committees that deal with defense issues.

The firms also maintain platoons of Washington lobbyists to help keep
government contracts headed their way. In 2001, according to the most
recent federal disclosure forms, 10 private military companies spent
more than $32 million on lobbying. DynCorp retained two lobbying firms
that year to successfully block a bill that would have forced federal
agencies to justify private contracts on cost-saving grounds. MPRI's
parent company, L-3 Communications, had more than a dozen lobbyists
working on its behalf, including Linda Daschle, wife of Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Last year L-3 won $1.7 billion in Defense
Department contracts.

The campaign cash and personal connections give private military
companies an unusual degree of influence, even by Washington
standards. In at least one case, a company has successfully shifted
U.S. foreign policy to bolster its bottom line. In 1998, the
government of Equatorial Guinea asked MPRI to evaluate its defense
systems, particularly its need for a coast guard to protect its oil
reserves. To do so, MPRI needed a license from the U.S. State
Department. But the Clinton administration flatly rejected the
company's request, citing the West African nation's egregious record
of torturing and murdering political dissidents.

MPRI launched a full-scale blitz to overturn the decision, quietly
dispatching company officials to work the hallways of the Pentagon,
State Department, and Capitol. "This is the kind of lobbying that's
surgically executed," says Rep. Schakowsky. "This is not something
they want a wide discussion on in Congress." MPRI's executives argued
that the United States should be engaging Equatorial Guinea, both to
improve its record on human rights and to ensure access to its oil
reserves. It didn't hurt that the company could effectively pull rank,
citing its extensive military experience. "Remember, these are
high-level four-star generals, who can really make an argument that
this is consistent with foreign policy," says Deborah Avant, an
international-affairs expert at George Washington University.

In 2000, the State Department did an about-face and issued a license
to MPRI. Bennett Freeman, a high-ranking State Department official who
initially opposed the deal, says he changed his mind after meeting
with Lt. General Harry Soyster of MPRI, who convinced him that the
company would include human-rights training in its work. "These
private military companies, if properly directed by U.S. government
officials, can in fact play positive roles," Freeman says. MPRI
refuses to reveal the terms of its contract with Equatorial Guinea.

The United States has a history of dispatching private military
companies to handle the dirtiest foreign assignments. The Pentagon
quietly hired for-profit firms to train Vietnamese troops before
America officially entered the war, and the CIA secretly used private
companies to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan contras during the
1980s after Congress had cut off aid. But as the Bush administration
replaces record numbers of soldiers with contractors, it creates more
opportunities for private firms to carry out clandestine operations
banned by Congress or unpopular with the public. "We can see some
merit in using an outside contractor," Charles Snyder, deputy
assistant secretary of state for African affairs, recently told
reporters, "because then we're not using U.S. uniforms and bodies."

Like the Clinton administration, the Bush administration is relying
heavily on private military companies to wage the war on drugs in
South America. Federal law bans U.S. soldiers from participating in
Colombia's war against left-wing rebels and from training army units
with ties to right-wing paramilitaries infamous for torture and
political killings. There are no such restrictions on for-profit
companies, though, and since the late 1990s, the United States has
paid private military companies an estimated $1.2 billion, both to
eradicate coca crops and to help the Colombian army put down rebels
who use the drug trade to finance their insurgency.

The largest beneficiary of this privatized war has been DynCorp, which
is helping Colombia's national police destroy coca crops with aerial
defoliants. But according to experts familiar with the war, the
company's role goes well beyond spraying fields. DynCorp employees
"are engaged in combatant roles, fighting in counterinsurgency
operations against the Colombian rebel groups," says Peter Singer, a
foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of
Corporate Warriors. "Indeed, the DynCorp personnel have a local
reputation for being both arrogant and far too willing to get 'wet,'
going out on frequent combat missions and engaging in firefights."
DynCorp has not responded to the allegation.

Relying on DynCorp and other private military companies has enabled
Washington to circumvent Congress and avoid attention. "If the
narcotraffickers shot American soldiers down, you could see the
headlines: 'U.S. Troops Killed in Colombia,'" says Myles Frechette,
the U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the Clinton administration. By
contrast, the 1992 assassination of three DynCorp employees, whose
helicopter was shot down during an anti-drug mission in Peru, merited
exactly 113 words in The New York Times. (In February, when another
air-craft crashed during a drug operation in Colombia, three employees
of Northrop Grumman were taken hostage.)

Private military companies also played an unheralded role in the
Balkans. After the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the United
Nations placed an embargo on providing military assistance to either
Serbia or Croatia. Some in the State Department, however, wanted to
counter the dominance of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic by
strengthening Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, a self-proclaimed
Aryan supremacist. Private military companies once again provided the
answer. In 1994, the State Department issued a license to MPRI to
provide military training to the Croatian army. "It allowed the United
States to exert a good deal of political heft while reserving its
official stance of not being involved," says Avant, the
international-affairs expert at George Washington University.

MPRI insists that it provided no combat training to Croatian troops,
saying it merely instructed the country's military in how to operate
in a Western-style democracy under civilian control. But according to
independent reports, the company taught basic infantry tactics to
Croatian soldiers and explained how to coordinate assaults. In August
1995, after the training ended, the Croatian army launched Operation
Storm, a U.S.-style military operation designed to take back the
disputed Krajina region from the Serbs. The four-day assault was a
bloody episode of ethnic cleansing. Croatian graduates of MPRI's
training carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled
civilians, leaving hundreds dead and more than 150,000 homeless.
Afterward, the Croatians expressed their gratitude for MPRI's help.
"They lecture us on tactics and big war operations," one officer told
The Observer of London, "which is why we needed them for Operation
Storm."

Such incidents point to the greatest danger underlying the increasing
push to privatize war. Soldiers who disobey orders or violate
standards of conduct can be court-martialed and incarcerated; their
supervisors can be reassigned or forced to retire. Private companies,
by contrast, are able to operate in almost complete secrecy, with
little accountability to civilian or military authorities. Consider
the case of two DynCorp employees who exposed a sex-trafficking
scandal in Bosnia, where the company was assisting the American
military with peacekeeping operations during the late 1990s. According
to court documents, DynCorp employees bought and sold local Bosnian
girls, some as young as 13, for use as sex slaves, often confiscating
the passports of victims so they couldn't escape. The men were not
subjected to local or U.S. criminal charges; DynCorp simply whisked
them home--and fired the two whistleblowers.

The lack of accountability could have grave consequences in battle.
The Pentagon has become so dependent on private military companies
that it literally cannot wage war without them. Troops already rely on
for-profit contractors to maintain 28 percent of all weapons systems,
and the Bush administration wants to increase that figure to 50
percent. In most cases, private military companies can withdraw their
employees with virtual impunity if faced with danger in a combat
zone--an escape route that worries many military officials. If
contractors flee when the shooting starts, it could sever supply
lines, ground aircraft, and leave soldiers to run complex weapons
systems they no longer have the skill or know-how to keep in working
order. "There are some weapons systems that the U.S. military forces
do not have the capability to do their own maintenance on," concedes
David Young, a deputy commander at the Defense Contract Management
Agency. "When you take these weapons systems into a combat zone, is
contract support still reliable, especially if you are facing weapons
of mass destruction? It's a source of worry when you're talking about
chemical or biological weapons." Military insiders, from the Defense
Department's inspector general to the Army War College, echo that
concern. "Will using contractors place our service personnel at
greater risk of losing their lives in combat?" one Air Force military
journal has asked. "Are we ultimately trading their blood to save a
relatively insignificant amount in the national budget?"

Blackwater USA's Gary Jackson, whose company operates in hostile parts
of Africa and southwestern Asia, insists that his employees would
never bolt from a war zone. "They're paying us good money to go to
places that are already ugly," he says. "If it gets real ugly, that's
why they hired us in the first place." Pentagon officials also insist
that private firms have proved reliable so far. "I've never seen any
deficiencies, even under fire," says the Army's Don Trautner. "I
challenge anyone to come up with a situation where a contractor would
run under harsh or hostile conditions."

Brian Boquist doesn't have to come up with a hypothetical scenario.
Boquist is the founder of International Charter Inc., a small private
military company based in Salem, Oregon, that has provided air
transportation for peacekeeping operations in Africa and Haiti. In
1996, Boquist subcontracted with DynCorp to fly helicopters for
international peacekeepers in Liberia. Four months into the contract,
rebels from the countryside spilled into the capital city of Monrovia,
shooting people and burning homes. While black smoke hung over the
city, refugees trying to escape the violence poured into the U.S.
Embassy compound. All around them, corpses lay in the street.

Boquist and his colleagues fled to the embassy from their downtown
hotel--but when they got there, their superiors from DynCorp were
nowhere to be found. "They had left the day before," Boquist says.
"Just disappeared." Boquist tried to contact the company for several
days and finally reached DynCorp's U.S. offices by telephone. "Do the
best you can to get your personnel out," he recalls being told. By
then, though, the airport in Monrovia was closed. Stranded in the
burning city, Boquist and his colleagues armed themselves--buying
weapons on the black market and picking up abandoned guns from the
street--and defended the embassy and the refugees inside until U.S.
military reinforcements arrived. "It's easy to be patriotic when you
don't have anyplace to go," he says.

Boquist hasn't forgiven DynCorp ("it was hell on earth"), but notes
that it's only natural for businesses to be concerned with their
bottom line. "They're worried about liability and being sued, and that
takes precedence," Boquist says. "That's the same problem you're going
to face in any major conflict."

Despite such experiences in the field, the Bush administration is
rapidly deploying private military companies in the Persian Gulf and
other conflict zones. By March, DynCorp alone had 1,000 employees in
the Middle East to assist in the invasion of Iraq. "The trend is
growth," says Daniel Nelson, the former professor at the Pentagon's
Marshall Center. "This current president and administration have--in
part because of September 11, but also because of their fundamental
ideology--taken off constraints that somewhat limited the prior
administration." According to some estimates, private military
companies will double their business by the end of the decade, to $200
billion a year.

President Bush only has to look to his father's war to see what the
consequences of this trend could be. In the Gulf War's single
deadliest incident, an Iraqi missile hit a barracks far from the
front, killing 28 Army reservists who were responsible for purifying
drinking water. Other troops quickly jumped in to take their place.
"Today, the military relies heavily on contractors for this support,"
Colonel Steven Zamparelli, a career contracting officer, notes in the
Air Force Journal of Logistics. "If death becomes a real threat, there
is no doubt that some contractors will exercise their legal rights to
get out of the theater. Not so many years ago, that may have simply
meant no hot food or reduced morale and welfare activity. Today, it
could mean the only people a field commander has to accomplish a
critical 'core competency' task such as weapons-system
maintenance...have left and gone home."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin